Doug Altman

Doug Altman
Professor Douglas Altman
Born	(1948-07-12) 12 July 1948 (age 68) London, UK
Residence	United Kingdom
Nationality	United Kingdom
Fields	Statistician
Institutions	Centre for Statistics in Medicine, Cancer Research UK, University of Oxford
Alma mater	University of Bath
Known for	Medical statistics
Notable awards	Royal Statistical Society's Bradford Hill Medal (1997); BMJ Lifetime Achievement Award (2015)

Douglas Altman FMedSci (born London, UK, 12 July 1948) is 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 is 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 statistics from the University of Bath. His first job was in the Department of Community Medicine at St Thomas's Hospital Medical School. 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 (now Cancer Research UK), 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.

Altman is chief statistical advisor to the British Medical Journal (BMJ), where he is a member of the editorial "hanging committee", and co-convenor of the statistical Methods Group of the Cochrane Collaboration.

Altman is regarded as a leading authority on the execution and reporting of health research, and has played a leading role in establishing better standards. He is one of the co-founders of the international EQUATOR health research reliability network, and a member of the CONSORT Group since 1999, a group dedicated to offering a standardised way for researchers to report trials.