Statistically speaking...
Numbers are the lifeblood of science.
Dana-Farber's biostatistics department keeps them on course.
By Robert Levy
The early returns were alarming. Children treated with a new, more aggressive form of chemotherapy for leukemia were becoming ill from the medication. Side effects were more prevalent and serious than predicted. Dana-Farber doctors leading the study of this therapy wondered whether it should be halted.
Statisticians who had helped design the clinical trial advised patience. The project had only recently begun, they warned, and the number of children who had been treated was fairly small. What doctors were seeing probably wasn't a trend, but a fluke based on a small sample. Experience suggested that as the study progressed, the numbers would balance out, and children who couldn't handle high-dose chemotherapy would eventually account for only a fraction of the entire group. The physicians stayed the course — and the result was a treatment so effective it is still in use today, more than 20 years after first being studied.
That story, which Dana-Farber biostatisticians like to cite as an example of their role in clinical research, is more than a parable about the virtue of patience. It illustrates that in biology, isolated cases matter less than patterns, probabilities, and odds. Roll a particular ball down a particular ramp under a particular set of conditions, and it will always reach the same speed at the bottom. Give a group of patients a certain medication, even something as reliable as aspirin, and the result is apt to resemble a crowd scene from a medieval tapestry: some people feeling hale and hearty, others sick to their stomach, some dizzy, a few fatigued — a range of reactions that may seem almost random.
"In addition to working with DFCI investigators on hundreds of studies each year, we develop new techniques for capturing, expressing, and interpreting scientific data."
—David Harrington, PhD
Almost, but not quite. The task of detecting trends in the blare of biological data — of separating "the signal from the noise" — is the realm of biostatistics. As science's way of coming to terms with the inherent complexity of living things, biostatistics turns numbers into tools for discovery. It provides for biologists what physical laws offer chemists: a sturdy structure on which to base their investigations.
It goes without saying that the quality of biological research, particularly in medicine and human health, is only as good as the statistical work supporting it. That Dana-Farber has been able to achieve a leadership position in the cancer research field is due in no small part to the caliber of its Department of Biostatistical Science.
"What makes this department unique, compared to counterparts at other institutions, is that in addition to working with DFCI investigators on hundreds of studies each year, we carry out research in biostatistics itself, developing new techniques for capturing, expressing, and interpreting scientific data," says department Chair David Harrington, PhD. "We also serve as the statistical center for several large national and international projects."
- Next: Out from the shadows
- Page: 1 | 2 | 3| 4
