Читать книгу Applied Biostatistics for the Health Sciences - Richard J. Rossi - Страница 16

PRIOR TO the twentieth century, medical research was primarily based on trial and error and empirical evidence. Diseases and the risk factors associated with a disease were not well understood. Drugs and treatments for treating diseases were generally untested. The rapid scientific breakthroughs and technological advances that took place in the latter half of the twentieth century have provided the modern tools and methods that are now being used in the study of the causes of diseases, the development and testing of new drugs and treatments, and the study of human genetics and have been instrumental in eradicating some infectious diseases.

Modern biomedical research is evidence-based research that relies on the scientific method, and in many biomedical studies it is the scientific method that guides the formulation of well-defined research hypotheses, the collection of data through experiments and observation, and the honest analysis whether the observed data support the research hypotheses. When the data in a biomedical study support a research hypothesis, the research hypothesis becomes a theory; however, when data do not support a research hypothesis, new hypotheses are generally developed and tested. Furthermore, because statistics is the science of collecting, analyzing, and interpreting data, statistics plays a very important role in medical research today. In fact, one of the fastest growing areas of statistical research is the development of specialized data collection and analysis methods for biomedical and healthcare data. The science of collecting, analyzing, and interpreting biomedical and healthcare data is called biostatistics.