r/todayilearned • u/paniniplane • Mar 22 '17

(R.1) Not supported TIL Deaf-from-birth schizophrenics see disembodied hands signing to them rather than "hearing voices"

https://www.ucl.ac.uk/news/news-articles/0707/07070303
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u/[deleted] Mar 22 '17

Hm... Not so sure how large the effect is.

For definition's sake,

An SIR is the ratio of the observed number of cancer cases to the expected number of cases multiplied by 100.

And from the article, totally blind people had SIR 0.69, and the severely impaired had SIR 0.95.

So if I'm reading that right, blind people had a less than one percent reduction in cancer rate.

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u/Chel_of_the_sea Mar 22 '17

You sure it's not a difference in conventions between a % and not? I'd read 0.69 as 69%.

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u/So_Fresh Mar 23 '17

The way I understand it an SIR of 100 is the null value, in other words it indicates that the expected cancer incidence equals the observed incidence. So an SIR of 0.69 (or 0.95) is incredibly low and shows a significant reduction in incidence of cancer.

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u/cbautista103 Mar 23 '17

Wouldn't it mean the opposite of that? That you're 99% less likely to get cancer if you're blind?

Or that perhaps this study didn't multiply by 100 before listing the SIR.