• Question: How common are statistics used in scientific breakthrough?

    Asked by 938epdj26 to Liz on 21 Jun 2017.
    • Photo: anon

      anon answered on 21 Jun 2017:

      All the time. Any new medicine, no matter how amazing, will have to be tested using statistics. So either it will be tested against a placebo (that a ‘treatment’ that looks as much as possible like the new medicine but doesn’t actually have any drug in it). The participants in the drug trial don’t know whether they receive the placebo or the new medicine – and that’s important because otherwise they might report that they feel better just because of the idea that they’ve received something they think will work. Once there is an existing approved drug, say Superexicon, then any new drug would be tested against Superexicon. And statistics are used to see if any differences between the two groups indicate a real difference.

      In things I work on – epidemics and their control – we use statistics to understand how the disease is spreading within a particular group or area – then we can predict how it will spread in the future. We can also predict the impact of better control (for example through distributing bed nets to reduce malaria transmission or through distributing masks and protective suits to keep medical staff from catching Ebola).

    • Photo: Liz Buckingham-Jeffery

      Liz Buckingham-Jeffery answered on 21 Jun 2017:

      Christl has given a great answer, and I completely agree. Statistics is used all the time in developing new medicines, testing new therapies in psychology, in our work predicting where diseases will spread, … just all the time in science.

      Statistics is also used in all sorts of other areas too, not just in health care and not even just in science! For example, statistics is used by advertisers to see which campaigns have been most successful. This will help them make more successful adverts in the future. Statistics is used by Netflix to suggest shows to you that you may like, based on what you have watched in the past. Statistics is used in sports to predict the outcomes of matches. Statistics is used in politics: during the recent election, statistics was used to make all of the polls leading up to the vote and by individual parties to identify target seats where they had the potential to win.

      And in fact, very similar statistical and mathematical methods are used in completely different areas: my friend who works in astrophysics looking for exoplanets uses almost the same maths and stats methods as me! Every time he finds a new planet somewhere in the universe, statistics has played a major part of that discovery.

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