Towards More Reproducible and Unbiased Research

Date: 
November 16, 2017
John Ioannidis, Professor of Medicine and of Health Research and Policy, Stanford University

Description

John Ioannidis is the C.F. Rehnborg Chair in Disease Prevention, Professor of Medicine, Professor of Health Research and Policy, Professor (by courtesy) of Biomedical Data Science at the School of Medicine; Professor of Statistics (by courtesy) at the School of Humanities and Sciences, co-Director of the Meta-Research Innovation Center, and Director of the PhD program in Epidemiology and Clinical Research at Stanford University. Dr. Ioannidis received his MD and DSc in biopathology from the National University of Athens. He trained at Harvard and Tufts (internal medicine and infectious diseases), then held positions at NIH, Johns Hopkins and Tufts. He has held academic appointments at University of Ioannina Medical School, Tufts University, Harvard School of Public Health and Imperial College.

Dr. Ioannidis has served as a member of the executive board of the Human Genome Epidemiology Network and Senior Advisor on Knowledge Integration at NCI/NIH (2012-6), President, Society for Research Synthesis Methodology, and editorial board member of many leading journals including Editor-in-Chief of the European Journal of Clinical Investigation. He has delivered over 400 invited and honorary lectures and is the recipient of many awards (e.g. European Award for Excellence in Clinical Science [2007], Medal for Distinguished Service, Teachers College, Columbia University [2015], Chanchlani Award for Global Health [2017]).

Dr. Ioannidis's empirical work includes meta-research and large-scale evidence (in particular randomized trials and meta-analyses) and appraisal and control of diverse biases in biomedical research. He is interested in developing and applying new research methods, and in the interdisciplinary enhancement of existing research methods for study design and analysis in biomedicine. Some of his most influential papers are those that address issues of replication validity of genetic association studies, biases in biomedical research, research synthesis methods, extensions of meta-analysis, genome-wide association studies and agnostic evaluation of associations, and validity of randomized trials and observational research. The PLoS Medicine paper on “Why most published research findings are false” has been the most-accessed article in the history of Public Library of Science (~2 million hits). In 2010,The Atlantic listed Dr. Ioannidis among its Brave Thinkers and wrote that he “may be one of the most influential scientists alive."