Johnson and Johnson sues researchers who linked talc to cancer • Hacker News Board

Re: Johnson and Johnson sues researchers who linked talc to cancer

#131

Post by DrScientist » Mon, Jul 17, 2023, 10:05 AM UTC

mike_hearn wrote: post #118

codelord wrote: post #103

As someone who did a PhD and published and read many papers (in ML) I believe vast majority of papers in ML are misleading. If in fact every paper that claims a better performance over state of the art was true we would have solved AI by now. You see all sorts of problems when you dig deeper into the technical details of peer reviewed publications (even in top tier conferences) including misleading baselines, statist…

How do you measure consensus? There are many researchers who claim there's a consensus of whatever they happen to believe, but when counter-examples are pointed out they start No True Scotsmanning ("no real expert believes..."). Health related research is in a much worse state than ML unfortunately. ML suffers from metrics gaming and overfitting but there's probably not much outright fraud? Common estimates are that…

> well, there are all these universities and professors who have tenure, there are all these journals, there are all these systems and people have been promised lifetime employment.”

Odd that tenure is singled out as the core of the problem. I'd say the undermining of tenure is a large part of the problem.

Research is hard - very hard - you are being asked to discover stuff nobody else has - to push the boundaries of knowledge. I would argue that the idea that one failed research project, and you are out on your ear because of a gap in publishing - is a core part of the problem.

In terms of medical doctors doing research - I'd argue that's a special dangerous mix - medical doctors need to have an element of self-belief just to be able to do their job ( life and death decisions ). Instilling it is part of the training.

That self-belief, plus a lack ( in most cases ) of any in depth scientific research training is a dangerous mix.

Medical training != science training.

In this specific case I have no idea about the rights and wrongs.

Re: Johnson and Johnson sues researchers who linked talc to cancer

#132

Post by amelius » Mon, Jul 17, 2023, 10:08 AM UTC

adrian_b wrote: post #121

amelius wrote: post #108

How did asbestos end up in the talc?

Both talc and chrysotile (the most frequently encountered asbestos mineral) are hydrated magnesium silicates, which are formed together in various proportions through the alteration by water of certain volcanic rocks that are rich in olivine. When talc is mined, it is hard to ensure that it is sufficiently pure and not mixed with other minerals that are found together with it, like asbestos. When very pure talc is de…

Thanks!

> When very pure talc is desired, it is made artificially, by chemical synthesis, using pure magnesium carbonate and pure silicon dioxide. This is much more expensive than natural mined talc.

Is there a way to find out what kind of talc was used in a product?

Re: Johnson and Johnson sues researchers who linked talc to cancer

#133

Post by sokoloff » Mon, Jul 17, 2023, 10:11 AM UTC

AnthonyMouse wrote: post #62

darth_avocado wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> This can lead to unfair results, not for you — who cares about you — but for your victims: If a $1 billion company has killed 100 people, the first 10 who sue might get $100 million each of damages, leaving nothing for the remaining 90. There is a valid point there, but one could argue it sets up unfair precedent for companies to act in bad faith if they can get off easy.

The unfairness isn't in what happens after they do something wrong, it's in how they structure their operations to begin with. The point of limited liability is so that grandpa can invest in an index fund even if he doesn't understand the inner workings of consumer products manufacturing without having to worry that one of the 500 companies in the index will hire a bad manager and have it wipe out not just that inves…

This doesn’t work for a particularly useful type of limited liability company: index funds (and mutual funds in general).

Today’s grandpa might be living off the retirement income from his S&P fund investments which should (IMO) have the same level of limited liability to him as grandpa would have if he invested in a tiny slice of each of 500 different companies directly.

> We don't expect a business to be a generic investment fund

I do expect some businesses to be exactly that.

Re: Johnson and Johnson sues researchers who linked talc to cancer

#134

Post by sokoloff » Mon, Jul 17, 2023, 10:12 AM UTC

notimetorelax wrote: post #61

bagacrap wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How is the business getting off easy in this scenario. It's dissolving. What else can we do to it?

The business limited its exposure through the spinoff. J&J as an entity may need to seize to exist to pay back for the damages.

Minor tip: “cease to exist” is the phrase you almost surely intended.

Re: Johnson and Johnson sues researchers who linked talc to cancer

#135

Post by danuker » Mon, Jul 17, 2023, 10:17 AM UTC

mkagenius wrote: post #97

blincoln wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> If indeed the researchers did conceal that the subjects had other exposure to asbestos, that would be pretty bad? It depends. Were the subjects actually exposed in a meaningful way to another source of asbestos, or did the corporate lawyers go fishing through past address history, purchases, etc. and will argue things like "Subject A visited Australia ten years before the study and was in a city where some older st…

> Were the subjects actually exposed in a meaningful way to another source of asbestos, or did the corporate lawyers go fishing through past address history, purchases, etc. Ideally that should be part of the research paper if done diligently, refuting them even before people doubt them.

