Latest News from the BSU
- March 2012 - MRC Biostatistics Unit reports on Afghanistan Casualty Statistics cited in the media
- March 2012 - Sheila Bird honoured by Fellowship in the Royal Society of Edinburgh
- March 2012 - The Wonders of Biostatistics at 2012 Cambridge Science Festival
- February 2012 - Long coroners' investigations 'risk lives' as deadly epidemics may go unnoticed
- January 2012 - MRC Biostatistics Unit announces our new Director
- News Archive - Previous News from the BSU (From June 2009 onwards) please click here
MRC Biostatistics Unit reports on Afghanistan Casualty Statistics cited in the media
'UK death toll in Afghanistan over 400'
Afghanistan
By Geoff Meade
British Forces News, 7 March 2012
The loss of six soldiers in an explosion in Helmand Province puts the UK’s military death toll in Afghanistan at over 400.
With the mission now in its eleventh year, the latest deaths mean the conflict’s average annual death toll is twice as high as that seen either in Iraq or Northern Ireland.
Professor Sheila Bird of the MRC Biostatistics Unit was interviewed by British Forces News reporter Geoff Meade as one of the experts in the Afghanistan Casualty Statistics.
More....... To watch this feature, please click here.
Sheila Bird honoured by Fellowship in the Royal Society of Edinburgh
The MRC Biostatistics Unit is pleased to announce that Sheila M. Bird has been elected to Fellowship in the Royal Society of Edinburgh. This is a great honour and a fine tribute to Sheila's scientific work over many years. Persistent themes have been study-design, statistical reporting standards, and survival analyses enabled by robust registry data.
The Royal Society of Edinburgh (RSE) is Scotland's National Academy. The Fellowship of the Society covers science, arts, humanities, the professions, industry and commerce.
There are 46 new UK and International Fellows to add to its 1500-strong Fellowship. Candidates are nominated by existing Fellows. Each candidature undergoes a rigorous four-stage annual selection process which culminates in a ballot of the whole Fellowship. The ballot result is announced in March each year.
Sir John Arbuthnott, the President of the RSE and eminent microbiologist commented,
“In my first year as President I am pleased to welcome such a talented group of people to the RSE. Each new Fellow has achieved excellence in her or his field of work, whether in academia, public service or business. When I meet the new group of new Fellows at their induction in May I will encourage all of them to actively engage with the work of the RSE for the benefit of society here in Scotland and internationally.”
“It is also encouraging that the proportion of female Fellows elected is the highest in the history of the Society in a single year, which I believe is an indication that more women are reaching the highest levels of their discipline, which is also now being reflected in election to the RSE.”
Amongst the new Fellows elected they mention Professor Sheila Bird, describing her as "an influential and important champion of the intelligent use of statistical methods in public policy and the media." (Information taken from the RSE website)
All new Fellows are invited to a ceremony for Fellows to sign the Society's Roll Book and be formally admitted to the Fellowship on Monday 14 May.
 |
Saturday 17th & Sunday 18th March at Biology Zone
The Wonders of Biostatistics at 2012 Cambridge Science Festival
The MRC Biostatistics Unit will be presenting 'The Wonders of Biostatistics' to Cambridge Science Festival audiences who visit the Biology Zone at the New Museums Site.
'The Wonders of Biostatistics' will show you how key ideas in biostatistics are used to understand, and improve, the public health. Different activities allow visitors to apply these ideas for themselves in a series of challenges!
The activities will cover four different, complementary themes:
(Capture-Recapture Studies: used in public health for counting hard-to-reach sub-populations)
Activity organiser: Simon White
Activity organisers: Brian Tom and Aidan O'Keeffe
Activity organiser: Rebecca Turner
Activity Leader: Ruth Keogh
Come and explore with us how biostatistics can be used to improve health. Try our four different activities in which your creativity and thinking abilities will help you to solve the challenges we'll give you!
The Festival will have over 180 events showcasing the boundaries that are being broken in science, technology, engineering and mathematics. Have a look at the programme to find full details of these, and how to locate us in the Biology Zone.
For further information about 'The Wonders of Biostatictis'at 2012 Cambridge Science Festival please click here
For further information about the 2012 Cambridge Science Festival please visit http://www.cam.ac.uk/sciencefestival/
20th February 2012
Long coroners' investigations 'risk lives' as deadly epidemics may go unnoticed
By Chris Smyth
The Times, Monday 20 Feb 2012
Lives are at risk from epidemic diseases because of bureaucratic delays by coroners, Britain's leading statistics body has warned.
