Doug Altman: Driving critical appraisal and improvements in the quality of methodological and medical research

Abstract

Doug Altman was a visionary leader and one of the most influential medical statisticians of the last 40 years. Based on a presentation in the “Invited session in memory of Doug Altman” at the 40th Annual Conference of the International Society for Clinical Biostatistics (ISCB) in Leuven, Belgium and our long-standing collaborations with Doug, we discuss his contributions to regression modeling, reporting, prognosis research, as well as some more general issues while acknowledging that we cannot cover the whole spectrum of Doug's considerable methodological output. His statement “To maximize the benefit to society, you need to not just do research but do it well” should be a driver for all researchers. To improve current and future research, we aim to summarize Doug's messages for these three topics.