Benjamin Franklin used data to show smallpox variolation was safer than smallpox infection “the natural way”

One of the Founding Fathers used reason and numbers to convince people about variolation’s safety.

René F. Najera, MPH, DrPH
Microbial Instincts
5 min readMar 27, 2024

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Cartoon of a man writing on a piece of paper in a study with many books around. A candle lights the room.
Image via Dall-E from OpenAI.

I’ve told you before that you shouldn’t put all the weight of your evidence on the p-value of your statistical…

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René F. Najera, MPH, DrPH
Microbial Instincts

DrPH in Epidemiology. Associate/JHBSPH. Adjunct/GMU. Epidemiologist. Father. Husband. (He/Him/His/El)