He did say that you tune them to minimize false negatives.
I do find it interesting that in the early days of HIV testing even most people who got a "positive" result were in fact negative. The tests have since greatly improved and the number of people taking a test due to hysteria rather than likelihood of infection declined.
But I can imagine a world in which we get very many forms of liquid biopsies like this every year, and false positives become a thing we understand and are used to.
Whether one should bias to allow more false positives or false negatives depends on the next steps after a false positive vs the risks after a false negative.
Well, it would seem hand-wavy to whichever scientists are tasked with improving it I'm sure! There's probably a lot of work involved.
But it's pretty standard for new tests. The first ones are never the most reliable. Obviously the rate of false positives and expense of follow-up testing determine whether it's overall a good idea, but it probably will start out with a positive ROI that becomes a highly positive ROI pretty fast.
I mean, yes, some people are going to freak out no matter how many times their doctor tells them about false negatives before they get the test. But overall this will save a lot of lives and as the test improves, a lot of money too.
I do find it interesting that in the early days of HIV testing even most people who got a "positive" result were in fact negative. The tests have since greatly improved and the number of people taking a test due to hysteria rather than likelihood of infection declined.
But I can imagine a world in which we get very many forms of liquid biopsies like this every year, and false positives become a thing we understand and are used to.