As for the other 509 cancers detected by the screening programme, finding the cancers by use of screening made no difference to the women's lifespans.
District officials and health workers were often confused about how to implement the programme, finding the official guidelines issued by central government unhelpful, confusing and lacking in detail.
China puzzlesAre executive-education programmes finding that China is not the land of milk and honey after all?
Yet the hard evidence for character education in schools remains surprisingly elusive, with a recent US study of seven different programmes finding little impact on children's outcomes.
As Bryce et al. (2011) have noted, randomization is rarely possible in programme evaluations and, with continued scale-up of maternal and child survival programmes, finding 'virgin' comparison areas is increasingly challenging.
The DWP said it was unable to respond in detail to the programme's findings because it had not been shown a full transcript, but a spokeswoman said it was "nonsense" to suggest there were targets or expected results of any sort.
The report authors have told the BBC's Panorama programme their findings were not taken seriously.
Moreover, as far as participants' satisfaction can be interpreted as an indicator of potential long-term support for the programme, our findings also support plausible sustainability for the programme.
In a statement, it said: "We continue to stand by the programme's findings which uncovered serious concerns about the use of public money, which are still being investigated by the government.
Reporter Julian Manyon summed up the programme's findings: none of the witnesses interviewed for the programme heard the soldiers challenge the trio before opening fire, but variously believed they had seen the IRA members shot in the back, with their hands up, or shot after falling to the ground.
