The statistics interpretation as production of truths: ethical insights

Abstract

This essay aims to raise critical awareness about the bioethical risk of the understanding of statistics, as the production of scientific truths, within the practical life of the health professional. Statistics give us a probabilistic view of the natural events observed systematically, with innumerable limits intrinsic to their methods. But the scientific milieu also has its degree of non scientific perception, which created in the collective imagination of the scientific milieu the idea that statistics obtain truths about the complex systems of nature, truths as solid as the scientist’s predictions about the orbits of the planets. Thus, the construction of expectations of success and
failure in interventions, as well as the careful evaluation of the risks and benefits of the application of experimental results in human life, can be dangerously compromised in the day to day of the biomedical practices.