Event Description
Speaker:
Jeffrey S. Morris, PhD, Professor and
Director, Division of Biostatistics
Department of Biostatistics, Epidemiology and Informatics
Perelman School of Medicine
Professor, Department of Statistics
Wharton School of Business
University of Pennsylvania
Talk title:
"A Seat at the Table: The Key Role of Biostatistics and Data Science
in the COVID-19 Pandemic"
The challenges of sorting through accruing data and studies in real time to
provide real time learning and decision making have highlighted the critical
role statistical data scientists and epidemiologists play in the broader
society. Besides engaging on scientific studies, they also play a crucial role
in accurately assessing and communicating what is known from accruing
information in the data, stripping away political biases and communicating
emerging knowledge while accurately conveying uncertainties and potential
biases. This is especially critical when evaluating observational data, for
which erroneous conclusions and confusion can arise when analyzed and interpreted
by those without understanding of the inherent biases and quantitative nuances
with these data. In this talk, I discuss my efforts through my https://covid-datascience.com blog and
associated work on social media and with the
media to help with this process. I focus specifically on the context of
uncovering what the data say about vaccine effectiveness as the pandemic has
evolved under different conditions and with different viral variants, while
highlighting some of the erroneous narratives based on logical and
epidemiological fallacies that have been prominent on social media and the
media, many narratives being anti-vaccine but others being pro-vaccine, and
contributed to confusion and division in the broader society. I will argue that
our increased visibility and contributions in scientific communications could
help get accurate information to the public and policymakers.
Bio: Jeffrey Morris got his PhD in Statistics at Texas A&M University
in 2000, and after 19 years in the Department of Biostatistics at the
University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center, he moved to University of
Pennsylvania in 2019 where he is Director of the Division of Biostatistics in
the Department of Biostatistics, Epidemiology and Informatics and Professor of
Biostatistics at the Perelman School of Medicine. He is currently the editor of
Biology, Medicine and Genomics for the Annals of Applied Statistics, and
previously served as ENAR president and overall program chair for the Joint
Statistical Meetings. His research interests focus on developing quantitative
methods to extract knowledge from complex high dimensional biomedical data
including multi-platform genomics, imaging, and wearable device platforms, with
particular focuses on Bayesian modeling and functional data analysis. During
the pandemic, he has authored a blog https://covid-datascience.com
and been active on social media and with the media in using his expertise and
perspective as statistical data scientist to evaluate and synthesize accruing
information in the pandemic, debunking misinformation and filtering out
political and other sources of bias, to clearly communicate objective,
empirically-based knowledge about various aspects of the pandemic to the
general audience. |
