John Docherty

April 4th, 2012

JEROME CORNFIELD
-Jerome Cornfield was born October 12, 1912 in New York City. [2] -He received his degree in 1933 from New York University in history and economics. [2] -He was a graduate student at Columbia University (1933-1934), where he studied statistics and economics, and then at the U.S. Department of Agriculture Graduate School (1936-1938), where he studied statistics and mathematics. [2] -Cornfield's early professional work was with economic statistics, and he later entered the field of biostatistics. [2] -From 1934-1947 Cornfield worked as a statistician for the Department of Labor in the Bureau of Labor Statistics. [3] -In 1948 Cornfield began work at the National Institutes of Health in the Biometrics Section, National Cancer Institute. He was promoted to more responsible positions until he left the National Cancer Institute in 1958 to work at the School of Medicine at Johns Hopkins University as both Professor and Head of the Department of Biostatistics in the School of Hygiene and Public Health. [3] -He returned to the National Institutes of Health in 1960 as Assistant Chief of the Biometrics Research Branch at the National Heart Institute. Cornfield was later promoted to Chief of the Biometrics Research Branch (1963-1967). [3] -From 1968-1972 Cornfield worked at the University of Pittsburgh as Research Professor of Biostatistics at the Graduate School of Public Health. In 1972 Cornfield began work at The George Washington University as Professor of Statistics and Director of the Biostatistics Center of the Department of Statistics. [2] -During his career Cornfield worked in many areas of study, including epidemiology, carcinogens, smoking, cardiovascular disease, diabetes, and other chronic diseases. [2]

John Docherty

April 4th, 2012

-In addition, he is known for his contributions to the nature of clinical trials, Bayesian inference, and the relationship between statistical theory and practice. [1] -Cornfield was active in a number of professional organizations. He was a fellow and president (1974) of the American Statistical Association, a member and president (1972) of the American Epidemiologic Society, a fellow of the Institute of Mathematical Statistics, and a member of numerous other professional organizations. [2] -Cornfield wrote many scientific papers with a diverse range of topics, such as random sample theory to the economics of employment patterns, the investigation of tumors in chickens, problems in photosynthesis, and effects of environmental toxins on human health. [4, p. 176] -He created many of the statistical methods that have now become standard in the fields of medicine, toxicology, pharmacology, and economics. [2] -In 1951, Cornfield used Bayes Theorem to solve a puzzle about the chances of a person getting lung cancer. His paper helped epidemiologists to see how patients' histories could help measure the link between a disease and its possible cause. Moreover, he had begun to establish the link between smoking and lung cancer. Later efforts in England and the U.S. confirmed Cornfield's results. [1] -Fisher and Neyman, the world's two leading anti-Bayesians, didn't accept the research showing that cigarettes caused lung cancer. [1]
-1959, Jerome Cornfield joined with five leading cancer experts from the National Cancer

Institute, the American Cancer Society, and the Sloan-Kettering Institute, to write a thirty-page paper that reviewed all studies that had been published on the topic of lung cancer. [4, p. 182] -This paper systematically addressed every one of Fisher's arguments, and Fisher ended up looking ridiculous. This settled the issue for the entire medical community. [4, p. 183] -Cornfield went on to be involved in most of the major public health battles involving scientific data and statistics. [2]

John Docherty

April 4th, 2012

-In 1979 he was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer, and as he lay dying, he called to his two daughters and told them: "You spend your whole life practicing humor for the times when you really need it." [2]
References: [1] (2011, August 29). A History of Bayes Theorem. Retrieved from http://lesswrong.com/lw/774/a_history_of_bayes_theorem/ [2] Greenhouse, S. W. (2005). "Cornfield, Jerome". Encyclopedia of Biostatistics. John Wiley & Sons. doi:10.1002/0470011815.b2a17032 [3] Greenhouse, S.W. (1982). Jerome Cornfields Contributions to Epidemiology. Biometrics, 38, 33-45. Retrieved from http://www.jstor.org/stable/2529852 [4] Salsburg, D. (2001). The Lady Tasting Tea. New York, USA: W.H. Freeman