I've written before about routine screenings and the harm they sometimes cause. (See Routine Screenings: Blessing or Curse?) Though they are always costly, often unnecessary, and frequently lead to medical harm, these screenings are defended to the death (pardon the pun) by all concerned. Why? Three reasons, I suspect: emotion, misunderstanding science, and money. All three are inextricably bound.
Causes are understandably very personal and very emotional for those involved. Support for what is purported to be life saving early detection becomes a litmus test and worthy cause. Think breast cancer and all those pink ribbons. Suggesting that what has been portrayed as vital early detection may, in fact, be a waste of time and money and perhaps quite dangerous pushes all those emotional buttons.
The scientific method - how science is done - should be emotionally and personally neutral, based on fact rather than belief. However, science is often routinely ignored, even by people who are scientifically trained. Why? Personal experience and attribution bias. We tend to be selectively biased by our own experiences, i.e., we believe our own eyes much more than a set of data or experiments. Personal experience counts more and is generalized much further than valid and reliable scientific testing. (By the way, eyewitness testimony is notoriously unreliable.)
So, if you know someone who had a routine mammogram or PSA test and subsequently cancer as detected, treated, and the person lived, you are likely to attribute their survival to the routine screening. This is true for physicians as well as patients. That their survival may have been the result of something else entirely or that they may have recovered equally well without early detection is never even considered. It is counterintuitive and entirely true.
Money is the third and probably the main reason why little will change. An entire medical industrial complex and series of related causes and foundations has built up around the issue of early detection of various cancers - some being more popular than others. If scientific research demonstrates, as the studies reported in the following link clearly do, that early detection efforts do not save lives, the research will be dismissed, denigrated, or ignored. It's human nature in part. Ignoring the inconvenient truth is easier the coming up with a different way of doing things.
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