Kay Dickersin

Last updated
Kay Dickersin
Born
Philadelphia, Pennsylvania
NationalityAmerican
Occupation(s)Professor, researcher
Known forResearch on publication bias, research on selective outcome reporting, strengthening research integrity, Cochrane Collaboration, consumer engagement in research
Academic background
Alma mater Johns Hopkins University
University of California, Berkeley

Kay Dickersin is an academic who trained first in cell biology and subsequently epidemiology. She went on to a career studying factors that influence research integrity, in particular publication bias and outcome reporting bias. She is retired (as of December 31, 2018) Professor Emerita in the Department of Epidemiology at Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health [1] where she was Director of the Center for Clinical Trials and Evidence Synthesis there. [2] She was also Director of the US Cochrane Center [3] [4] and the US Satellite of the Cochrane Eyes and Vision Group [5] [6] within the Cochrane Collaboration. [7] Dickersin received multiple awards for her research. [1]

Contents

Education

Dickersin's formal academic and research training spans the basic, clinical, and public health sciences. Dickersin began an undergraduate degree at Bennington College in Bennington, Vermont, planning to major in art. After two years, she transferred undergraduate institutions to University of California, Berkeley. She received both a Bachelor of Arts and Master of Arts in Zoology (cell biology), from the UC Berkeley, in 1974 and 1975, respectively. She was awarded a PhD in epidemiology from the Johns Hopkins School of Hygiene and Public Health in 1989. While an undergraduate, she received a Howard Hughes Fellowship in Medical Research in 1971, and during her PhD research she received an NIH traineeship.

Career

Dickersin spent two months in Dorothy and Claude A. Villee's research laboratory at Harvard University to complete a "field work term” at Bennington College. Her new interest in science led her to leave Bennington after 2 years, and to work in Allan Tobin's lab in developmental biology at Harvard College. Subsequently, she transferred undergraduate institutions to University of California, Berkeley. At Berkeley, where she did undergraduate and master's degree research, she worked in Daniel Mazia’s lab. Her master’s thesis was “Increased Permeability of Sea Urchin Eggs to Adenine After Fertilization, Parthenogenetic Activation, and Exposure to Ammonia”. After her master's degree, Dickersin taught biology at two community colleges in California (West Valley College and Fullerton College) and subsequently worked in Roger Sloboda's lab at Dartmouth College doing developmental biology research. [8]

While at Fullerton College, and through her biology students, Dickersin learned about the field of epidemiology, which she liked because it merges science with societal concerns and involves experimental research (clinical trials). In addition, in the late 1970s Dickersin believed the opportunities for women in laboratory research were limited. These two factors led her to switch research areas to public health, a field that she believed is more friendly to women. Dickersin matriculated at the Johns Hopkins School of Hygiene and Public Health in 1979, focusing on clinical trials, and Curtis L. Meinert became her advisor. Her graduate education was interrupted when the family moved to Boston for 4 years in 1981 so that her husband could attend medical school. During this interlude she worked with two influential mentors, Thomas C. Chalmers and Sir Iain Chalmers, and became interested in research synthesis and related biases. When she returned to Baltimore to complete her PhD, she worked on clinical trials as well as research directly linked to publication bias. Her PhD dissertation, “Publication and the Meta-analysis of Clinical Trials,” was the first in her Department to use the model where a group of related published research papers is bound together with linking text, rather than the traditional model of a stand-alone document with chapters.[ citation needed ]

After completing her PhD in 1989, Dickersin moved to the University of Maryland, School of Medicine, in Baltimore, first to the Department of Ophthalmology and later to the Department of Epidemiology and Preventive Medicine. In 1998, she moved to Brown University School of Medicine where she launched the Center for Clinical Trials and Evidence-Based Healthcare. In 2005, she accepted a position directing the Center for Clinical Trials at Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health in Baltimore, renamed in 2014 to the Center for Clinical Trials and Evidence Synthesis.

