The answer is not "the false positive rate must be pushed far lower."
The false positive rate is equal to the significance level.
The specificity of the test is equal to 1 minus the false positive rate.
As more elements are added, the false positive rate then declines.
The authors calculate their false positive rate at only one for every 100,000 kilobases.
When members of high-risk groups are tested, the false positive rate is much lower, but still significant.
Company officials said that the "false positive" rate was under 1 percent.
Those results, they say, are surprisingly consistent - in 2010, the false alert rate was 74%.
Even under the best of conditions, there is always a small, but irreducible false negative rate.
And their false positive rate of guessing incorrect was 0.86 percent.