Collaboration on the Issue of False Positives in Diagnostic Tests and the Impact of Rarity on Test Accuracy

Manil Suri and Daniel Morgan are an unusual team: Manil is a mathematics professor and author, while Daniel is a physician and professor of epidemiology, public health, and infectious diseases. But they recently teamed up for a First Opinion essay, “Diagnostic tests for rare conditions present a mathematical conundrum,” in which they write about how the more rare a disease ease, the more likely a test will return a false positive. Host Torie Bosch spoke with Manil and Daniel about how false positives can cause major problems, how both physicians and patients misunderstand statistics, and how their work plays out in their own lives.