Dear all,
A reminder that, on Tuesday 29th January the RSS Leeds/Bradford local group will be hosting two
meetings.
In the morning we have a session aimed at career-young statisticians entitled "What is it really
like to be a medical statistician"
In the afternoon we have a session (joint with the Medical Section) on "Biomedical controversies".
All are welcome to attend either or both sessions!
Further details can be found on our webpage:
http://www.maths.leeds.ac.uk/statistics/rss/current.html#YSF
http://www.maths.leeds.ac.uk/statistics/rss/current.html#MEDICAL
Regards, Paul
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Dr. Paul D. Baxter
Secretary/Treasurer, RSS Leeds/Bradford Local Group,
Department of Statistics, University of Leeds, Leeds, LS2 9JT, UK.
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Leeds/Bradford: Tuesday 29 January, 10am-12.30pm, Leeds University
What is it really like to be a medical statistician?
Philip Sedgwick (St George's, University of London).
Wendy Harrison (University of Leeds).
Adam Millican-Slater (Department of Health).
This event is intended for those starting (or considering) a career in health / medical statistics.
The speakers' brief is to talk about:
1. What are the most important lessons they've learned that they weren't aware of when they first
joined the discipline?
2. What did / didn't their undergraduate (or postgraduate) degrees prepare them for?
3. What advice would they give to statisticians just starting their careers?
All three speakers will offer a different perspective as Adam and Wendy have recently started their
careers (though working in quite different areas) and Philip is a more experienced statistician.
The meeting will be held at Leeds University’s School of Mathematics on Level 8, Mathematics Active
Learning Lab (MALL), starting at 10am with a tea break at 11am and a buffet lunch at 12.30pm.
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Leeds/Bradford: Tuesday 29 January, 1.30pm-5pm, Leeds University
Biomedical controversies (joint with the Medical Section)
Aubrey Blumsohn.
Transparency in pharmaceutical research: raw data, ghost statistics and things that go bump in the
night.
Pharmaceutical companies sell products under the banner of science. Doctors and patients rely on
that literature to make rational and safe therapeutic decisions. Many incidents over the past few
years have raised doubts about the integrity of the pharmaceutical scientific literature, and the
integrity of those charged with regulation. These issues will be discussed giving examples of recent
well documented events surrounding drugs such as Vioxx, Avandia, Seroxat, and Actonel.
Martin Bland (University of York).
Risedronate, the BBC, and me.
Risedronate is a drug used to reduce fractures in women with osteoporosis. The story of the
Sheffield Risedronate trial made national news when one of the clinical researchers dissociated
himself from the trial, because he was refused access to the data he had helped to collect. Then
some of the data were obtained. I shall describe how I came to analyse the data on behalf of the
BBC, what I found, and what happened next.
Peter Wilmshurst (Royal Shrewsbury Hospital).
Research fraud and the evidence base.
Surveys reveal that a high proportion of academics know of cases of research fraud, yet retraction
of a publication is rare and punishment of a fraudster even more so. Therefore even if we ignore the
"unknown" frauds, the "known" frauds exert a sizeable influence on "scientific truth". This affects
meta-analysis. The fact that so many sponsored clinical trials find positive results warrants
reflection.
The talk will examine different types of fraud and other kinds of scientific misconduct. It will
cover the reasons that fraud and misconduct occur, the pressures that give rise to the problems and
why there is often reluctance to deal with them adequately.
The meeting will be held at Leeds University’s Worsley Building on Level 8, Room Y, starting at 2pm
with refreshments from 1.30pm.
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