{ "source": "Cooked Index — occupational AI risk register", "page": "https://cookedindex.com/jobs/statisticians/", "methodology": "https://cookedindex.com/methodology", "notice": "Verdicts are re-examined as evidence accumulates. Re-fetch before relying on this; the page above always carries the current score.", "scored_at": "2026-08-11", "model": "claude-opus-5", "occupation": { "title": "Statisticians", "soc_code": "15-2041", "category": "Tech", "us_employment": 29030, "median_annual_wage": 105650 }, "verdict": "EXPOSED", "risk_resistance": 37, "contested": false, "near_boundary": false, "dimensions": { "task_resistance": 9, "embodiment": 2, "liability_shield": 5, "trust_premium": 8, "judgment_accountability": 13 }, "reasoning": { "task_resistance": "A 9 reflects the split: model fitting, multiple-imputation runs, table shells, and CDISC/ADaM dataset production are already machine-generatable, while sample-size justification for a Phase III protocol, choosing a variance estimator for a complex multistage survey design, and diagnosing why a proportional-hazards assumption fails in the data you actually have still require someone who understands the study, not just the file.", "embodiment": "A 2 rather than 0 only because some statisticians walk to a lab or clinic to see how measurements are actually recorded, or sit in on a data-monitoring committee in person; the work itself is a laptop, a compute cluster, and a version-controlled repo.", "liability_shield": "At 5 you have credentials that matter socially — a PhD, ASA Accredited Statistician, SAS/ASQ certifications — but no state licence bars anyone else from running the analysis, and when an FDA submission or a court's Daubert challenge goes badly the sponsor, the PI, or the testifying expert absorbs it rather than the staff statistician who wrote the SAP.", "trust_premium": "An 8 covers the real but replaceable relationships: the clinical team, program office, or product manager who has learned your analyses hold up and brings you the messy question early, which buys you consulting hours no anonymous vendor gets — but the deliverable is a defensible number, and a new hire with the same methods can inherit the client.", "judgment_accountability": "A 13 is earned by calls that have no procedure — declaring an interim futility boundary crossed, deciding whether nonresponse in a survey wave is ignorable, choosing whether to pool sites with sparse events — decisions a reviewer will second-guess and that move drug approvals or published federal estimates, but stopping short of 14+ because most of those calls are pre-specified in an SAP or a documented methodology, reviewed by a senior statistician, and signed off by someone above you." }, "rationale": "The mechanical core of the job — writing R/SAS/Python analysis scripts, running regressions and survival models, cleaning datasets, generating tables and figures, drafting methods sections — is exactly what current models do at usable quality, and fast. What resists is upstream and downstream: designing an experiment or sampling frame that can actually answer the question, defending assumptions when the data violate them, and putting your name on an inference that a regulator, court, or executive will act on. The modal statistician (biostatistics, government survey work, market research support) still spends a large share of hours on the automatable middle, which is why this lands squarely in EXPOSED rather than safe.", "outlook": "By the mid-2030s expect fewer statisticians producing analyses and more acting as design architects and sign-off authorities over model-generated output, with regulated biostatistics and official-statistics roles holding up best.", "what_would_raise_it": { "levers": [ { "dimension": "liability_shield", "change": "FDA/ICH-style requirement that a named, credentialed trial statistician personally attests to the statistical analysis plan and unblinded analysis — already partly real via ICH E9(R1) estimand attestation and 21 CFR Part 11 e-signature on SAPs; extension to explicit personal sign-off on any AI-generated analysis, plus EMA/FDA guidance requiring human attestation of model-assisted submissions, would harden this", "plausibility": "plausible", "would_add": 5 }, { "dimension": "liability_shield", "change": "Court adoption of Daubert-style rules that statistical expert testimony must come from a human affiant who can be deposed on method choices, explicitly barring AI-generated analyses as the sole basis — Federal Rule of Evidence 702 amendments (2023) already tightened proponent burden on reliability", "plausibility": "already happening", "would_add": 3 }, { "dimension": "liability_shield", "change": "ASA/RSS establishing an accredited chartered-statistician credential that regulators or IRBs require for sign-off on human-subjects analyses (RSS CStat exists but carries no statutory force in the US)", "plausibility": "unlikely", "would_add": 3 }, { "dimension": "task_resistance", "change": "Genuine two-tier job: if scripting, table generation, and methods drafting are fully automated, the remaining hours concentrate on design of sampling frames, estimand definition, adjudicating assumption violations, and pre-registration defense — the tier models are worst at. Raises measured resistance without any new law, but only for statisticians already doing design work; shrinks headcount at the same time", "plausibility": "already happening", "would_add": 4 }, { "dimension": "judgment_accountability", "change": "Formalization of the statistician as the accountable party for reproducibility and p-hacking failures — e.g., journals or NIH requiring a named statistical reviewer of record on submissions, as NEJM and some FDA advisory panels already do informally", "plausibility": "plausible", "would_add": 3 }, { "dimension": "trust_premium", "change": "Litigation and regulatory buyers specifically contracting for human-authored analysis because AI-generated evidence faces admissibility or audit challenge — visible already in expert-witness engagement letters requiring disclosure of AI use", "plausibility": "plausible", "would_add": 3 } ], "ceiling_note": "Even with all levers, the sign-off tier is a small fraction of the 29k headcount; liability shields protect roles, not the volume of routine analyst-hours, so the occupation likely shrinks toward a smaller, better-protected core rather than holding its size." }, "adjudication": null, "employment_history": { "points": [ { "y": 2017, "emp": 36540, "wage": 84060 }, { "y": 2018, "emp": 39920, "wage": 87780 }, { "y": 2019, "emp": 39090, "wage": 91160 }, { "y": 2020, "emp": 38860, "wage": 92270 }, { "y": 2021, "emp": 31370, "wage": 95570 }, { "y": 2022, "emp": 30780, "wage": 98920 }, { "y": 2023, "emp": 29950, "wage": 104110 }, { "y": 2024, "emp": 29800, "wage": 103300 }, { "y": 2025, "emp": 29030, "wage": 105650 } ], "from": 2017, "to": 2025, "change_pct": -20.6, "comparable_from": 2019, "spans_soc_revision": true }, "pivots": [ { "slug": "medical-scientists-except-epidemiologists", "title": "Medical Scientists, Except Epidemiologists", "verdict": "EXPOSED", "risk_resistance": 49, "median_wage": 103410, "overlap": 71, "skills_to_close": [ "Operations Monitoring", "Negotiation", "Operation and Control", "Troubleshooting" ] } ], "license": "https://cookedindex.com/terms" }