RIP, Scott Adams: On Advanced Prostate Cancer Incidence Rates

Also a look at prostate cancer screening advice

RIP, Scott Adams:

There is a lot more at X.

Scott Adams, selling the 2026 Dilbert Calendar

13 Jan 2026, PJ Media: Scott Adams, ‘Dilbert’ Cartoonist, Author, and Podcaster, Dies at 68

Scott Adams, a cartoonist, author, an independent-minded pundit and podcaster, has died at the age of 68 after a rather public battle against prostate cancer. The host of Real Coffee with Scott Adams, the creator of the legendary comic strip Dilbert, and the author of numerous books, had continued with his livestreaming routine, seven days a week throughout his treatments for the disease up until yesterday. In the process, he treated his audience like close family during his cancer journey.

Adams first entered the American consciousness through the clever and relatable satire of Dilbert, which vividly captured the frustrations, absurdities, and the humor of modern office life. His success with Dilbert enabled him to branch out into self-help books on persuasion, and eventually to carve out a very influential niche as an intelligent observer of American politics, culture and media.

Adams was born in 1957 in rural Windham, New York. While he often recounted that he showed early aptitude for drawing, he initially pursued a more conventional path, earning an MBA and working in banking and telecommunications firms. Years in a corporate setting informed his later work on Dilbert, which debuted in 1989. The strip’s central insight, that organizations often reward the wrong behaviors and promote the least capable people, felt both funny and true.

For generations of white-collar workers, Dilbert was not merely a comic strip; it was a form of recognition of the often unspoken reality of cubicles, corporate-speak, pointless meetings, and managers who were never in on the joke.

One of the things I liked about Dilbert is there were enough spreadsheet jokes that people would clip them out and give them to me, and I’d hang them up in my cube(s).

I had this one hanging up in my cube for years: [mainly because I am notorious for bitching about other people’s horrid spreadsheets]

I think my ma sent me this one:

Finally, this was supposedly Scott Adams’s favorite Dilbert strip:

This reminds me — the way I got my first job in college was by going to the professor in charge of the math computer lab to get an account. Immediately after I said howdy, I asked if it was a Unix network. Then he asked if I wanted a job in the lab. (I got further jobs in the math department later.)

On Recent Advanced Prostate Cancer Trends

Scott Adams died from prostate cancer, the same as my late husband, Stuart.

Adams gave only limited information on his cancer diagnosis, as far as I know. But it seems he was diagnosed when the cancer was advanced, again, the same as Stuart. The greater world heard about Adams’s diagnosis last year, as I spoke about in May 2025:

Rather than show mortality trends today, let me show you diagnosis trends in the U.S., for advanced prostate cancer (which is morbidity, an entirely different thing)

The CDC’s page on prostate cancer incidence breaks out info into 3 age groups, as you see above, and you see the increase in advanced prostate cancer diagnosis (or “distant”, because the prostate cancer cells are found in the body far away from the prostate, usually spread throughout and incurable at that point.)

This data was published 25 Sept 2025, and is the most recent available.

These rates are quoted per 100,000 men per year, as with mortality rates, so in an absolute sense, they are low. But you can see the rate had been level for older men (over age 70) for many years before it started to increase after 2011. More on that in a moment.

Let me zoom in on the younger ages:

The increase for the 55 to 69 year group started earlier than 2011, as you can see.

The rates are very low for the youngest age group of men represented in the data set, but the rates are increasing throughout the period.

Increasing Cancer Incidence at Advanced Stages: Partly Related to Bad Screening Advice

Back in May last year, after we had heard of former President Biden’s diagnosis of advanced prostate cancer, people were incredulous that he hadn’t been screened for prostate cancer in years:

I knew what the advice had been, and it’s bad:

The bad advice had been promulgated in 2011. It is just bad all-around, not just at older ages.

Because of this bad advice, men are putting off prostate cancer screening, and prostate cancer is curable if diagnosed at an early stage, but only treatable if found at an advanced stage. The treatment for prostate cancer gets harsher, and the effects from the treatment or the cancer are more profound, the more advanced the cancer.

Here is better screening advice from the American Cancer Society: (last revised November 2023)

[I added some italicization]

The American Cancer Society recommends that men have a chance to make an informed decision with their health care provider about whether to be screened for prostate cancer. The decision should be made after getting information about the possible benefits, risks, and uncertainties of prostate cancer screening. The discussion about screening should take place at:

• Age 50 for men who are at average risk of prostate cancer and are expected to live at least 10 more years

• Age 45 for men at high risk of developing prostate cancer. This includes African American men and men who have a first-degree relative (father or brother) diagnosed with prostate cancer at an early age (younger than age 65).

• Age 40 for men at even higher risk (those with more than one first-degree relative who had prostate cancer at an early age)

After this discussion, men who want to be screened should get the prostate-specific antigen (PSA) blood test. The digital rectal exam (DRE) may also be done as a part of screening. (See Screening Tests for Prostate Cancer.)

If, after this discussion, a man is unable to decide if testing is right for him, the screening decision can be made by the health care provider, who should take into account the man’s general health, preferences, and values.

If no prostate cancer is found as a result of screening, the time between future screenings depends on the results of the PSA blood test:

• Men who choose to be tested who have a PSA of less than 2.5 ng/mL may only need to be retested every 2 years.

• Screening should be done yearly for men whose PSA level is 2.5 ng/mL or higher.

Because prostate cancer often grows slowly, men without symptoms of prostate cancer who have less than a 10-year life expectancy should not be offered prostate cancer screening, because they aren’t likely to benefit from it. Overall health status, and not age alone, is important when making decisions about screening.

I discuss the 10-year life expectancy issue in this post. It occurs at an age much higher than 70 years old.

All that said, if you look above, you can see that the screening advice cannot be the only explanation for the trend. There is a general increase in incidence in advanced prostate cancer at all ages, and the increase started in earlier years for younger ages.

Still, screening recommendations seem to be the largest factor.

“Distant” = advanced prostate cancer.

The group with the highest incidence is non-Hispanic Black. The lowest is non-Hispanic Asian/Pacific Islander. Everybody else is kind of clustered together.

You can see the incidence had been going down until 2010… and then started going up in 2011.

I don’t know what Scott Adams’s situation was, re: the cancer. Some men end up with advanced prostate cancer, even with regular screenings (if it’s an aggressively growing cancer)… but you are more likely to find cancer at an earlier stage (if you have cancer) if you have the screenings.

Not looking for cancer does not mean the cancer isn’t there.

Scott Adams was a highly influential person, and I hope one of his influences is on men to prioritize their health.

Related Posts

• Nov 2025: Movember 2025: Prostate Cancer U.S. Mortality Trends Update - discusses PSA screening

• May 2025: President Biden Had Followed Bad Prostate Cancer Screening Guidelines -- Here are Better Ones

• Oct 2025: Geeking Out on Cancer: The Difference Between Incidence Rates From Screening and Types

• Nov 2021: Movember: The Improvement in Prostate Cancer Mortality - talks about PSA screening

• Nov 2022: Movember 2022: Prostate Cancer Mortality Trend Update - talks about stalling out of mortality improvement, and screening being missed

• May 2025: Podcast: On Advanced Prostate Cancer: Some Personal Thoughts on Biden’s and Scott Adams’s Announcements