Importance of Biostatistics in bioscience

Biostatistics
Biostatistics is the application of statistics to a wide range of topics in biology. It encompasses
the design of biological experiments, especially in medicine, pharmacy, agriculture and fishery;
the collection, summarization, and analysis of data from those experiments; and the
interpretation of, and inference from, the results. A major branch is medical biostatistics, which
is exclusively concerned with medicine and health

Biostatistics as a discipline Whether biostatistics is or is not a discipline depends on the amount

and quality of knowledge that has been developed and accumulated in the field. I would not
consider biostatistics a discipline prior to the end of World War II. But biostatistics has
experienced a drastic change during the last 30 years. Prior to 1950, biostatistics was
synonymous with health statistics, almost entirely descriptive in nature. Since then graduates
with strong backgrounds in mathematical statistics and mathematics have entered the field and
treated biostatistical topics with a different attitude. Research emphasis shifted from descriptive
statistics to the development of a sound theoretical basis for the field. Conventional topics in
biostatistics were completely readdressed and restruc- tured and new methods of analysis have
been continually introduced. As a result, biostatis- tics today contains a respectable body of
knowledge both in quality and quantity and is built on a solid theoretical foundation. In the
words of Professor Bernard G. Greenberg (1983), this body of knowledge "is transmissible by
teaching, and is subject to change resulting from research.

The domain of biostatistics Professor Zelen correctly acknowledges the advancement that has
been made in design of experiments, in medical experiments, in survival analysis, and in clinical
trials; he also notes "estimation problems in stochastic processes are receiving increased
attention." But the domain of biostatistics is much broader than that visualized by Professor
Zelen. Biostatisticians draw problems not only from health and medicine, but also from such
fields as agriculture, biology, genetics, biochemistry, biophysics, demogra- phy, epidemiology,
and many others. Any probabilistic or statistical development in these areas may be classified as
biostatistics. Take, for example, demography. The field plays a central role in population
research, but some of the basic theory underlying the analysis of migration, mortality, fertility,
family life cycle, and population growth was developed by biostatisticians.

The depth of biostatistics An important word, development, is missing and the theoret- ical
aspect of biostatistics is completely ignored in Professor Zelen's article. We should realize that,
in studies of problems in the biomedical sciences or in many other fields, it may not be sufficient
merely to advise scientists to design their experiments and collect their data to suit the
established statistical methods of analysis. For scientists to better understand the problem at hand
and to advance their knowledge through research, the biostatistician may have to develop
stochastic or mathematical models to describe the phenomena according to the biological
interpretation of the underlying mechanism, to define appropriate random variables, to derive the
corresponding probability density functions, and to develop mathematics for estimation and other
related problems. The required statistical theory may not exist. And we cannot enjoy the luxury
of calling upon others to develop theory and methodology for us.

In the study of carcinogenesis, for example, a biostatistician may need to develop stochastic
models for the biological process, and to develop the density function for the length of time
needed for the development of neoplastic cells (Chiang, 1983). The work of Arley and Iverson
(1952), Armitage and Doll (1957), Neyman and Scott (1967), Kendall (1970), and many others is
the work of a biostatistician. The application of the Markov chain to the study of human genetics
and C. C. Li's work (1961) are also the work of a biostatistician. So are the epidemic models
discussed in Bailey (1957), accident proneness in Bates and Neyman (1952), population
reproduction, etc. It is the development of probability and statistical theory, concepts, models,
formulas, and methods needed in many research areas that has enriched our field and enhanced
the status of biostatistics in the scientific world.

The future of biostatistics The future of biostatistics will not be the same as the future of
biostatistical science, and the future of biostatistical science is not what Professor Zelen has
described. In the section "The Future," Professor Zelen speaks more as a computer scientist than
a biostatistician. He overemphasizes the role of computing and statistical software and fails to
recognize that computing and software are tools and will remain such. His misplacement of
emphasis made him feel insecure when he realized "the computer will become an intelligent data
analyst" in less than 10 years. The "computer data analyst" may come sooner than he thinks. But
biostatistics will continue to flourish and biostatisticians will not be out of a job.

In my estimation, we will see more theoretical development in our field and theoretical
development, not statistical software, will be the centerpiece of biostatistics as a scientific
discipline. Biostatisticians will be more interested in understanding biomedical phenomena
through model building and new theories than in data collection and analysis. Since the
phenomena in the life sciences are dynamic and time-dependent, the future of biostatistics lies in
the direction of stochastic processes. For example, development of diseases, effects of treatment,
recovery, and survival of patients are all functions of time. Conventional statistics alone will not
be adequate to study such dynamic phenomena. The appropriate analytic means is stochastic
processes. Most of the aforementioned carcinogenesis models are based on stochastic processes;
the foundation of the life table is a stochastic process; basic models underlying survival analysis
were derived from stochastic processes. Many universities in the country have added new
courses in stochastic processes in their curricula. More stochastic processes will be used in
biostatistical research.

The current interest in survival analysis will continue but with a change in basic models. At
present, most work in survival analysis has been concentrated on the one-(living)-state model
(Cox, 1972). More attention will be directed to the two-(health)-state model of Fix and Neyman
(1951), to the multistate illness-death model (Chiang, 1964), and to the staging model for the
development of diseases (Chiang, 1979). These models are more realistic than the one-state
model in describing illness processes in the human population. New concepts and new statistical
theory will emerge either in conjunction with stochastic processes or otherwise. More people in
mathematical statistics will focus on biostatistical problems, and biostatistics will increase in its
contribution and importance in the advance- ment of science.