Douglas Graham Altman
FMedSci (12 July 1948 – 3 June 2018) was an English
statistician best known for his work on improving the reliability and reporting of medical research and for highly cited papers on statistical methodology. He was professor of statistics in medicine at the
University of Oxford
, mottoeng = The Lord is my light
, established =
, endowment = £6.1 billion (including colleges) (2019)
, budget = £2.145 billion (2019–20)
, chancellor ...
, founder and Director of
Centre for Statistics in Medicine
The Centre for Statistics in Medicine (CSM) at the University of Oxford, United Kingdom was founded by Professor Douglas G. Altman until 2018. He was succeeded by Professor Sallie Lamb until 2019, then by Professor Gary Collins. In 1995 it was ...
and
Cancer Research UK
Cancer Research UK (CRUK) is the world's largest independent cancer research organization. It is registered as a charity in the United Kingdom and Isle of Man, and was formed on 4 February 2002 by the merger of The Cancer Research Campaign and t ...
Medical Statistics Group, and co-founder of the international
Equator Network
The EQUATOR (Enhancing the QUAlity and Transparency Of health Research) Network is an international initiative aimed at promoting transparent and accurate reporting of health research studies to enhance the value and reliability of medical researc ...
for health research reliability.
Professional career
Doug Altman graduated in 1970 with an Honours degree in Statistics from Bath University of Technology, now the
University of Bath
(Virgil, Georgics II)
, mottoeng = Learn the culture proper to each after its kind
, established = 1886 (Merchant Venturers Technical College) 1960 (Bristol College of Science and Technology) 1966 (Bath University of Technology) 1971 (univ ...
. His first job was in the
Department of Community Medicine, St Thomas’s Hospital Medical School, London. He then spent 11 years working for the
Medical Research Council's Clinical Research Centre where he worked almost entirely as a statistical consultant in a wide variety of medical areas. In 1988 Doug Altman became head of the newly formed Medical Statistics Laboratory (now Medical Statistics Group) at
Imperial Cancer Research Fund
Cancer Research UK (CRUK) is the world's largest independent cancer research organization. It is registered as a charity in the United Kingdom and Isle of Man, and was formed on 4 February 2002 by the merger of The Cancer Research Campaign and t ...
(now
Cancer Research UK
Cancer Research UK (CRUK) is the world's largest independent cancer research organization. It is registered as a charity in the United Kingdom and Isle of Man, and was formed on 4 February 2002 by the merger of The Cancer Research Campaign and t ...
), and in 1995 also became founding director of the Centre for Statistics in Medicine (CSM) in Oxford. In 1998 he was made Professor of Statistics in Medicine by the
University of Oxford
, mottoeng = The Lord is my light
, established =
, endowment = £6.1 billion (including colleges) (2019)
, budget = £2.145 billion (2019–20)
, chancellor ...
.
Altman was chief statistical advisor to the
British Medical Journal, where he was a member of the editorial "hanging committee", and co-convenor of the statistical Methods Group of the
Cochrane Collaboration
Cochrane (previously known as the Cochrane Collaboration) is a British international charitable organisation formed to organise medical research findings to facilitate evidence-based choices about health interventions involving health profess ...
.
Work on research integrity
Altman was regarded as a leading authority on the execution and reporting of health research, and played a leading role in establishing better standards. He was one of the co-founders of the international
EQUATOR health research reliability network, and a member of the
CONSORT Group from 1999, a group dedicated to offering a standardised way for researchers to report trials.
He was also one of the original authors of the
IDEAL framework IDEAL (Idea, Development, Exploration, Assessment, Long-term study) is a framework for describing the stages of innovation in surgery and other interventional procedures. The purpose of IDEAL is to improve the quality of research in surgery by emph ...
for improving surgical research.
Contributions to statistical education
Altman's publications on statistical education, many co-authored with his long-standing collaborator
Martin Bland, are well known among the medical profession, being noted for their practical relevance and clarity. His textbook ''Practical Statistics for Medical Research'', published in 1991, has sold 50,000 copies in hardback.
Notable achievements
Altman was the author of over 450 papers in statistical methodology, with 11 being cited over 1,000 times. Among them is one
Lancet paper, which has been cited over 23,000 times and is ranked 29th in the
Nature
Nature, in the broadest sense, is the physical world or universe. "Nature" can refer to the phenomena of the physical world, and also to life in general. The study of nature is a large, if not the only, part of science. Although humans are ...
/
Web of Science Top 100 most-cited research papers of all time.
Altman was awarded th
Bradford Hill Medal by the
Royal Statistical Society
The Royal Statistical Society (RSS) is an established statistical society. It has three main roles: a British learned society for statistics, a professional body for statisticians and a charity which promotes statistics for the public good.
