Health & Medical News - Where are all our number crunchers? - 07/12/2004: "Where are all our number crunchers?
Nicole Manktelow
ABC Science Online
Tuesday, 7 December 2004



All this data and no-one to analyse it (Image: iStockphoto)
A shortage of statisticians could delay future health and drug research, a leading Australian researcher warns.

Dr David Mitchell, research leader at CSIRO Mathematical and Information Sciences, says biological research is generating data that could help fight diseases such as breast cancer or leukaemia.

But he says there are too few qualified people who can spot the hidden clues.

'This sort of data is going to get enormous, but the number of people able to deal with it is tiny,' says Mitchell, a molecular biologist supervising a group of statisticians.

The Statistical Society of Australia is also worried about the shortage of qualified statisticians and is inviting the public to comment as part of a review.

Details of the review are available on the society's website, with submissions closing on 14 January 2005.

There is also a shortage of students studying statistics, Mitchell says, with most science graduates studying biology rather than mathematics.

'In 2003 enrolments, there were about 3000 PhD students, about half of which are in biological science,' Mitchell says.

'That's not really surprising considering there's a wealth of discovery in there; it's the hot area.

'But there were only 186 [postgraduate] students in mathematical sciences and not all of those will be statisticians.'

Will the shortage delay research?
Statistical analysis can unlock complicated data, like data from genes on a microarray, a microchip or other sub"