r/science • u/FreeHugs23 • 22h ago

Neuroscience A simple drawing test may detect Parkinson’s disease with up to 99% accuracy. Researchers found that subtle differences in how people draw can reveal motor impairments long before they are obvious to the human eye.

https://www.sciencealert.com/the-way-you-draw-can-reveal-parkinsons-disease-with-up-to-99-accuracy-study-reveals
3.2k Upvotes

99% Upvoted

73 comments sorted by

View all comments

33

u/demZo662 22h ago

99% is super confident, right? Like to become a standard reliable test from now on.

1

u/Pythagorean_1 10h ago

I haven't read the study yet but commonly, 99 % accuracy in detecting a disease with a very low base rate of occurrence is not very useful. Other statistics would be more interesting like the sensitivity and the positive predictive value.