David Spiegelhalter
Emeritus Professor of Statistics at the University of Cambridge, former president of the Royal Statistical Society, and author of The Art of Statistics.
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Measuring outcomes of medical or surgical interventions is part of good practice, but publishing individual doctors' results remains controversial.
Measurement of outcomes from medical or surgical interventions is part of good practice, but publication of individual doctors' results remains controversial.
doi.orgSaid 19 Aug 2004This on korrents
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Beliefs
Korrents What they believe 5 beliefs — each backed by an exact quote.
Each is a — compiled by korrents.com, not by them: the one-line wordings are korrents', the quotes are theirs.
Recent
Measuring outcomes of medical or surgical interventions is part of good practice, but publishing individual doctors' results remains controversial.
Measurement of outcomes from medical or surgical interventions is part of good practice, but publication of individual doctors' results remains controversial.
The legacy of Bristol: public disclosure of individual surgeons' results (with 5 co-authors) Said 19 Aug 2004
A surgeon's performance cannot be separated from that of the institution because quality depends heavily on institutional systems.
The administration believes the performance of a surgeon cannot be separated from that of his or her institution as quality is highly dependent on institutional systems.
The legacy of Bristol: public disclosure of individual surgeons' results (with 5 co-authors) Said 19 Aug 2004
Casemix makes it unwise to publish surgeons' unadjusted mortality figures for comparison.
Because of this casemix influence it would not be sensible to publish unadjusted mortality by surgeon.
The legacy of Bristol: public disclosure of individual surgeons' results (with 5 co-authors) Said 19 Aug 2004
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A single risk-adjusted summary of a surgeon's results risks giving spurious credibility to analyses that ignore non-patient influences.
The use of a single risk adjusted number to summarise a surgeon's results runs the risk of lending a level of spurious credibility to an analysis that does not take into account the impact of influences that are not patient related.
The legacy of Bristol: public disclosure of individual surgeons' results (with 5 co-authors) Said 19 Aug 2004
Non-risk-adjusted mortality data cannot support patient choice and only signal that a fuller review is required.
No conclusions can be drawn until a full review has taken place. This sort of data cannot contribute to patient choice.
The legacy of Bristol: public disclosure of individual surgeons' results (with 5 co-authors) Said 19 Aug 2004
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Recommends rcmnd
rcmnd What they recommend 5 things — each backed by an exact quote.
Compiled by rcmnd.app, not by them: the quotes are theirs, and each links to the post it was copied from.
Recent
Loved Do You Feel Lucky?
This is part of the Murderous Maths series, and is my favourite book. It is great. It is a book for secondary school kids full of cartoons and lovely characters like this filthy boy called Pongo McWhiffy, or the one I like best is an upper-class idiot called Binky Smallbrains who falls for every trick. It is a book about chance, luck and probability, and these are difficult things that people have to learn about at school. This book really cracks through it. It starts with probability trees
fivebooks.com 25 Sept 2011
Liked Damned Lies and Statistics
I like this book because one of the things that really irritates me as a statistician is when numbers are bandied around as though they are God-given truths and can't be argued with.
fivebooks.com 25 Sept 2011
Recommends How Risky Is It, Really?
Yes, this is a completely non-technical book, which is looking at things from the point of view of psychology. It is essentially a review of the recent research on risk perception.
fivebooks.com 25 Sept 2011
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Recommends Dicing with Death
This book is somewhat similar to The Drunkard's Walk in that it covers the history of probability. But since Stephen's background is in medical statistics, he looks at clinical trials and other medical studies.
fivebooks.com 25 Sept 2011
Recommends The Drunkard's Walk
This is a general introduction to the history of probability and the way it comes into everyday life. It intersperses the historical development with modern applications, and looks at finance, sport, gambling, lotteries and coincidences.
fivebooks.com 25 Sept 2011
Where they publish
Site David Spiegelhalter's home page His personal home page: books, talks, media and the Understanding Uncertainty project.
Link verified 5 Sept 2026.
x.com @d_spiegel Posts on statistics, risk and evidence communication.