Dickersin's research career spanned several areas related to clinical trials and systematic reviews of trials. She has led clinical trials, for example she was principal investigator of two federally funded multicenter randomized trials, the data center for the Ischemic Optic Neuropathy Decompression Trial (IONDT) [9] and the Surgical Treatments Outcomes Project for Dysfunctional Uterine Bleeding (STOP-DUB). [10] Dickersin became interested in systematic reviews in the mid-1980s, especially the problem of identifying all relevant research on a topic. [11] While her early research focused on establishing the existence of publication bias and the difficulty of retrieving the clinical trial literature, [12] [13] her later research has explored how selective outcome reporting may distort knowledge from clinical trials. [14] She has also contributed to implementation of “fixes” related to these problems, aimed at increasing research integrity. For example, she has contributed to the establishment of clinical trial registries, [14] [15] [16] [17] [18] promoting public accessibility to trial findings, [19] [20] and establishment of the Cochrane Collaboration in 1993 [21] [22]

Over the course of her career, Dickersin served on a variety of federal advisory committees, for example, she was appointed by President Clinton to the National Cancer Advisory Board (1994-2000). Internationally, she was instrumental in starting the World Health Organization’s International Clinical Trials Registry Platform (ICTRP) and served as Co-Chair of the Scientific Advisory Group from 2005-2008 when it was disbanded. She has also served on numerous Institute of Medicine and National Research Council committees, which include for example: The Vaccine Safety Committee (1992-3); Committee to Advise the Department of Defense on its FY 1993 Breast Cancer Program (1993); Committee to Study the Reimbursement of Routine Patient Care Costs for Medicare Patients Enrolled in Clinical Trials (1998-9); Committee to Assess the System for Protecting Human Research Subjects (Advisory Consultant) (2001-2); Committee on the Review of Evidence on High Clinical Value Services (2005-7); Committee on Comparative Effectiveness Research Prioritization (2009); Committee for the Handling Missing Data in Clinical Trials (2009–10); Committee on Standards for Systematic Reviews of Clinical Effectiveness Research (2009–11).

Cochrane collaboration

Dickersin was a founding member of the Cochrane Collaboration in 1993, and was on the Steering Committee from 1993 to 1996. She served on the Information Management Steering Group from 2003 to 2005. She directed the US Cochrane Center, which has evolved from one of four original centers (she headed the Baltimore Cochrane Center, the first US-based center, opening in 1994). She also directed the Cochrane Eyes and Vision Group, US Satellite, since its inception in 2002 and until June 30, 2018.

The US Cochrane Center coordinated the development of Cochrane's Central Register of Controlled Trials (CENTRAL) from 1994 to 2005, [14] which was then turned over to The Cochrane Library publisher for further development and maintenance. Dickersin's papers related to the Cochrane Collaboration are at the National Library of Medicine. [23]

In 2018, the US Cochrane Center at Johns Hopkins closed and Kay Dickersin stepped down from her position as its director. [3]

Consumer engagement in research

In 1986, one year after resuming her PhD work, Dickersin was diagnosed with invasive breast cancer. This led to her starting a breast cancer support group, Arm-in-Arm, with Marsha Oakley, and engagement in national and international consumer advocacy work, as a founding mother of the National Breast Cancer Coalition in 1991. Her papers related to the start of the NBCC are at the Schlesinger Library in Cambridge, Massachusetts. [24] As the only scientist on the Board of Directors of the NBCC, Dickersin initiated a series of “teach-ins” for the Board designed to expose Board members to the underlying concepts in biology and epidemiology that they would need to be active contributors to the research agenda. Teaching faculty included Francis Collins and others. This project expanded in 1995 to Project LEAD, a flagship science education program offered by NBCC to consumer advocates and still active in 2014. [25] Her longstanding support for consumer and patient engagement in the research process [26] is also evident from her involvement in the Department of Defense (DoD) Breast Cancer Programme. [27]

In 2003, Dickersin initiated a coalition of consumer and health advocacy groups (later named Consumers United for Evidence-based Healthcare or CUE. [28] The idea behind CUE was to bring together consumer groups, who traditionally have not worked together, to form a professional organization for learning and networking. In addition to serving these functions, CUE helps scientist groups to identify consumers for meaningful engagement in research and on advisory and guideline panels. As of 2019, CUE is directed by Dr. Janice Bowie at Johns Hopkins.[ citation needed ]

Awards and honors

Research

Consumer engagement/women’s health

Teaching and mentoring

Personal

Dickersin is married to Robert Van Wesep and has two sons and three grandchildren. [29]

Related Research Articles

Evidence-based medicine (EBM) is "the conscientious, explicit and judicious use of current best evidence in making decisions about the care of individual patients". The aim of EBM is to integrate the experience of the clinician, the values of the patient, and the best available scientific information to guide decision-making about clinical management. The term was originally used to describe an approach to teaching the practice of medicine and improving decisions by individual physicians about individual patients.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Meta-analysis</span> Statistical method that summarizes data from multiple sources

