XL. Stochastic significance, consistency, apposite data, and some other remedies for the intellectual pollutants of statistical vocabulary

A statistician who wants to do serious work in matters of clinical medicine becomes confronted by a complex, sometimes formidable, professional vocabulary. The vocabulary contains the multitude of words—arising from all their Greek, Latin, and other etymologic sources—that are needed to label the diverse anatomic, pathologic, physiologic, biochemical, microbial, pharmacologic, and other entities that constitute the contents of clinical medicine. A physician learns most of this vast vocabulary during the first two years of medical school, but thereafter must constantly augment and occasionally replace the basic terms as new ones emerge from subsequent experience, technology, ideas, and research.