Wacholder et al (2004) have shown that, unless the prior probability of an association is high, a large proportion of genetic associations showing marginal statistical significance in studies of low to moderate power will be false positive results. Of interest, a recent follow-up study of 288 superficial bladder cancer patients showed no association between XPC-PAT or Lys939Gln variants and increased risk of tumour recurrence (Gu et al, 2005). Here, XPC is linked to neoplasm.