Biostatistics (a contraction of biology and statistics; sometimes referred to as biometry or biometrics) is the application of statistics to a wide range of topics in biology. The science of biostatistics encompasses the design of biological experiments, especially in medicine and agriculture; the collection, summarization, and analysis of data from those experiments; and the interpretation of, and inference from, the results.
Bio-statistics and the history of biological thought
Biostatistical reasoning and modeling were of critical importance to the foundation theories of modern biology. In the early 1900s, after the rediscovery of Mendel's work, the gaps in understanding between genetics and evolutionary Darwinism led to vigorous debate among biometricians, such as Walter Weldon and Karl Pearson, and Mendelians, such as Charles Davenport, William Bateson and Wilhelm Johannsen. By the 1930s, statisticians and models built on statistical reasoning had helped to resolve these differences and to produce the neo-Darwinian modern evolutionary synthesis.The leading figures in the establishment of this synthesis all relied on statistics and developed its use in biology.
- Sir Ronald A. Fisher developed several basic statistical methods in support of his work The Genetical Theory of Natural Selection
- Sewall G. Wright used statistics in the development of modern population genetics
- J. B. S Haldane's book, The Causes of Evolution, reestablished natural selection as the premier mechanism of evolution by explaining it in terms of the mathematical consequences of Mendelian genetics.
In parallel to this overall development, the pioneering work of D'Arcy Thompson in On Growth and Form also helped to add quantitative discipline to biological study.
Despite the fundamental importance and frequent necessity of statistical reasoning, there may nonetheless have been a tendency among biologists to distrust or deprecate results which are not qualitatively apparent. One anecdote describes Thomas Hunt Morgan banning the Friden calculator from his department at Caltech, saying "Well, I am like a guy who is prospecting for gold along the banks of the Sacramento River in 1849. With a little intelligence, I can reach down and pick up big nuggets of gold. And as long as I can do that, I'm not going to let any people in my department waste scarce resources in placer mining." Educators are now adjusting their curricula to focus on more quantitative concepts and tools.
Applications of bio-statistics
- Public health, including epidemiology, health services research, nutrition, and environmental health
- Design and analysis of clinical trials in medicine
- Population genetics, and statistical genetics in order to link variation in genotype with a variation in phenotype. This has been used in agriculture to improve crops and farm animals (animal breeding). In biomedical research, this work can assist in finding candidates for gene alleles that can cause or influence predisposition to disease in human genetics
- Analysis of genomics data, for example from microarray or proteomics experiments. Often concerning diseases or disease stages.
- Ecology, ecological forecasting
- Biological sequence analysis
- Systems biology for gene network inference or pathways analysis.
Statistical methods are beginning to be integrated into medical informatics, public health informatics, bioinformatics and computational biology.
Bio-statistics journals
- Biometrics
- Biometrika
- Biostatistics
- International Journal of Biostatistics, The
- Canadian Journal of Epidemiology and Biostatistics
- Journal of Agricultural, Biological, and Environmental Statistics
- Journal of Biometrics & Biostatistics
- Journal of Biopharmaceutical Statistics
- Pharmaceutical Statistics
- Statistical Applications in Genetics and Molecular Biology
- Statistics in Biopharmaceutical Research
- Statistics in Medicine
- Turkiye Klinikleri Journal of Biostatistics
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