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Comment on A virus that kills cancer: the cure that's waiting in the cold

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Yesterday's submission

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4463519

gained no comments (although more upvotes than this submission so far) and I see that today's submission has a no-op # character at the end of the URL, which is considered bad form for a resubmission. I did some looking up of other sources on the profiled researcher and on the general issue of research related to adenoviruses and cancer yesterday when the first submission came in. I liked the article and its overall tone more than (apparently) some of today's commenters liked it, but didn't upvote it because it is too preliminary--wild speculation about cancer cures happens every day. The particular researcher profiled in the article (who seems cautious and sensible, as quoted by the reporter here) is obscure. The research on adenoviruses and cancer is vast, going on in many laboratories in many parts of the world, and so far has been disappointing in its results. This is too early for front-page news here.

As I typically do, here I once again recommend the article "Warning Signs in Experimental Design and Interpretation"

http://norvig.com/experiment-design.html

by Peter Norvig, Google's director of research. Every day on Hacker News we see news articles submitted announcing a "cure" for this or that dreaded disease. Before believing such eagerly awaited stories, check out their research base and find out if other researchers have replicated and verified the same research results.

lognOP

Sorry about the # no-op. Either my browser or the source did that and I didn't notice.

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