Statistical Thinking in Clinical Trials

Abstract

Biostatistics is a very hot discipline today. Over a period of two centuries from 1700 to 1900, statistics underwent horizontal as well as vertical development. In the horizontal development the methods spread among various desciplines from astronomy to psychology to social sciences to biology and so on. In the vertical development it created proper understanding of role of probability as the analogy of game of chance. After fair amount of initial debate it was agreed upon by experts in the field of medicine, mathematics and statistics that data gathered on patients after exposing them to new or exisiting medicines can be analysed statistically to draw conclusions about their effectiveness or otherwise. Since then lot of changes took place and now statistics, statistical methods and statistical applications are getting appreciated by researchers in almost all fields. Medical researchers are not exception to this. In this article a brief overview is given on what kind of statistical thinking is expected from new entrants in this field as well as from stake holders/each member of clinical research team.