Small Numbers in Health. A Socio-history of Fragile Medical Statistics

The emergence of modern health statistics in the 20th century has given rise to numerous studies. However, the currently accepted narrative doesn’t take into consideration the important and uninterrupted production during the same period of what we call “small numbers”, namely data that is fragile, lacking robustness, but is nevertheless valued within medical settings. Although imperfect, these numbers have found themselves at the heart of systems for which they help create the standards. In order to advance an alternative history of health statistics, we present three directions for research related to the contexts, methods and values of small numbers.