This is the most difficult subject to put into laymen's terms. Not only do we have the barrier of scientific language and wording, but we also have the make-up of the subjects and, in some studies, complex mathematical statistics. The author will be periodically updating this portion of the website with an analysis of current scientific studies to be popularized by the mass media. For now, please remember that studies get older as every year passes. What was thought to be true in 1980 regarding chemotherapy survival for a certain stage of melanoma may be totally different today. Different drugs come and go in medical popularity influencing studies and treatment patterns.

There are numerous other questions to consider: Who did the study, a major university with no axe to grind, or a small special-interest group? Should a major soup company pay for a study on high blood pressure caused by salt? Is the soup result really mmmmm . . . good? Does that have any bearing on the outcome of the study and how it is "spun" to the public? Was there a good scientific control, comparing the new drug with the best of older drugs, in the study?

Just one example from the dermatology world. A prominent Florida dermatologist who was a consultant (receiving gifts, travel and other perks) for a company that manufactures an expensive cream to treat precancers proposed a "new way" to apply fluorouracil (5-FU), indicating that much shorter treatment is just fine compared to all other treatments that other Board Certified Dermatologists may choose to use for the betterment of their patients. Amazingly (through politics and money to a medical journal publisher...possibly in the form of advertising pages) doctors received in their medical journals this doctor's word that the expensive cream "worked well" for short periods of time. The website author had personally seen some of this doctor's patients and noticed their precancers returning within one year following the other doctor's shortened regimen treatment with 5-FU. In the paper the doctor published there was NO CONTROLLED study, something every high school science student knows how to do. The same patient apply fluorouracil in the accepted manner for a CONTROLLED STUDY to the opposite side of the body, one side for one week the other side for 6 weeks. This comparison is an important scientific principle known as standard bilateral comparison. In scientific studies right is compared with left or a patient is compared to another patient. Failing to compare right with left is a scientific flaw and fails to validate the study. It is a pity that governmental agencies, like Florida Medicare, were forced using political channels by the doctor and possibly a company to rely in the late 1990's on such poorly constructed (possibly politically and monetarily motivated) and scientifically flawed research. At that time Florida Medicare mandated to limit precancer treatment for Florida patients to the burning, painful, and expensive cream which had to be paid for "out of (their own) pocket(s)" by senior citizens, many on a fixed income, which of course, saved Medicare millions of dollar$. Fortunately, after several years and millions of dollars and thousands of hours of doctors' work as well as help from AARP and members of congress the damaging effects that this doctor's "politicking and misguided publishing" did (now deceased by suicide) were undone recently for Florida Medicare which had a national impact. Doctors of one specialty may have difficulty interpreting a study or research from another specialty. You can imagine how difficult it is for the media to sift through a poor study such as this, because an expert is usually needed to find the problems. There is the additional consideration of how you can sell newspapers if there isn't a sensational story.

Many studies on skin cancer are done on patients who are fairly old. Many of these patients die before they can be checked to see if the skin cancer returned, making things difficult for the doctors and statisticians doing the study. Sometimes doctors are more concerned about scarring in younger patients and deliver a bit less treatment. Going lightly on treatments may certainly affect study outcomes. See Just How Much Surgery Is Necessary. The author is convinced that skin cancer recurrence studies should all be redone for all of the various treatment methods for 10 and even 15 years to more accurately advise younger patients of the true recurrence rate that matters to them. When you are 30 years old and receiving a scraping and burning treatment to save an insurance company money but only know what its chances for success are for 5 years, that does not tell you much about what will happen when you are 50. Frequently, patients in their 40's and 50's who received such treatments as routine vertical section surgery or scraping and burning for skin cancers when they were younger come to the website author for Mohs surgery because up to 50% of the cancers have returned as can be seen by the naked eye. Imagine what is going on below the surface of the skin in some younger patients treated with less accurate methods of skin cancer removal.

For now, patients should try not to jump at the results of the every study that comes along without doing some research, especially if the results are being seen only second hand via the media. Put what you hear into perspective, or have your dermatologist do so, or seek a second opinion. In the chapter on Sunscreens the author tries to put into perspective the story that "sunscreens may actually cause skin cancer." There is an example where a conclusion was unfounded and a distortion of the likely meaning of the researcher. See Sunscreens.