Chester Bliss (1899-1979)
Chester Bliss studied entomology, specifically in developing
insecticides. He recognized the limitations in studies at the
time which were performed outside of a laboratory with
countless uncontrolled variables, so he began to perform
experiments inside a laboratory. Untrained in statistical
analysis, he tried using Pearson's statistical distributions to
explain his results at first without success. He then created a
procedure called probit analysis
which has been widely
used in toxicology. He wanted to estimate the 50 percent
lethal dose
, meaning the dose required to kill 50 percent
of a large population of insects. This process has been applied
to other scenarios as well but works best if the goal is close
to 50 percent.
When Franklin Delano Roosevelt was running for president in
1932, he responded to distrust of bureaucracy by promising to
reduce the number of government officials. In keeping that
promise, the assistant to the assistant to the undersecretary
of agriculture saw no need to conduct research in a laboratory
with insecticides that were supposed to be used out in the
field. He fired Bliss in 1933. Since this was in the middle of
the Great Depression, Bliss could not find another job in the
US. He went to stay with R.A.
Fisher (1890-1962) in England and worked on research with him.
Fisher soon found him a job in Leningrad, where the Communist
party was slowly coming to power. A higher up in the company
Bliss worked for was summoned to Moscow and never returned. His
boss was later invited to Moscow and committed suicide
on
the way back. The Communist party suspected Bliss was an American
spy but, after meeting with him in a sort of trial, they
determined he was just an ignorant American and let him continue
his experiments in peace as a member of the Communist party. He
continued working until it became dangerous for any scientist to
live in Russia. He could not travel to the US because he had
belonged to a Communist organization, so he fled to Riga, Latvia.
He contributed to ideas of study design, considering eliminating external factors, and developed his own analysis method.