The Thomas C Chalmers Award

History

A tradition since the 2nd Colloquium in Hamilton (1994) - will be offered for the tenth time at the Barcelona Colloquium.

Thomas Clark Chalmers was born in New York City on December 8, 1917. He entered Yale University in 1936 and then moved to New York, to Columbia University College of Physicians and Surgeons, obtaining his MD in 1943.

Throughout his career, Tom was an outspoken advocate of randomized trials whether at the bedside, at professional meetings, in class, or in situations pertaining to his own life. After his diagnosis of prostate cancer in 1993, he insisted that he only receive treatment in the context of a clinical trial. Fortunately there was an ongoing trial at Dartmouth Hitchcock Medical Center in which he enrolled. Over the course of his illness, he delighted in quizzing and lecturing the residents and physicians caring for him about the evidence for their tests and interventions. He loved to teach, frequently using argument as a device. His creativity spanned his entire career and influenced clinicians and methodologists alike. He is perhaps best known for the notion of "randomize the first patient", his belief that it is more ethical to randomize patients than to treat them in the absence of good evidence. He convincingly and repeatedly demonstrated that RCTs tend to provide far more conservative estimates of treatment effect than non-RCTs and that enthusiasm of researchers for their findings is often in inverse proportion.

In his later years, in arguably his most important work, Tom and his colleagues showed that, had information from RCTs been systematically and cumulatively synthesized, important treatments such as thrombolytic therapy for myocardial infarction would have been recognized as useful earlier. In addition, he demonstrated that the advice given in textbooks and review articles published over the same period of time did not correspond to the available evidence, even 15 years after an intervention's effect had been well characterized.

The Prize

The Thomas C Chalmers prize is awarded for the best oral or poster presentation at the Colloquium. To be eligible for the Award, the work should address methodological issues related to systematic reviews and demonstrate:

a) originality of thought;
b) high quality science;
c) relevance for the advancement of the science of systematic reviews;
d) clarity of presentation.

General rules of the prize will be the same as in previous Colloquia, with a panel of assessors. The winner of the prize will receive a specially designed trophy (incorporating the Cochrane logo engraved with the name and year of the award) and a check for US $1,000. Appropriate media coverage and letters of recognition to the winner's host institution will also be arranged.

Previous winners
2002:
Royle P. Obtaining published errata to randomized controlled trials: is it worth the effort?

Runners up:
Napoli M, Schiff H. Survey of American media coverage of the review of mammography trials: An opportunity to educate consumers about the risks of detecting carcinoma in situ.

Telaro E et al. Quality assessment in Cochrane reviews: Do we practice what we preach?

2001: Joint Winners:
Deeks JJ. Half dead or half alive? Which way should events be coded for meta-analyses of risk ratios?

Henry D, Moxey A, O'Connell D. Agreement between randomized and non-randomized studies - the effects of bias and confounding.

Runners up:
Sterne J, Bartlett C, Juni P, Egger M. Empirical evidence of bias? The hazard of ignoring heterogeneity in meta-epidemiology.

Olsen O, Gøtzsche P. Quality assessment of mammography screening trials.

2000: Joint winners:
Li wan Po, Herxheimer A, Poolsup N, Aziiz Z. How do Cochrane reviews address adverse effects of drug therapy?

Tierney J, Stewart LA. Investigating patient exclusion bias in meta-analysis

1999:
Higgins J. How should we interpret updated meta-analyses?

1998:
Deeks J, Bradburn M, Bilker W, Localio R, Berlin J. Much ado about nothing: statistical methods for meta-analysis with rare events.

1997:
Berlin J. Does blinding affect the results of meta-analyses?

1996:
Liberati A, D'Amico R, Torri V, Tinazzi A, Leonetti C, Pifferi S. Meta-analyses from different sources of information.

1995:
Clarke M, Stewart L, Parmar M. Benefits of meta-analysis using individual patient data.

1994:
Counsell CE, Clarke MJ, Slattery J, Sandercock PAG. The miracle of DICE therapy for acute stroke: fact or fictional product of subgroup analysis.

Thomas C Chalmers Award Committee 2003:
Godwin Nwadibia Aja (Nigeria)
Kay Dickersin (USA)
Joergen Hilden (Denmark)
Philippa Middleton (Australia)
Consol Serra (Spain)
Nandi Siegfried (South Africa)
Rob Scholten (Netherlands)