Paula Williamson and colleagues win the 2021 Bill Silverman Prize
Paula Williamson, Professor in Medical Statistics in the Department of Health Data Science, together with colleagues, has been awarded the Cochrane 2021 Bill Silverman Prize.
William (Bill) Silverman (1924-2004) was one of the founders of American neonatal medicine. He was honoured repeatedly as one of the pioneers in his specialty; however, he often evoked somewhat contradictory responses amongst his colleagues because he was in the habit of raising troubling questions about the scientific basis and ethics of his and their practices. Like many of the people who have helped to establish Cochrane, Bill Silverman could be regarded as a 'troublemaker'. As he reiterated frequently, however, criticism is a form of troublemaking that can help to drive progress. Furthermore, criticism should not be limited to examining the work of others but should also include self-criticism.
The Bill Silverman Prize is offered annually and explicitly acknowledges Cochrane's value of criticism, with a view to helping to improve its work, and thus achieve its aim of helping people make well-informed decisions about health care by providing the best possible evidence on the effects of healthcare interventions.
Paula Williamson won for this paper which was co-authored with institute colleagues Dr Sarah Gorst and Dr Karen Hughes,
Assessing the relevance and uptake of core outcome sets (an agreed minimum collection of outcomes to measure in research studies) in Cochrane systematic reviews: a review. BMJ Open 2020;10:e036562. doi:10.1136/ bmjopen-2019-036562
Paula also recently did an interview with Cochrane where she discussed the award, what drove her to enter and how it felt to win.
You can read the full interview here.