Recent
- Ahead of the Commons vote tomorrow, some very personal thoughts on the statistics of assisted dying https://t.co/ObxyuBcgPo , largely based on the recent report from Dignity in Dying 10 Sept 2026 dignityindying.org.uk
- and currently available on Kindle for 99p!! 9 Jul 2026
- I am beside myself with joy that The Art of Uncertainty is out in paperback today! Fits in any (largish) pocket, easy to read on the train or while jammed into a steaming underground carriage. The perfect present for the nerd in your life. 25 Jun 2026 amazon.co.uk
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- https://t.co/b8OEpYqvYT This seems a predictable failure, as 2021 data showed the test only picked up 28% of Stage 1/2 cancers. How much did this study of 140,000 patients cost? And the list price for detecting one cancer using GRAIL is $200,000 - was it ever feasible for NHS? 30 May 2026
- Great winners of the Harding Prize for Trustworthy Communication in 2025. Tom Whipple at The Times, and IN hub tool from Rebecca Coniam-Gudka, Abby Russell and Charlotte Kelman at the University of Exeter. Congratulations!!! 19 May 2026
- Kennedy supporting Trump's maths: a great example for teaching school students about percentage change. 28 Apr 2026 youtube.com
- Delighted to see the Covid Inquiry used one of our Winton Centre graphics in their vaccine report (p 215). But they chose the 'medium' exposure (February), rather than the more relevant 'low' exposure (March). I think this is misleading. 17 Apr 2026
- Spring is here, so it's back to frittering away my remaining life by doing wooden jigsaws face downwards. This one was tricky, even with the grain to follow, as there were so few interlocking pieces 2 Apr 2026
- I was so pleased to be part of a great team writing a commentary on the draft FDA guidelines on Bayesian clinical trial designs. Should have been done 30 years ago, but better late than never 23 Mar 2026
- My blog for OSR about the revised Code of Practice, and the importance of trustworthiness 20 Mar 2026
- https://t.co/beSDEH3RUX Looking forward to speaking with @jburnmurdoch at this event next Tuesday in London 20 Feb 2026
- OSR questioning the Covid Inquiry's claim that modelling 'established' 23,000 fewer deaths if mandatory lockdown imposed a week earlier on March 16th. In fact this estimate is not only very uncertain, but also assumes voluntary measures were brought forward a week, to March 9th 19 Feb 2026
- The Harding Prize for Trustworthy Communication is now open for entries until 15th February. We are looking for examples that inform people engagingly, without trying to persuade them what to think or do. Each Harding Prize is worth £3,141.59... 24 Jan 2026 wintoncentre.github.io
- I've had fun helping BBC Ideas produce this animation, which attempts to explain Bayesian ideas in 4 minutes. I hope you like it - I really like the animators style. 23 Jan 2026 bbc.co.uk
- https://t.co/ENzer2fHqJ I will be saving £250 a month in future, as Abi helps keep my locally advanced prostate cancer under control. I can afford it, but absurd it's taken so long for NHS to pay for this very effective drug. Hats off to campaigners and @BBCHughPym for coverage 17 Jan 2026
- BBC Ideas kindly gave me the TikTok treatment for this video 30 Dec 2025 bbc.co.uk
- my blog for MHRA on then role of regualation in the age of personalised medicine 2 Oct 2025 gov.uk
- some lessons learned from our contribution to the Infected Blood Inquiry 2 Oct 2025 rss.org.uk
- These are excellent winners! The pros and cons of breeding pythons to eat. Can we believe some claims made about stem cell treatments for Parkinson's? "If it sounds too good to be true, it probably is". Balanced, trustworthy information, delivered in an engaging way 12 May 2025
- https://t.co/5MvjBuyABJ excellent blog by OSR's Ed Humpherson on the importance of looking at the variability in health metrics rather than just their average - and the tools available for doing this 9 May 2025
Link verified 5 Sept 2026. Recent items update automatically from the channel.
Papers ORCID Their ORCID record: peer-reviewed papers, newest first.
Academic papers, most recent first, restricted to open-access articles published in an identified journal. Fetched live from OpenAlex, keyed by this ORCID.
