People, papers and presentations

Marek Kimmel, professor of statistics, is co-author of an article in the current issue of Nature that takes issue with the findings of an earlier study on the contribution of extrinsic risk factors to cancer development. Kimmel and colleagues who published a paper on the role of stem-cell divisions in cancer risk in 2015 wrote that approaches based on “nonconservative assumptions” by the researchers led to faulty results. The authors of the paper addressed by Kimmel’s group offered a response in defense of their work. Kimmel’s expertise includes epidemiology and mathematical models of cancer progression.