Some comments on teaching biostatistics in medical and health sciences

The role of statistical methods is now well recognized in health sciences since these disciplines are concerned with the study of communities or populations where the principles of sampling and statistical inference are clearly applicable. However, many medical and health sciences teachers and students have been slower to perceive the need for knowledge of biostatistical methods, even though all aspects of medical diagnosis and prognosis are governed by the laws of probability. Some of them are still skeptical about the value and importance of biostatistical principles to their fields and raise questions about the meaning, content, and nature of biostatistics and relevance of its teaching to health sciences disciplines. The purpose of this essay is to address some of these issues with the hope to invoke comments and responses from other biostatistics instructors who have encountered similar predicaments in their teaching and consulting roles to health sciences students and professionals.