Comment by lithocarpus

And... sometimes stats and population level studies take a very long time or (more often) are never done at all and so if we only rely on this to tell us what to do, we'll miss a lot.

There are common sense ways to reduce cancer risk that have been obvious to and practiced by many people for a long time, before the studies showed that they were right. For example, all of the many new synthetic materials and chemicals that have been found to be carcinogens. I just assume any novel chemistry exposure is a risk, to eat it, drink it, touch it, breathe it. I can't and don't avoid all of it, but I can avoid a lot of it in terms of dose, compared to people who don't think about this at all.