Recent
- David Spiegelhalter’s contribution to the Discussion of ‘Some statistical aspects of the COVID-19 response’ by Wood et al. 1 Jul 2025 David Spiegelhalter, FRS OBE Kt; David Spiegelhalter’s contribution to the Discussion of ‘Some statistical aspects of the Covid-19 response’ by Wood et al,
- How to maintain trustworthiness when doctors act as policy advocates 13 Aug 2024 Sebastian Walsh and colleagues consider the role of doctors in effective advocacy and recommend strategies to maximise trustworthiness
- Modelling hepatitis C infection acquired from blood transfusions in the UK between 1970 and 1991 for the Infected Blood Inquiry 1 Jun 2024 The Statistics Expert Group was convened at the request of the Infected Blood Inquiry to provide estimates of the number of infections and deaths from blood-borne infections including hepatitis B virus, human immunodefi…
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- The effects of communicating scientific uncertainty on trust and decision making in a public health context 1 Jul 2022 Large-scale societal issues such as public health crises highlight the need to communicate scientific information, which is often uncertain, accurately to the public and policy makers. The challenge is to communicate th…
- Expert elicitation on the relative importance of possible SARS-CoV-2 transmission routes and the effectiveness of mitigations 1 Dec 2021 OBJECTIVES: To help people make decisions about the most effective mitigation measures against SARS-CoV-2 transmission in different scenarios, the likelihoods of transmission by different routes need to be quantified to…
- The effects of quality of evidence communication on perception of public health information about COVID-19: Two randomised controlled trials 17 Nov 2021 Background The quality of evidence about the effectiveness of non-pharmaceutical health interventions is often low, but little is known about the effects of communicating indications of evidence quality to the public. M…
- Redevelopment of the Predict: Breast Cancer website and recommendations for developing interfaces to support decision‐making 21 Jun 2021 OBJECTIVES: To develop a new interface for the widely used prognostic breast cancer tool: Predict: Breast Cancer. To facilitate decision-making around post-surgery breast cancer treatments. To derive recommendations for…
- Factors associated with deaths due to COVID-19 versus other causes: population-based cohort analysis of UK primary care data and linked national death registrations within the OpenSAFELY platform 8 May 2021 BACKGROUND: Mortality from COVID-19 shows a strong relationship with age and pre-existing medical conditions, as does mortality from other causes. We aimed to investigate how specific factors are differentially associat…
- How well did experts and laypeople forecast the size of the COVID-19 pandemic? 5 May 2021 Throughout the COVID-19 pandemic, social and traditional media have disseminated predictions from experts and nonexperts about its expected magnitude. How accurate were the predictions of 'experts'-individuals holding o…
- Communicating personalized risks from COVID-19: guidelines from an empirical study 1 Apr 2021 As increasing amounts of data accumulate on the effects of the novel coronavirus Sars-CoV-2 and the risk factors that lead to poor outcomes, it is possible to produce personalised estimates of the risks faced by groups…
- Sound Human, Steer Clear of Jargon, and be Prepared 26 Mar 2021 Kevin McConway and David Spiegelhalter offer tips to statisticians communicating through the media, especially in the time of Covid-19
- COVID-19 risk perception: a longitudinal analysis of its predictors and associations with health protective behaviours in the United Kingdom 22 Mar 2021 In this study, we present results from five cross-sectional surveys on public risk perception of COVID-19 and its association with health protective behaviours in the UK over a 10-month period (March 2020 to January 202…
- What is my covid risk? 16 Mar 2021 Bupropion, widely used as an antidepressant and smoking cessation aid, undergoes complex metabolism to yield numerous metabolites with unique disposition, effect, and drug–drug interactions (DDIs) in humans. The stereos…
- Five rules for evidence communication 18 Nov 2020
- Living risk prediction algorithm (QCOVID) for risk of hospital admission and mortality from coronavirus 19 in adults: national derivation and validation cohort study 20 Oct 2020 Objective To derive and validate a risk prediction algorithm to estimate hospital admission and mortality outcomes from coronavirus disease 2019 (covid-19) in adults. Design Population based cohort study. Setting and pa…
- No more damned lies… 1 Aug 2020
- Shielding from covid-19 should be stratified by risk 28 May 2020 Lockdown is damaging lives; stratified shielding could help get us out
- Risk perceptions of COVID-19 around the world 5 May 2020 The World Health Organization has declared the rapid spread of COVID-19 around the world a global public health emergency. It is well-known that the spread of the disease is influenced by people’s willingness to adopt p…
- The effects of communicating uncertainty on public trust in facts and numbers 23 Mar 2020 Uncertainty is inherent to our knowledge about the state of the world yet often not communicated alongside scientific facts and numbers. In the “posttruth” era where facts are increasingly contested, a common assumption…
- Should We Trust Algorithms? 31 Jan 2020 There is increasing use of algorithms in the health care and criminal justice systems, and corresponding increased concern with their ethical use. But perhaps a more basic issue is whether we should believe what we hear…
Link verified 9 Sept 2026. Recent items update automatically from the channel.
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