{"id":42317,"date":"2018-06-08T15:06:58","date_gmt":"2018-06-08T14:06:58","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blogs.bmj.com\/bmj\/?p=42317"},"modified":"2018-06-15T11:21:47","modified_gmt":"2018-06-15T10:21:47","slug":"jeffrey-aronson-when-i-use-a-word-the-geniousness-of-doug-altman","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.bmj.com\/bmj\/2018\/06\/08\/jeffrey-aronson-when-i-use-a-word-the-geniousness-of-doug-altman\/","title":{"rendered":"Jeffrey Aronson: When I use a word . . . The geniousness of Doug Altman"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">As the whole world knows, Doug Altman died this week. <\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">The news provoked a <\/span><a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/search?q=doug%20altman&amp;src=typd\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">Twitter storm<\/span><\/a><span style=\"font-weight: 400\"> of large proportions, over 200 messages in five days, plus innumerable retweets. The significant words they contain are shown in the word cloud.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-42319 alignnone\" src=\"https:\/\/blogs.bmj.com\/bmj\/files\/2018\/06\/aronson_altman.png\" alt=\"\" width=\"679\" height=\"471\" srcset=\"https:\/\/blogs.bmj.com\/bmj\/files\/2018\/06\/aronson_altman.png 679w, https:\/\/blogs.bmj.com\/bmj\/files\/2018\/06\/aronson_altman-300x208.png 300w, https:\/\/blogs.bmj.com\/bmj\/files\/2018\/06\/aronson_altman-640x444.png 640w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 679px) 100vw, 679px\" \/><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400\"><strong>Figure:<\/strong> A <a href=\"https:\/\/worditout.com\/word-cloud\/create\">word cloud<\/a> showing the relative frequencies of the most relevant (value judgment) words distilled from the first 15 000 words in the tweets; I have combined cognate words (e.g. \u201cstats\u201d, \u201cstatistical\u201d, and \u201cstatisticians\u201d are all represented by \u201cstatistics\u201d); nearly 400 instances of \u201cDoug\u201d and Altman\u201d each outstripped even the number of instances of \u201cand\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignleft wp-image-42320\" src=\"https:\/\/blogs.bmj.com\/bmj\/files\/2018\/06\/aronson_altman2.png\" alt=\"\" width=\"167\" height=\"232\" \/>Some cited his <\/span><a href=\"https:\/\/www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov\/pmc\/articles\/PMC2539276\/\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">classic\u00a0editorial in <em>The BMJ<\/em><\/span><\/a><span style=\"font-weight: 400\"> \u201cThe scandal of poor medical research\u201d, with its pithy message: \u201cWe need less research, better research, and research done for the right reasons. Abandoning using the number of publications as a measure of ability would be a start.\u201d I suspect that today he would add \u201cand citation counts and spurious measures of impact\u201d, especially since his <\/span><a href=\"https:\/\/scholar.google.co.uk\/citations?user=_QnLm3kAAAAJ&amp;hl=en\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">citations<\/span><\/a><span style=\"font-weight: 400\"> are astronomical and his impact crushing. Others referred to his textbook <\/span><i><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">Practical Statistics for Medical Research<\/span><\/i><span style=\"font-weight: 400\"> (1991) (\u201chis red bible\u201d); some reminded us of the acronyms CONSORT, DAMOCLES, EQUATOR; and others referred to the <\/span><a href=\"https:\/\/www.bmj.com\/search\/advanced\/author1%3Aaltman%2Bdg%20limit_from%3A1840-01-01%20limit_to%3A2018-06-05%20numresults%3A10%20sort%3Arelevance-rank%20format_result%3Astandard?page=16\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">Statistics Notes<\/span><\/a><span style=\"font-weight: 400\"> in <em>The BMJ<\/em>, 68 of them (1994\u20132018), written with colleagues, often <a href=\"https:\/\/www-users.york.ac.uk\/~mb55\/pubs\/pbstnote.htm\">Martin Bland<\/a>; more are in the pipeline.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">But the best description of all, in my view, was the suggestion that he had \u201cgeniousness\u201d. Now this word is not to be found in any dictionary that I know of, although it deserves to be in them all. So what does it mean? Well it\u2019s clearly a portmanteau word.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">A portmanteau word is \u201ca word formed by blending sounds from two or more distinct words and combining their meanings\u201d (<\/span><i><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">Oxford English Dictionary<\/span><\/i><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">). Lewis Carroll introduced the idea in <\/span><i><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">Through the Looking Glass and What Alice Found There <\/span><\/i><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">(1871). Having discovered the poem \u201cJabberwocky\u201d in the house in which she first finds herself after passing through the looking glass, Alice wonders what all the words mean and finally finds an interpreter in the form of Humpty Dumpty. \u201cSlithy\u201d, he tells her, means slimy and lithe and \u201cmimsy\u201d is miserable and flimsy. \u201cYou see,\u201d he explains, \u201cit\u2019s like a portmanteau\u2014there are two meanings packed up into one word.