Public Health Grand Rounds: Dr. Kenneth Rothman

The UCLA Department of Epidemiology and

Fielding School of Public Health

invite you to join

Public Health Grand Rounds!

Kenneth J. Rothman, DMD, DrPH

Distinguished Fellow, Research Triangle Institute

Professor of Epidemiology, Boston University

“The Demise of Statistical Significance Testing”

Statistical significance testing is widely misunderstood, prone to yield serious misinterpretation of data, and conducive to reducing the information content of quantitative measures into a stark dichotomy. Estimation without linkage to significance testing is far preferable for interpreting data. Nonetheless, significance testing remains a common focus in data analysis. Will recent developments finally bring about its demise?

A light lunch will be provided.

Dr. Rothman has more than 40 years professional experience in Epidemiologic research. His research has included work on the teratogenicity of vitamin A, the health effects of cellular telephone use, and potential environmental risk factors for cancer. He has also conducted epidemiologic research and written on the epidemiology of cancer, cardiovascular disease, birth defects, environmental epidemiology, and methodological, conceptual and ethical issues in epidemiology. Dr. Rothman authored two widely used textbook of epidemiologic methods, Modern Epidemiology and Epidemiology: an Introduction, and is the founding editor of Epidemiology, a leading public health journal. He received the American Public Health Association’s Abraham Lilienfeld Award for 2002, recognizing excellence in the teaching of epidemiology during the course of a career, is a Fellow of the International Society for Pharmacoepidemiology, and an honorary fellow of the American College of Epidemiology. Dr. Rothman is also a Distinguished Fellow at RTI International, where he holds the position of Vice President for Epidemiologic Research at RTI Health Solutions.