Yes, Doug is correct and I'm wrong. In fact, his comment jogged MY memory -- I actually used BMDP a bit in the late 70's(I think it was).
Thanks to Doug for corrected chronology. Bert Gunter Genentech Nonclinical Biostatistics -----Original Message----- From: r-help-boun...@r-project.org [mailto:r-help-boun...@r-project.org] On Behalf Of Jeff Laake Sent: Thursday, February 18, 2010 11:28 AM To: r-help@r-project.org Subject: Re: [R] Use of R in clinical trials I am old enough. Memory isn't always reliable but Doug Bates recounting is what I remember and a quick search has BMDP developed in 1961 and SAS in 1966. To my surprise, the search produced a site that offered BMDP for sale. On 2/18/2010 11:15 AM, Peter Dalgaard wrote: > Christopher W. Ryan wrote: >> Pure Food and Drug Act: 1906 >> FDA: 1930s >> founding of SAS: early 1970s >> >> (from the history websites of SAS and FDA) >> >> What did pharmaceutical companies use for data analysis before there >> was SAS? And was there much angst over the change to SAS from >> whatever was in use before? >> >> Or was there not such emphasis on and need for thorough data analysis >> back then? > > Well, I'm not quite old enough for this, but the story I heard is that > before SAS was the desktop calculator, essentially. Statistics had > correspondingly enormous focus on balanced designs, allowing > computation to be reduced to means and sums of squares. This would > typically be left to consulting firms employing (human) computers to > literally do the sums. Digital computers had of course been around for > decades at the time but mostly for hard core physics. (Well, actually, > they were finding their way into accounting too.) So SAS was, I > expect, pretty uniformly a relief. > > At the same time, the requirements of the FDA have been tightening; I > suppose partly due to technological feasibility, partly in response to > certain practises being recognised as dubious, like selective > publication, multiple testing, etc. And more data are required since > new drugs are rarely all that much better than older ones, while the > worries about side effects have increased. > > >> --Chris >> Christopher W. Ryan, MD >> SUNY Upstate Medical University Clinical Campus at Binghamton >> 425 Robinson Street, Binghamton, NY 13904 >> cryanatbinghamtondotedu > > > ______________________________________________ R-help@r-project.org mailing list https://stat.ethz.ch/mailman/listinfo/r-help PLEASE do read the posting guide http://www.R-project.org/posting-guide.html and provide commented, minimal, self-contained, reproducible code. ______________________________________________ R-help@r-project.org mailing list https://stat.ethz.ch/mailman/listinfo/r-help PLEASE do read the posting guide http://www.R-project.org/posting-guide.html and provide commented, minimal, self-contained, reproducible code.
