ArticleThe Review of economic studies2023
Behaviour within a Clinical Trial and Implications for Mammography Guidelines.
Article in The Review of economic studies, 2023. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 8 papers.
What it found
Each row is one number read from the abstract, on the scale the paper reported it, with its interval. Left of the dashed line favours the treatment, right favours the comparator. Under each row is the sentence it came from. New to these charts? A ten-minute tutorial.
The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.
The trial behind it
Trials whose registry record cites this paper, or whose number appears in the abstract. A trial that started after this paper was published is citing it as background, not reporting it.
Neither the registry nor the abstract names a trial number. If this is a trial report, that itself is worth knowing.
Who cites it
8 citing papers in PubMed, 24 citations in OpenAlex.
- Instrumental Variables Methods Reveal Larger Effects of Menopausal Hormone Therapy in the Landmark Women's Health Initiative Clinical Trial.AEA papers and proceedings. American Economic Association · 2025Article
- Instrumental variables methods reconcile intention-to-screen effects across pragmatic cancer screening trials.Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America · 2023Article
- Reconciling Seemingly Contradictory Results from the Oregon Health Insurance Experiment and the Massachusetts Health Reform.The review of economics and statistics · 2023Article
- How to Examine External Validity Within an Experiment.Journal of economics & management strategy · 2023Article
- When Scale and Replication Work: Learning from Summer Youth Employment Experiments.Journal of public economics · 2022Article
- Effects of the Colorectal Cancer Control Program.Health economics · 2021Article
- Mammograms and Mortality: How Has the Evidence Evolved?The journal of economic perspectives : a journal of the American Economic Association · 2021Article
- Screening and Selection: The Case of Mammograms.The American economic review · 2020Article
Corrections and comments
PubMed lists nothing against this paper. Absence here is not a guarantee, only a check that was made.
Authors and funding
1 author at 1 institution in 1 country.
Funding
Abstract
Mammography guidelines have weakened in response to evidence that mammograms diagnose breast cancers that would never eventually cause symptoms, a phenomenon called "overdiagnosis." Given concerns about overdiagnosis, instead of recommending mammograms, US guidelines encourage women aged 40-49 to get them as they see fit. To assess whether these guidelines target women effectively, I propose an approach that examines mammography behavior within an influential clinical trial that followed participants long enough to find overdiagnosis. I find that women who are more likely to receive mammograms are healthier and have higher socioeconomic status. More importantly, I find that the 20-year level of overdiagnosis is at least 3.5 times higher among women who are most likely to receive mammograms. At least 36% of their cancers are overdiagnosed. These findings imply that US guidelines encourage mammograms among healthier women who are more likely to be overdiagnosed by them. Guidelines in other countries do not.
Identifiers
What OpenQuestion holds
Registered trials
Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.