My father is a physician who has been following this issue for years, since primary care docs tend to have much more routine patient contact, and so it’s the primary care docs who most often are at the pointy end of the decision making process for routine screening, be it mammograms, cervical cancer or psa’s.

Anyhoo, he has said to me that the “they were using outdated equipment” argument is acultually bogus. He claims that if you control for how advanced the device used is, one still sees essentially no benefit under the circumstances proscribed by the new recs. (Under forty, average risk, etc)

Two other points. I find it telling that you dad is skeptical of the recs because “some” of the data included contradicts the conclusions. Did he elaborate on what fraction of the data this was?

Second, this entire line of argument succumbs to a dangerous fallacy about medical imaging for screening purposes. “Better” devices are usually better because the picture quality is higher. this means you see more stuff. BUT this in no way improves the clinicians ability to distinguish between thing in the image that will actually cause disease and things in the image that will not. and since the default procedure is to treat anything “suspicious”, this inevitably leads to more unecessary treatment. too many docs and patients assume that better pictures=better treatment. and it just ain’t necessarily so.

finally, speaking for myself, as a statistician, I’d want a he’ll of lot more sophistication in criticisms from a clinician than “meta analyses are too birds eye” and “some of the studies used older devices” from someone charged with guiding me though medical decisions.

anyway, I thought I’d share the opinions of another informed clincian, since that seems to be the standard for authority here.