EDITORIALS Simulated Screening for Prostate Cancer: the Useful Model

but some models are useful. ” (1). Simulation models contribute to our knowledge of complex systems by letting us see what a system will do under specific circumstances, based on the as-sumed rules by which the system functions. In spite of the sim-plifications they must make in representing the underlying real-ity, simulation models can provide insight not only when used to explore behavior under previously unobserved circumstances but also when used to find the conditions under which the system will behave in a prescribed or observed way. Draisma et al. (2) have used MIcrosimulation for SCreening ANalysis (MISCAN) to model screening for prostate cancer in the latter way, that is, to estimate unobserved parameters. It is a Monte Carlo simulation (3) and therefore a particularly flexible and valuable approach to modeling cancer screening in a large population. The flexibility of this model comes from its larg