In a rare policy intervention, the Royal Statistical Society says that delays in death registration "can leave public health authorities lacking the necessary data to track any outbreak and to intervene effectively to minimise illness or death".
Public health suffers because the cause of death is often unrecorded for months while coroners conduct investigations, making official figures much less useful to policymakers attempting to combat problems ranging from drug addiction to pandemics of infectious disease, the statisticians say.
Figures released to Parliament last month show that almost one in eleven of all deaths certified by coroners is not registered until more than six months after the person has died.
The system hampered efforts to combat the 2009 swine flu outbreak, forcing the former chief medical officer personally to phone round coroners to try to work out how many people had died.
said Sheila Bird, of the Biostatistics Unit of the Medical Research Council.“It's really shocking to think that in the 21st century we can't properly count the dead”,
“This is very important in terms of public health and the testing of new medicines. When you have an epidemic, the most fundamental thing you need to do is ascertain lethality of the new disease, and if you don't know who's dead you can't know the impact. You can't follow up to see if it's likely that this death was due to a new illness”.
Most deaths are not investigated by coroners, who focus on those with suspicious or unusual causes, but these categories are often where accurate figures are most crucial to public health researchers.
Coroners in England can register suspicious deaths only after they have conducted an inquest, but this can often be six to nine months later.
The Royal Statistical Society is urging ministers in England to follow Scotland in compelling coroners to file provisional reports within days of a death. Dame Sally Davies, the Chief Medical Officer, is thought to agree with such plans, but Whitehall red tape means the loophole is yet to be closed, as only the Ministry of Justice has power to change the law. Attempts to negotiate a solution have so far failed.
“This needs to be sorted out. We've waited quite long enough,” Professor Bird said.
Patrick Mercer, a Conservative MP, has written to David Cameron urging him to make the departments agree.
“In effect, for at least six months, there is no official record that 10,000 people have died. These registration delays, which are legislated against in Scotland, compromise our national statistics, hamper our monitoring of epidemics (from swine-flu to drugs-related deaths) and undermine the standing of the National Health Service as a test bed for pharmaceutical and epidemiological research,” he wrote.
Professor Bird said that delays in death registration would make it much harder for Britain to track the progress of a new disease.
“We can't have our leaders in public health diverted into having to do this, which is a very basic function of the State: to know who's alive and who's dead,,” Professor Bird said.
A spokeswoman for the Department of Health said: "We are exploring how to improve death registration to provide better data for public health purposes. We are in very early discussions with other government departments. No decisions have been made."
Due to the subscription service at The Times, an online version of the article is unavailable, please contact the MRC press office if you would like access to a copy.
We are delighted to announce that Professor Sylvia Richardson, who is currently Chair in Biostatistics in the Department of Epidemiology and Biostatistics at Imperial College London has been appointed as the Director of the MRC Biostatistics Unit in Cambridge from 1 April 2012.
Professor Richardson succeeds acting Director Professor Vern Farewell, following the departure of former Director Professor Simon Thompson in 2011.
The MRC will award Professor Richardson an MRC Research Professorship to be held at the University of Cambridge. Professor Richardson has been at Imperial since 2000 and was previously Directeur de Recherches at the French National Institute for Medical Research INSERM, where she held research positions for 20 years.
Professor Richardson has worked extensively in many areas of biostatistics research and made important contributions to the statistical modelling of complex biomedical data, in particular from a Bayesian perspective. Her work has contributed to progress in epidemiological understanding and has covered spatial modelling and disease mapping, mixture and clustering models as well as integrative analysis of observational data from different sources. Her recent research has focussed on modelling and analysis of large data problems such as those arising in genomics. Professor Richardson said,
“I am extremely pleased to take up this appointment at a time when important developments in biomedical sciences and public health are creating great demands for new statistical methods. I am confident that the MRC Biostatistics Unit will continue to play a major role in these developments.”
Professor Sir John Savill, Chief Executive of the MRC said,
Welcome to the MRC Biostatistics Unit Professor Richardson!“I am absolutely delighted that Professor Sylvia Richardson is taking over as Director of the MRC Biostatistics Unit, which is so important to the MRC's mission. She is an outstanding scientific leader and will help the Unit go from strength to strength.”