Jonas Ranstam's website
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Jonas Ranstam BSc PhD is a former professor of medical statistics at Lund University, Sweden, and an internationally active medical statistical consultant with extensive experience from collaboration in randomised trials and epidemiological studies. He is a member of the ISI 🔗 and ISCB 🔗 and is particularly interested in statistical reviewing. He has reviewed over 7000 manuscripts submitted to biomedical journals and was in 2016 the overall winner of Publons' Sentinels of Science Award.
Modern medical science was born late. Until the second half of the 20th century, medical research was dogmatic, mainly based on authoritative case reports and expert opinion. The importance of objective evidence was not generally recognised until the late 1940s and 1950s. Empirical science combines objective evidence and subjective opinion. Progress is achieved not by more opinion but by more evidence empirically supporting developed hypotheses. However, imprecise or biased information that provides empirical support for a theory or hypothesis can easily mislead and corrupt science. Many scientific journals, therefore, engage professional statisticians as reviewers of manuscripts submitted for publication. The emphasis of their work, the statistical review, usually focuses on the limitations and weaknesses imposed upon findings by the investigator's research question, study design, data collection, and statistical analysis. Completed reviews are usually presented in a brief report to the editorial office, describing both errors of commission and omission and suggesting corrections and reanalyses.