Douglas Graham Altman FMedSci (12 July 1948 – 3 June 2018) was an English

statistician A statistician is a person who works with theoretical or applied statistics. The profession exists in both the private and public sectors. It is common to combine statistical knowledge with expertise in other subjects, and statisticians may wor ...

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 The University of Oxford is a collegiate research university in Oxford, England. There is evidence of teaching as early as 1096, making it the oldest university in the English-speaking world and the world's second-oldest university in contin ...

, founder and Director of Centre for Statistics in Medicine 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 Department of Community Medicine, St Thomas's Hospital Medical School, London was the foremost centre for public health research in the UK in the 1970s and 1980s. Some of its records are held in The National Archives (United Kingdom). It was e ...

. 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

), 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

. Altman was chief statistical advisor to the

British Medical Journal ''The BMJ'' is a weekly peer-reviewed medical trade journal, published by the trade union the British Medical Association (BMA). ''The BMJ'' has editorial freedom from the BMA. It is one of the world's oldest general medical journals. Origin ...

, 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 profes ...

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 The equator is a circle of latitude, about in circumference, that divides Earth into the Northern and Southern hemispheres. It is an imaginary line located at 0 degrees latitude, halfway between the North and South poles. The term can al ...

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 empha ...

for improving surgical research.

Contributions to statistical education

Altman's publications on statistical education, many co-authored with his long-standing collaborator

Martin Bland John Martin Bland (born 6 March 1947), known as Martin Bland, is a British statistician. He has been professor of health statistics at the University of York since 2003.

, 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 ar ...

/ 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 degre ...

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 An editor-in-chief (EIC), also known as lead editor or chief editor, is a publication's editorial leader who has final responsibility for its operations and policies. The highest-ranking editor of a publication may also be titled editor, managing ...

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 ad ...

and the

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 bowe ...

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 ...

, George Davey Smith. * ''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 Altman
available 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 ...

. * 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
HERE

BMJ Statistical Notes
- A series of short articles on the use of statistics by Doug Altman and his longtime collaborator

Martin Bland John Martin Bland (born 6 March 1947), known as Martin Bland, is a British statistician. He has been professor of health statistics at the University of York since 2003.

. * 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 Medicine

CONSORT 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