...
for his contributions to medical statistics in 1997, and a DSc from the
University of London
The University of London (UoL; abbreviated as Lond or more rarely Londin in post-nominals) is a federal public research university located in London, England, United Kingdom. The university was established by royal charter in 1836 as a degree ...
in the same year.
In 2015 Altman was awarded a lifetime achievement award by the BMJ, where he was credited by the editor, Dr Fiona Godlee, with having "done more than anyone else to encourage researchers to fully report what they actually did, warts and all, rather than letting the best be the enemy of the good or, worse, pretending that research is perfect".
Altman was also
editor in chief of ''
Trials
In law, a trial is a coming together of parties to a dispute, to present information (in the form of evidence) in a tribunal, a formal setting with the authority to adjudicate claims or disputes. One form of tribunal is a court. The tribun ...
'', a Fellow of the
Academy of Medical Sciences
The Academy of Medical Sciences is an organisation established in the UK in 1998. It is one of the four UK National Academies, the others being the British Academy, the Royal Academy of Engineering and the Royal Society.
Its mission is to adv ...
and the
Royal Statistical Society
The Royal Statistical Society (RSS) is an established statistical society. It has three main roles: a British learned society for statistics, a professional body for statisticians and a charity which promotes statistics for the public good.
...
.
Personal life
Altman was born on 12 July 1948 in
London
London is the capital and List of urban areas in the United Kingdom, largest city of England and the United Kingdom, with a population of just under 9 million. It stands on the River Thames in south-east England at the head of a estuary dow ...
to Jack and Decima Altman. He died from
bowel cancer
Colorectal cancer (CRC), also known as bowel cancer, colon cancer, or rectal cancer, is the development of cancer from the colon or rectum (parts of the large intestine). Signs and symptoms may include blood in the stool, a change in bowel m ...
on June 3, 2018. He was survived by his wife Sue, and their children Louise and Edmund.
Books authored
*
* ''Practical Statistics for Medical Research'' (1990). Douglas G. Altman
Books edited
* ''Systematic Reviews in Healthcare: Meta-Analysis in Context'' (2001). Editors: Douglas G. Altman,
Iain Chalmers
Sir Iain Geoffrey Chalmers (born 3 June 1943) is a British health services researcher, one of the founders of the Cochrane Collaboration,[Matthias Egger
Matthias Egger is professor of epidemiology and public health at the University of Bern in Switzerland, as well as professor of clinical epidemiology at the University of Bristol in the United Kingdom.
Education and career
Egger completed his cli ...](_blank)
,
George Davey Smith
George Davey Smith (born 9 May 1959) is a British epidemiologist. He has been professor of clinical epidemiology at the University of Bristol since 1994, honorary professor of public health at the University of Glasgow since 1996, and visiting ...
.
* ''Statistics With Confidence: Confidence Intervals and Statistical Guidelines'' (2000). Editors: Douglas G. Altman, David Machin, T. N. Bryant, Martin J. Gardner.
* ''Systematic Reviews'' (1999). Editors: Douglas G. Altman, Iain Chalmers.
* ''Statistics in Practice: Articles Published in the British Medical Journal.'' (1982). Editors: Sheila M. Gore, Douglas G. Altman.
Peer-reviewed articles
List of the over 800 articles by Doug Altmanavailable through
PubMed
PubMed is a free search engine accessing primarily the MEDLINE database of references and abstracts on life sciences and biomedical topics. The United States National Library of Medicine (NLM) at the National Institutes of Health maintain t ...
.
* David M, Kenneth FS and Altman DG for the CONSORT Group. (2001) Revised recommendations for improving the quality of reports of parallel group randomized trials. ''Lancet'' 14, 1191-4.
* Bland JM, Altman DG. (1986) Statistical methods for assessing agreement between 2 methods of clinical measurement. ''Lancet i'', 307-310. A reprint is availabl
HEREBMJ Statistical Notes- A series of short articles on the use of statistics by Doug Altman and his longtime collaborator
Martin Bland.
* Altman DG, Bland JM. (1983) Measurement in medicine - the analysis of method comparison studies. ''The Statistician'' 32, 307-317.
* Bland JM, Altman DG. (1999) Measuring agreement in method comparison studies. ''Statistical Methods in Medical Research'' 8, 135-160.
* Bland JM, Altman DG. (1995) Comparing methods of measurement - why plotting difference against standard method is misleading. ''Lancet'' 346, 1085-1087.
References
External links
Doug Altman's profile at ISI Highly Cited Researcher website
Doug Altman's profile at the Centre for Statistics in MedicineCONSORT Statement webpage
{{DEFAULTSORT:Altman, Doug
1948 births
2018 deaths
People from London
English statisticians
Alumni of the University of Bath
Fellows of the Royal Statistical Society
Fellows of Wolfson College, Oxford
Fellows of the Academy of Medical Sciences (United Kingdom)
Medical journal editors
Biostatisticians
Deaths from colorectal cancer
NIHR Senior Investigators