In a small-scale study, smokers whose lung screenings suggested signs of cancer nonetheless believed that they could safely continue to smoke, reasoning that future screenings would enable them to catch cancer before it became life-threatening.

“They compared how hard it was to quit smoking with how easy it was to be screened,” said Steven Zeliadt, the study's lead author and research assistant professor of health services in the UW School of Public Health.

That finding, he said, indicates that billions of federal dollars now spent on lung screenings would be better invested in smoking-cessation and in highlighting tobacco's harm to children.