Cancer: I. Analysis of recent new case incidence reports.
Provides an evaluation of recent government agency reports that allege an upward trend in cancer incidence. Visual and statistical analyses are performed to demonstrate that the data of two cancer surveys, TNCS and SEER, which cover discontinuous time periods and non-identical geographic populations, are incompatible. They may not, as they were, be pooled for time-trend analysis. There is misstatement of the population-at-risk in the use of TNCS data. In SEER, there is evidence that procedures have changed over time, that updating procedures have a sex bias, and that the findings are not yet sufficiently stable to provide a meaningful trend assessment. The alleged upward trend in cancer incidence is an illusion attributable to the overlooking of the discrepancies and inconsistencies between and within the two surveys. Neither survey individually shows an increase in cancer incidence.
D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D009369:Neoplasms / Q000453:epidemiology*; D012044:Regression Analysis; D012737:Sex Factors; D013029:Space-Time Clustering; D013997:Time Factors; D014481:United States