What is it about?
A within-patent study comparing optimal isomers carried out in at Kalamazoo in 1905 is described and a brief biography of its prime mover, Arthur Cushny is provided.
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Why is it important?
The trial, although it can be criticised a modern perspective, was innovative and important in its use of control, alternation and repeated treatment and measurement. Ethical issues were also not neglected by the authors. the data they presented were later (1908) used by Student to illustrate his t-test. Student's paper is regarded as an important milestone on the road of modern statistical development.
Perspectives
I find this story interesting not only because of the scientific matter, chemical, biological and statistical, but also because it provides a window into an era that was important both for the development of medicine and statistics and because the lives of the scientists involved remind us that science is also a human activity.
Professor Stephen J Senn
Consultant Statistician
Read the Original
This page is a summary of: Cushny and Peebles, optical isomers and the birth of modern statistics, Journal of the Royal Society of Medicine, December 2017, SAGE Publications,
DOI: 10.1177/0141076817743188.
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