The International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC) Monographs Programme identifies chemicals, drugs, mixtures, occupational exposures, lifestyles and personal habits, and physical and biological agents that cause cancer in humans and has evaluated about 1000 agents since 1971. Monographs are written by ad hoc Working Groups (WGs) of international scientific experts over a period of about 12 months ending in an eight-day meeting.

The objective of the study was to assess the validity of the GLOBOCAN methods for deriving national estimates of cancer incidence. The researchers obtained incidence and mortality data from Norway by region, year of diagnosis, cancer site, sex and 5-year age group for the period 1983–2012 from the NORDCAN database. Estimates for the year 2010 were derived using nine different methods from GLOBOCAN.