Title: The Meaning is the Variance: Population Heterogeneity Should be the Focus of Ergonomics and Biomechanics Research

Bio: Matthew P. Reed, PhD., is the Don B. Chaffin Collegiate Research Professor and head of the Biosciences Group of the University of Michigan Transportation Research Institute. He also has appointments in Integrative Systems and Design, where he is Chair of the interdisciplinary Design Science program, and Industrial and Operations Engineering, where he leads the Human Motion Simulation Laboratory in the Center for Ergonomics. Dr. Reed’s research focuses on vehicle safety, engineering anthropometry, and ergonomics. He is an author of more than 250 publications relating to humans in engineered systems. Dr. Reed is a Fellow in SAE International and a member of the SAE Human Accommodation and Design Devices Committee, Driver Vision Standards Committee, and Truck and Bus Human Factors Committee. He has received outstanding paper awards from SAE, including the Arch T. Colwell Merit Award, the Myers Award, and the Isbrandt Award for crash safety research. He currently serves as vice-president of the International Research Council on the Biomechanics of Injury.

Abstract: The “50th-percentile” male is never the limiting case, and the “5th-percentile female” and “95th-percentile male” don’t exist. Why do people keep talking about them? I will discuss why mean and univariate effects in ergonomics and biomechanics often leave out most of the interesting phenomena and why we should focus our efforts in education and research on rigorous, multivariate consideration of population heterogeneity with examples from industrial ergonomics, product design, and crash safety.