Dr Neil Scott

Biography

Dr Neil Scott is a medical statistician within the Biostatistics and Health Data Science department. 

He graduated from the University of Edinburgh in 1995 with an MA in Mathematics and has an MSc in Applied Statistics from Napier University.  He obtained a PhD from the University of Aberdeen in 2007. 

From 1997 to 2001 he worked as a medical statistician in the Health Services Research Unit, University of Aberdeen, where he worked on clinical trials and systematic reviews, particularly in surgery.

He joined the Biostatistics and Health Data Science department (originally the Department of Public Health, then the Medical Statistics Team) in 2001, and has collaborated on a large number of medical research projects in a wide variety of clinical areas.

He has an interest in the development and validation of quality-of-life instruments.  His PhD project involved using differential item functioning (DIF) analyses to determine whether there were linguistic or cultural differences in responses to the EORTC QLQ-C30 questionnaire.

He has a major interest in systematic reviews and meta-analysis and has co-authored many systematic reviews including several Cochrane reviews.  He is also interested in complex evidence synthesis methodologies, such as network meta-analysis, and is a member of the Aberdeen team critiquing technology assessments for the National Institute of Health and Care Excellence (NICE).

He previously acted as a statistical consultant to NHS Grampian staff and is interested in statistical consultancy in general.

He contributes to a variety of teaching activities.  He is course co-ordinator for the PU5522 online Applied Statistics course and is a lecturer on the Systematic Reviewing (PU5526) and Evidence Based Health (PU5031) courses.

External Memberships

Fellow of the Royal Statistical Society (RSS)

Research Overview

Neil’s main research interests include:

• Randomised controlled trials, including methods of randomisation
• Systematic reviews and meta-analysis, including individual patient data (IPD) reviews and network meta-analyses
• Health-related quality of life (HRQoL)
• Differential item functioning (DIF) methods
• Methods to assess translations of HRQoL questionnaires
• Case-control studies
• Statistical consultancy

Current PhD opportunity: https://www.findaphd.com/phds/project/comprehensive-meta-analyses-of-surgical-repair-of-groin-hernia/?p172221

Teaching Responsibilities

Contribution to:

PU5522 Applied Statistics (online) (lecturer and course co-ordinator)

PU5017 Applied Statistics (lecturer and previous course co-ordinator)

PU5526 Systematic Reviewing (lecturer)

PU5031 Evidence-Based Health (online) (lecturer)

SPSS staff course (previous lecturer)

Intermediate Statistics staff course (previous lecturer)

PhD Statistics Course (previous tutor)

Statistical consultancies (NHS and University staff)

Student clinics