A meta-analysis is a statistical analysis that combines the results of multiple scientific studies. Meta-analyses can be performed when there are multiple scientific studies addressing the same question, with each individual study reporting measurements that are expected to have some degree of error. The aim then is to use approaches from statistics to derive a pooled estimate closest to the unknown common truth based on how this error is perceived. It is thus a basic methodology of Metascience. Meta-analytic results are considered the most trustworthy source of evidence by the evidence-based medicine literature.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Randomized controlled trial</span> Form of scientific experiment

A randomized controlled trial is a form of scientific experiment used to control factors not under direct experimental control. Examples of RCTs are clinical trials that compare the effects of drugs, surgical techniques, medical devices, diagnostic procedures or other medical treatments.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Cochrane (organisation)</span> British nonprofit for reviews of medical research (formed 1993)

Cochrane is a British international charitable organisation formed to organise medical research findings to facilitate evidence-based choices about health interventions involving health professionals, patients and policy makers. It includes 53 review groups that are based at research institutions worldwide. Cochrane has approximately 30,000 volunteer experts from around the world.

In published academic research, publication bias occurs when the outcome of an experiment or research study biases the decision to publish or otherwise distribute it. Publishing only results that show a significant finding disturbs the balance of findings in favor of positive results. The study of publication bias is an important topic in metascience.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Women's Health Initiative</span> Long-term U.S. health study

The Women's Health Initiative (WHI) was a series of clinical studies initiated by the U.S. National Institutes of Health (NIH) in 1991, to address major health issues causing morbidity and mortality in postmenopausal women. It consisted of three clinical trials (CT) and an observational study (OS). In particular, randomized controlled trials were designed and funded that addressed cardiovascular disease, cancer, and osteoporosis.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Systematic review</span> Comprehensive review of research literature using systematic methods

A systematic review is a scholarly synthesis of the evidence on a clearly presented topic using critical methods to identify, define and assess research on the topic. A systematic review extracts and interprets data from published studies on the topic, then analyzes, describes, and summarizes interpretations into a refined conclusion. For example, a systematic review of randomized controlled trials is a way of summarizing and implementing evidence-based medicine.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Iain Chalmers</span>

Sir Iain Geoffrey Chalmers is a British health services researcher, one of the founders of the Cochrane Collaboration, and coordinator of the James Lind Initiative, which includes the James Lind Library and James Lind Alliance.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Observational study</span> Study with uncontrolled variable of interest

In fields such as epidemiology, social sciences, psychology and statistics, an observational study draws inferences from a sample to a population where the independent variable is not under the control of the researcher because of ethical concerns or logistical constraints. One common observational study is about the possible effect of a treatment on subjects, where the assignment of subjects into a treated group versus a control group is outside the control of the investigator. This is in contrast with experiments, such as randomized controlled trials, where each subject is randomly assigned to a treated group or a control group. Observational studies, for lacking an assignment mechanism, naturally present difficulties for inferential analysis.

In epidemiology, reporting bias is defined as "selective revealing or suppression of information" by subjects. In artificial intelligence research, the term reporting bias is used to refer to people's tendency to under-report all the information available.

David Lawrence Sackett was an American-Canadian physician and a pioneer in evidence-based medicine. He is known as one of the fathers of Evidence-Based Medicine. He founded the first department of clinical epidemiology in Canada at McMaster University, and the Oxford Centre for Evidence-Based Medicine. He is well known for his textbooks Clinical Epidemiology and Evidence-Based Medicine.

Peter Christian Gøtzsche is a Danish physician, medical researcher, and former leader of the Nordic Cochrane Center at Rigshospitalet in Copenhagen, Denmark. He is a co-founder of the Cochrane Collaboration and has written numerous reviews for the organization. His membership in Cochrane was terminated by its Governing Board of Trustees on 25 September 2018.

Alessandro Liberati was an Italian healthcare researcher and clinical epidemiologist, and founder of the Italian Cochrane Centre.

Marie Diener-West is the Helen Abbey and Margaret Merrell Professor of Biostatistics and the chair of the Master of Public Health Program at Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health. Diener-West is an editor for the Cochrane Eyes and Vision Group and a member of the American Public Health Association, American Statistical Association, Association for Research in Vision and Ophthalmology, and the Society for Clinical Studies.

The United States Cochrane Center (USCC) was one of the 14 centers on the world that facilitated the work of the Cochrane Collaboration. The USCC was the reference center for all 50 US states and US territories, protectorates, and districts: the District of Columbia, American Samoa, Guam, the Northern Mariana Islands, Puerto Rico, and the US Virgin Islands. The USCC was also the reference Center for the following countries: Antigua and Barbuda, Bahamas, Barbados, Belize, Dominica, Grenada, Guam, Guyana, Jamaica, Japan, Saint Kitts and Nevis, Saint Lucia, Saint Vincent and the Grenadines, and Trinidad and Tobago. The USCC discontinued on February 7, 2018.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Consumers United for Evidence-based Healthcare</span>

Consumers United for Evidence-based Healthcare (CUE) is a coalition of health advocacy consumer groups interested in evidence-based healthcare. It was formed in 2003.