\u201d Carroll explained this in his preface to <\/span><i><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">The Hunting of the Snark<\/span><\/i><span style=\"font-weight: 400\"> (1876): \u201cHumpty Dumpty&#8217;s theory, of two meanings packed into one word like a portmanteau, seems to me the right explanation for all. For instance, take the two words \u2018fuming\u2019 and \u2018furious\u2019. Make up your mind that you will say both words, but leave it unsettled which you will say first \u2026 if you have the rarest of gifts, a perfectly balanced mind, you will say \u2018frumious\u2019. Supposing that when Pistol uttered the well-known words\u2014\u2018Under which king, Bezonian? Speak or die!\u2019 [if] Justice Shallow had felt certain that it was either William or Richard, but had not been able to settle which, \u2026 he would have gasped out \u2018Rilchiam!\u2019\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">Modern examples include chocoholic (chocolate + alcoholic), Frankenfoods (Frankenstein + foods), genetically modified foodstuffs, and Nintendinitis (Nintendo + tendinitis), damage from excessive playing of video games.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">So \u201cgeniousness\u201d clearly combines two nouns that apply perfectly to Doug Altman, genius and generousness. He was indeed a genius, in many ways, but particularly in the profundity of his understanding of the most difficult statistical concepts. I don\u2019t recall how I came across the <\/span><a href=\"https:\/\/www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov\/pmc\/articles\/PMC4877414\/\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">paper<\/span><\/a><span style=\"font-weight: 400\"> in which he and his colleagues provided \u201can explanatory list of 25 misinterpretations of P values, confidence intervals, and power\u201d, published in the <\/span><i><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">European Journal of Epidemiology<\/span><\/i><span style=\"font-weight: 400\"> (a journal that is not on my regular reading list), but having read it I discussed it with him when we met at an <\/span><i><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">Evidence Live<\/span><\/i><span style=\"font-weight: 400\"> meeting in Oxford. His clear explanations made me want to read it again, and having done so this week I remain in awe. Doug\u2019s genius also lay in his ability to see and solve problems, obvious when explained, that nobody else had noticed.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-42321 alignnone\" src=\"https:\/\/blogs.bmj.com\/bmj\/files\/2018\/06\/aronson_altman3.png\" alt=\"\" width=\"275\" height=\"261\" \/><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400\"><strong>Figure:<\/strong> My favourite picture of Doug Altman, showing him in characteristic expository mode, <\/span><a href=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=gHjpKc1qufg\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">lecturing<\/span><\/a><span style=\"font-weight: 400\"> definitively about reporting research at a Science in Transition symposium in Utrecht, 16 January 2014<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">Doug\u2019s generousness is repeatedly mentioned by the twitterati: \u201cfabulous, generous, brilliant, funny, inspirational, dearly loved\u201d; \u201crigorous, generous, and fun\u201d; \u201cthe most generous &amp; modest global superstar\u201d; \u201cgenerous, stimulating and fun\u201d; \u201chumble, generous, funny &amp; nurturing\u201d; \u201cgenerous and creative\u201d; \u201dfriend, generous colleague &amp; agitator\u201d; \u201ca generous friend, great teacher, innovator and pioneer\u201d; \u201csupportive and generous\u201d; \u201calways generous to others\u201d; \u201cgreat, generous, with a massive legacy\u201d. And that doesn\u2019t say it all by any means.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">\u201cGeniousness\u201d is a good way of summing it all up.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400\"> \u201cAltman\u201d is from the Yiddish Altermann, an old man, a name given to a child born after the death of a sibling or assumed by someone very ill, hoping to fool the Angel of Death into thinking that the person was too old to be worth claiming. Doug did not live to be old enough.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/blogs.bmj.com\/bmj\/files\/2014\/12\/jeffrey_aronson.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignleft wp-image-32935\" src=\"https:\/\/blogs.bmj.com\/bmj\/files\/2014\/12\/jeffrey_aronson-223x300.jpg\" alt=\"jeffrey_aronson\" width=\"91\" height=\"102\" \/><\/a><em><strong>Jeffrey Aronson<\/strong>\u00a0is a clinical pharmacologist, working in the Centre for Evidence Based Medicine in Oxford&#8217;s Nuffield Department of Primary Care Health Sciences. He is also president emeritus of the British Pharmacological Society.<\/em><\/p>\n<p><strong>Competing interests:<\/strong>\u00a0None declared.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>As the whole world knows, Doug Altman died this week. The news provoked a Twitter storm of large proportions, over 200 messages in five days, plus innumerable retweets. The significant [&#8230;]<\/p>\n<p><a class=\"btn btn-secondary understrap-read-more-link\" href=\"https:\/\/blogs.bmj.com\/bmj\/2018\/06\/08\/jeffrey-aronson-when-i-use-a-word-the-geniousness-of-doug-altman\/\">More&#8230;<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":38359,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5762],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-42317","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-jeff-aronsons-words"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v27.4 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/product\/yoast-seo-wordpress\/ -->\n<title>Jeffrey Aronson: When I use a word . . . 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