14 Facts About Doug Altman

Douglas Graham Altman FMedSci 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.

Doug Altman was professor of statistics in medicine at the University of Oxford, founder and Director of Centre for Statistics in Medicine and Cancer Research UK Medical Statistics Group, and co-founder of the international Equator Network for health research reliability.

Doug Altman graduated in 1970 with an honours degree in statistics from Bath University of Technology, now the University of Bath.

Doug Altman 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 at Imperial Cancer Research Fund, and in 1995 became founding director of the Centre for Statistics in Medicine in Oxford.

Doug Altman was regarded as a leading authority on the execution and reporting of health research, and played a leading role in establishing better standards.

Doug Altman 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.

Doug Altman was one of the original authors of the IDEAL framework for improving surgical research.

Doug Altman was the author of over 450 papers in statistical methodology, with 11 being cited over 1,000 times.

Doug Altman was awarded the Bradford Hill Medal by the Royal Statistical Society for his contributions to medical statistics in 1997, and a DSc from the University of London in the same year.

In 2015 Doug 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".

Doug Altman was editor in chief of Trials, a Fellow of the Academy of Medical Sciences and the Royal Statistical Society.

Doug Altman was born on 12 July 1948 in London to Jack and Decima Doug Altman.

Doug Altman was survived by his wife Sue, and their children Louise and Edmund.