Iain Chalmers: Guilty, obsessional, and frustrated

Biography

Iain Chalmers is one of the founders of the Cochrane Collaboration, named after Archie Cochrane, who first dreamt of collecting and publishing critical reviews of knowledge from randomised controlled trials. Chalmers became director of the UK Cochrane Centre in 1992 and convened the meeting at which the international Cochrane Collaboration was inaugurated in 1993. Since 2003 he has been coordinator of the James Lind Initiative, which has used a variety of approaches to promote better research for better healthcare. Chalmers always refuses invitations to speak or write about evidence based medicine because, he says, “as a clinician who has not practised clinically since 1973 I don’t think my opinions on …