Lesley Ann Stewart is a Scottish academic whose research interests are in the development and application of evidence synthesis methods, particularly systematic reviews and individual participant data meta-analysis. She is head of department for the Centre for Reviews and Dissemination at the University of York and director for the NIHR Evidence Synthesis Programme. She was one of the founders of the Cochrane Collaboration in 1993. Stewart served as president of the Society for Research Synthesis Methodology (2013-2016) and was a founding co-editor in chief of the academic journal Systematic Reviews (2010–2021).

Isabelle Boutron is a professor of epidemiology at the Université Paris Cité and head of the INSERM- METHODS team within the Centre of Research in Epidemiology and Statistics (CRESS). She was originally trained in rheumatology and later switched to a career in epidemiology and public health. She is also deputy director of the French EQUATOR Centre, member of the SPIRIT-CONSORT executive committee, director of Cochrane France and co-convenor of the Bias Methods group of the Cochrane Collaboration.

Cheryl Ann Marie Anderson is an American epidemiologist. Anderson is a professor at and founding Dean of the University of California San Diego Herbert Wertheim School of Public Health and Human Longevity Science. Anderson's research focus is on nutrition and chronic disease prevention in under-served human populations.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Lucile Adams-Campbell</span> American epidemiologist

Lucile L. Adams-Campbell is the first African-American woman to receive a PhD in epidemiology in the United States. She serves as the Professor of Oncology at Lombardi Comprehensive Cancer Center and associate director for Minority Health at the Georgetown University Medical Center. She is a Fellow of the National Academy of Medicine and the Washington DC Hall of Fame.