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7317550/

> The present study has several limitations. It is both retrospective and uncontrolled, and the cases were submitted in medico‐legal consultation, all of which potentially introduce bias.

I think the researchers were quite open about what they did.

Re: Johnson and Johnson sues researchers who linked talc to cancer

#136

Post by littlestymaar » Mon, Jul 17, 2023, 10:20 AM UTC

Panzer04 wrote: post #95

littlestymaar wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> one pretty practical approach [to how to solve this problem] is bankruptcy. This, after all, is what bankruptcy is for: It is a system to make sure that creditors are all paid fairly out of the assets of a company, rather than paying some creditors a lot because they are early and others nothing because they are too late. That's a legit argument in favor of bankruptcy of the entire company ! There's no good justifi…

Given J&J has yet to actually incur these damages, declaring bankruptcy seems a bit over the top.

When you factor in the fact that this company has (knowingly) killed multiple times more people than Osama Bin Laden, maybe it's not “over the top”…

Re: Johnson and Johnson sues researchers who linked talc to cancer

#137

Post by refurb » Mon, Jul 17, 2023, 10:32 AM UTC

irjustin wrote: post #14

Scratching the surface on talc, it's difficult to determine what should/should-not be done. Cancer.org has a page on talc[0] and from it: > Studies of personal use of talcum powder have had mixed results, although there is some suggestion of a possible increase in ovarian cancer risk. There is very little evidence at this time that any other forms of cancer are linked with consumer use of talcum powder. > Until more…

No doubt I'll be downloaded into oblivion, but it's a massive money making venture for lawyers, similar to "silicone breast implants cause cancer" back in the 90's (which turned out to be false).

The FDA did test randomly test a bunch of talc products and the "FDA found “sub-trace” levels, or no greater than 0.00002%, of chrysotile asbestos contamination in a bottle purchased from an online retailer."

That's 0.2 parts per million, or 200 nanograms in a gram, or 200 micrograms in a kilogram of powder in one sample.

Add on top:

- the FDA tested a number of products and most had zero asbestos (it's a trace contaminant not usually found in talc used for humans)

- the amount of talc that might be suspended in the air when using the products is measured in milligrams (so now we're getting into picograms of asbestos)

- J&J was sued for causing ovarian cancer, there isn't even a scientific link to ovarian cancer for asbestos.

The link to cancer is tenuous as best, but the lawyers smelled blood and could piece together enough of a story to get jury to find J&J guilty based on a "more likely than not" threshold.

In the end the winners in all this are the lawyers.

Look at the studies that were used as evidence, here is a link to the full paper.

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC9847157/pdf/129...

"Exposure data was obtained by sworn testimony of the mesothelioma patients in all cases, and/or from family members who had direct knowledge of the individual’s use of cosmetic talc and, if present, other sources of asbestos exposure."

That's it. The patient's and family member's word. No testing of samples for asbestos contamination, no review of their home to see if there was asbestos. Just a sworn statement.

Re: Johnson and Johnson sues researchers who linked talc to cancer

#138

Post by willis936 » Mon, Jul 17, 2023, 10:33 AM UTC

xkcd1963 wrote: post #123

blitzar wrote: post #111

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We need a Journal of Medicore Results, or a Journal of Tried it and it Didn't Work. As with social media and society in general, only the most inflated of headlines gets attention causing the gold rush of hyped up results. Nothing can be published without the hype and hyperbole, which then sets the benchmark for the next round of hype.

You say it as if that is something that should be accepted.

Is their desire to change it not evidence that they don't accept it? What they want is a real solution rather than to simply complain about the problem while doing nothing (which is closer to acceptance).

Re: Johnson and Johnson sues researchers who linked talc to cancer

#139

Post by ImHereToVote » Mon, Jul 17, 2023, 10:42 AM UTC

SapporoChris wrote: post #15

This agency https://www.cancer.org/cancer/risk-prevention/chemicals/talc... seems to downplay the risk of cancer. Is it possible Johnson and Johnson have been maligned? I'm not an advocate, I'd be interested in seeing significant evidence that their product causes cancer. However, I'd like to see a firm distinction between talc and talc contaminated with asbestos. The link with asbestos and cancer is clear. I'm not c…

What if we simply don't allow asbestos in our household products, just in case. Or at least have labelling on our products on the amount of asbestos are in them, so that consumers can have informed consent.

Re: Johnson and Johnson sues researchers who linked talc to cancer

#140

Post by msandford » Mon, Jul 17, 2023, 10:50 AM UTC

dcow wrote: post #100

What’s the story on the actual research? Is it legit? I find it hard to believe talc causes cancer. Apparently the research is on asbestos-containing talc, and J&J claims their talc never contained asbestos? What am I missing?

You're missing that JJ probably doesn't have the many millions of lab tests for every talc batch sold to prove they're asbestos free. If they did they wouldn't be arguing they're asbestos free, they'd be proving it and suing the talc researchers for libel.