Statistics is a science which can provide quantitative techniques to researchers in a wide variety of research areas.  It is particularly useful in many of the research fields at a Land Grant University where variability among plants, animals and other experimental material often is large and important treatment effects need to be separated from background noise.  Statistics is also an art when one considers the concept of choosing correct experimental designs for specific research situations and implementing them at the experiment site.

Research needs to be a collaborative effort.  It is in the interchange of ideas where great progress is made.  Statisticians often do their work in collaboration with researchers in other fields.  They can provide assistance at several steps in the scientific process.  Because they do not initiate the research effort, they do not have control over it.  And yet their input is often crucial to the success of the research in the other field.

Statisticians usually influence researchers in other fields through teaching in the classroom, serving on graduate committees and consulting on specific research problems.  There are a number of ethical expectations for a teacher of statistics.  Does he or she keep up to date in their field?  Do they present the principles in a digestible manner in the class?  Do they make Statistics an enjoyable subject?  Do they teach methodology which the students can use advantageously in their thesis research?  The statistician has a moral responsibility to teach the relevant material well and to have good communication with the students.

Statisticians can reinforce what they taught in the Statistics class when they serve on graduate committees.  It is quite desirable for the graduate student’s advisor to sit in on sessions with the statistician and graduate student.  In some cases, the graduate student knows more statistics than his/her advisor.  It is unethical for the statistician to do the data analytical work for the graduate student.  The graduate student should keep the statistician informed of progress throughout the thesis or dissertation process. 

The consulting statistician needs to be involved in the entire research from planning through data analysis interpretation and reporting.  This is because the analysis and interpretation depend very much on the original questions and hypotheses under study and the resulting research plan.  Proper planning does not guarantee success in research, but it assures that there will not be a built-in design flaw which will render the results unusable.

In consulting, the statistician must listen carefully to the researcher to get a good grasp of the problem before he or she makes recommendations as to how to proceed.  In some cases, key facts come out after hours of discussion.  It is unethical for a statistician to come up with a recommendation without having a good grasp of the problem.

Those engaged in research in various fields are usually studying populations or processes.  They usually understand a great deal more about the population or process than the statistician.  Therefore they develop the questions, hypotheses, or ideas which they would like to research.  The statistician can help them refine these questions, hypotheses or ideas, but he or she usually won’t be able to initiate the process.

The researcher usually cannot study in detail the entire population or process, but rather, a sample of the population must be studied.  For the quantitative aspects, the sample is not a part of the actual biological population or process, but rather a set of data (numbers) represent that population.