References

  1. 1 2 "Kay Dickersin". Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health. 2015. Retrieved 20 June 2015.
  2. ↑ "Johns Hopkins Center for Clinical Trials and Evidence Synthesis". Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health. 2015. Retrieved 20 June 2015.
  3. 1 2 "Closure of the US Cochrane Center at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, Baltimore". Cochrane. February 19, 2018. Retrieved November 21, 2018.
  4. ↑ "Welcome, US Cochrane Center". US Cochrane Center. 2015. Retrieved 20 June 2015.
  5. ↑ "Cochrane Eyes and Vision Group Homepage". Cochrane Eyes and Vision Group. 4 June 2015. Retrieved 20 June 2015.
  6. ↑ Wormald, R; Dickersin, K; for the, Cochrane Eyes and Vision Group (2013). "Evidence-based ophthalmology". Ophthalmology. 120 (4): 2361–2363. doi:10.1016/j.ophtha.2013.08.032. PMID   24246821.
  7. ↑ "Cochrane Homepage". June 2015. Retrieved 20 June 2015.
  8. ↑ Sloboda, R; Dickersin, K (1980). "Protein composition of the cytoskeleton of nucleated erythrocytes". J Cell Biol. 87 (1): 170–179. doi:10.1083/jcb.87.1.170. PMC   2110706 . PMID   6774984.
  9. ↑ Ischemic Optic Neuropathy Decompression Trial Research Group (1995). "Optic nerve decompression surgery for nonarteritic anterior ischemic optic neuropathy (NAION) is not effective and may be harmful". JAMA. 273 (8): 170–179. doi:10.1001/jama.1995.03520320035038. PMID   7844872.
  10. ↑ Dickersin, K; Munro, MG; Clark, MA; Langenberg, P; Scherer, R; Frick, K; Zhu, Q; Hallock, L; Nichols, J; Yalcinkaya, T; for the, STOP-DUB (Surgical Treatments Outcomes Project for Dysfunctional Uterine Bleeding) Research Group (2007). "Hysterectomy compared with endometrial ablation for dysfunctional uterine bleeding: a randomized controlled trial". Obstet Gynecol. 110 (6): 1279–1289. doi:10.1097/01.AOG.0000292083.97478.38. PMID   18055721. S2CID   5323856.
  11. ↑ Dickersin, K; Hewitt, P; Mutch, L; Chalmers, I; Chalmers, TC (1985). "Perusing the literature: comparison of MEDLINE searching with a perinatal trials database". Controlled Clin Trials. 6 (4): 306–317. doi:10.1016/0197-2456(85)90106-0. PMID   3907973.
  12. ↑ Dickersin, K; Chan, S; Chalmers, TC; Sacks, HS; Smith, H (1987). "Publication bias and clinical trials". Controlled Clin Trials. 8 (4): 343–353. doi:10.1016/0197-2456(87)90155-3. PMID   3442991.
  13. ↑ Dickersin, K (1990). "The existence of publication bias and risk factors for its occurrence". JAMA. 263 (10): 1385–1389. doi:10.1001/jama.263.10.1385. PMID   2406472.
  14. 1 2 3 Dickersin, K; Manheimer, E; Wieland, LS; Robinson, KA; Lefebvre, C; McDonald, S; and the, CENTRAL Development Group (2002). "Development of the Cochrane Collaboration's CENTRAL Register of controlled clinical trials". Eval Health Professions. 25 (1): 38–64. doi:10.1177/016327870202500104. PMID   11868444. S2CID   22331214.
  15. ↑ Dickersin, K; for the, Panel (1988). "Report from the panel on the case for registers of clinical trials at the eighth annual meeting of the society for clinical trials". Controlled Clin Trials. 9 (1): 76–81. doi:10.1016/0197-2456(88)90010-4. PMID   3356154.
  16. ↑ Ad Hoc Working Party of the International Collaborative Group on Clinical Trial Registries (1993). "Position paper and consensus recommendations on clinical trials registries" (PDF). Clin Trials Metaanal. 28 (4–5): 255–266. PMID   10146333 . Retrieved 21 June 2015.
  17. ↑ Dickersin, K; Rennie, D (2003). "Registering clinical trials". JAMA. 290 (4): 516–523. doi:10.1001/jama.290.4.516. PMID   12876095.
  18. ↑ Dickersin, K; Rennie, D (2012). "The evolution of trial registries and their use to assess the clinical trial enterprise". JAMA. 307 (17): 1861–4. doi:10.1001/jama.2012.4230. PMID   22550202.
  19. ↑ Wolford, B (13 November 2014), Big Pharma Plays Hide-the-Ball with Data, Newsweek , retrieved 21 June 2015
  20. ↑ Adams, B (2015). "The pioneers of transparency". BMJ. 350 (g7717): g7717. doi:10.1136/bmj.g7717. PMID   25555823. S2CID   206904155.
  21. ↑ Chalmers, I; Dickersin, K; Chalmers, TC (1992). "Getting to grips with Archie Cochrane's agenda". BMJ. 305 (6857): 786–788. doi:10.1136/bmj.305.6857.786. PMC   1883470 . PMID   1422354.
  22. ↑ Dickersin, K; Manheimer, E (1998). "The Cochrane Collaboration: evaluation of health care and services using systematic reviews of the results of randomized controlled trials". Clin Obstet Gynecol. 41 (2): 315–331. doi:10.1097/00003081-199806000-00012. PMID   9646964.
  23. ↑ "United States Cochrane Center archives". United States National Library of Medicine . 9 June 2015. Retrieved 21 June 2015.
  24. ↑ "Dickersin, Kay. Papers, 1991-2002: A Container List". oasis.lib.harvard.edu. Archived from the original on 2010-07-08.
  25. ↑ Dickersin, K; Braun, L; Mead, M; Millikan, R; Wu, AM; Pietenpol, J; Troyan, S; Anderson, B; Visco, F (2001). "Development and implementation of a science training course for breast cancer activists: Project LEAD (Leadership, Educations, and Advocacy Development". Health Expect. 4 (4): 213–220. doi:10.1046/j.1369-6513.2001.00153.x. PMC   5060083 . PMID   11703495.
  26. ↑ Dickersin, K; Schapner, L (1996). "Man-Made Medicine: Women's Health, Public Policy, and Reform". In Moss, KL (ed.). Reinventing medical research (1st ed.). Durham, NC: Duke University Press Books. ISBN   978-0822318163.
  27. ↑ Andejeski, Y; Bisceglio, IT; Dickersin, K; Johnson, JE; Robinson, SI; Smith, HS; Visco, FM; Rich, IM (2002). "Quantitative impact of including consumers in the scientific review of breast cancer research proposals". J Womens Health Gend Based Med. 11 (4): 379–388. doi:10.1089/152460902317586010. PMID   12150500.
  28. ↑ "Consumers United for Evidence-Based Healthcare (CUE)". Consumers United for Evidence-based Healthcare.
  29. ↑ "Our Members". hopkinsmedicine.org. Retrieved 2020-04-08.{{cite web}}: CS1 maint: url-status (link)
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