Bio
Professor, UMB School of Medicine
Laurence Magder has over 30 years of experience providing biostatistical expertise for biomedical research projects. His work has resulted in almost 200 publications in the biomedical literature. In addition to his collaborative work, Laurence is interested in developing relatively simple, easy-to-use statistical methods that can be useful in biomedical research. Examples of these methods can be found in his extensive list of publications. Laurence is also passionate about promoting a shift in the view of the role of statistics in biomedical research. Traditionally, statistical methods are described in courses and in practice as tools for using data to decide whether to accept or reject hypotheses. In contrast, Laurence views statistical methods as ways to quantify the evidence in a set of data with respect to hypotheses. This perspective allows scientists to weigh all relevant considerations in making a scientific judgment about hypotheses. This shift in thinking about the role of statistics renders many traditional statistical topics, such as the use of one-sided versus two-sided tests or the adjustment for multiple comparisons, irrelevant.