The use of inferential statistics in health and disease: A warning.
Community health is an increasingly important subject in the curricula of medical students. The roots of this discipline can be traced to public health and social and preventive medicine. Definition of its boundaries is being sought. Within these boundaries are epidemiology and biostatistics. Community health has reached into the social sciences and adopted their research methodology as a tool for the study of variables influencing disease in communities. This adoption has brought advantages to the practice of community health. It has also brought with it the controversy surrounding the use of the agricultural-botany paradigm in the study of human problems. With the incorporation of social science research methodology into community health, cognizance must be taken by medical educators and community health practitioners of the criticisms surrounding the use of inferential statistics.
D004812:Epidemiologic Methods; D013223:Statistics as Topic