John Duffy

John Duffy's Linked In profile page, Screengrab taken 1 November 2013.

John Duffy is a retired academic and civil servant who is best known for his involvement in controversy over links to the alcohol industry. In 2012 Duffy co-wrote a report for the Adam Smith Institute with Christopher Snowdon attacking research from the University of Sheffield which supported Minimum Unit Pricing of alcohol. This drew a twenty three page rebuttal from the Sheffield researchers.

Duffy lists his interests on his LinkedIn page as: 'Double standards in medical research - how public health advocates oversell the "evidence"'.

Education

• University of Reading M.Sc. in Biometry 1969-70


• University of Edinburgh B.Sc. Mathematical Science 2nd 1965-69
(1st in class Mathematical Statistics 4)

Background

In October 1996 Duffy was reported by former colleague David Wann, then director of funding for the Scottish Higher Education Funding Council to have an 'idiosyncratic sense of humour'. This 'had often caused serious problems in the AUT Scotland office. Mr Duffy was in the habit of phoning secretary Ray Patterson in the guise of an aggrieved member, "usually of foreign nationality or in a state of inebriation or both". It was unfortunately impossible for Mrs Patterson to distinguish Mr Duffy from the real thing, and a genuine member had been greatly offended at being told: "Come off it, John, I'm too busy for this nonsense."'

Career

After an early spell with British Steel Duffy got a job with the Department of Statistics at the University of Edinburgh and the Medical Research Council Unit for Epidemiological Studies in Psychiatry and was based at the Royal Edinburgh Hospital from 1971. He wrote his first peer reviewed journal article on alcohol in 1977. Among his co-authors was the psychiatrist Jonathan Chick with whom he wrote two articles in 1978 and 1986

Union activist

Duffy was a long time union office holder. According to his online CV he was Edinburgh Association of University Teachers Hon. Sec. 1978-81, and Hon. Pres. 1982-85, 1990-94. At Scottish level he was a member of AUT(Scotland) Council (1978 – 1996, 1996 – 2001) and Executive Committee (1982 – 96, 99-2001), then President AUT(Scotland) 1988-90. At UK level he was a member of AUT Council (from 1978), a member of AUT Executive Committee. (1988-90, 1992-1996; 1999-2001) and on several AUT national committees. After leaving Edinburgh for Birmingham Duffy was Vice-President of the Birmingham Association of University Teachers (Vice-President 2001-2003). Between 1989 and 1995 e was also a member of the Scottish Trade Union Congress Education and Training Committee.

Link with conservative think tank

While a union activist, in 1989, Duffy also collaborated with the conservative Social Affairs Unit a think tank formed as an offshoot from the neoliberal Institute of Economic Affairs.

Alcohol industry funding

In 1989 Duffy was a ‘joint grantholder’ with Martin Plant of a five year award from the alcohol industry funded Portman Group for £500,000. Promoted to Senior Lecturer in 1990 he was seconded to the Alcohol Research Group at the Department of Psychiatry to undertake the Portman Group funded work.

Alcohol is good for you

Duffy was said in late 1994 to have ‘ In a number of recent articles… raised questions about the Government's current safe-drinking levels - 21 units per week for men, 14 for women - for which he says there is no scientific basis.’

Certainly it was the case the John Duffy repeatedly stated that alcohol was either good for you or not as bad as Public Health advocates had suggested. For example:

At a conference held by the Alcohol Research Group in 1991 Duffy reportedly described Alcohol Concern's figures on deaths a year due to alcohol in England and Wales 'erroneous' and ‘based on poor research’:

he told the conference: 'It could be said that assming the relation between alcohol and mortality to be directly causal, alcohol consumption in the population, far from being a cause of excess mortality, is in fact a protective factor.'

In 1993 ‘The Edinburgh International Science Festival yesterday was told that moderate drinking may be healthy.’

Dr John Duffy, of the Alcohol Research Group in Edinburgh… told of evidence from major studies suggesting that modest consumption, of less than two units of alcohol per day, actually improves longevity in comparison to abstinence.

Later that year Duffy advanced the same argument in the New Statesman and Society:

Alcohol is good for you, a researcher said today. The Department of Health's advice on sensible drinking limits may need revision upwards, said John Duffy of Edinburgh University. In an article in this week's New Statesman and Society magazine, Mr Duffy, director of statistics and information at the university's alcohol research group, said more than 20 major studies have now found that the risk of death, particularly from coronary heart disease, was lower among light and moderate drinkers than among abstainers…"Although there are still aspects of the controversy to be resolved, current opinion is that alcohol drinking really does have a protective effect against coronary heart disease and as a result against mortality from all causes," he said. The Department of Health's sensible limits advice may need revision if it is found there are net health benefits linked with consuming more than 21 units of alcohol per week - the "sensible" limit for men, Mr Duffy said.

The article was also reported in the Herald under the headline ‘Alcohol “is good for you”’, and in the Scotsman under the headline ‘A little of what you fancy does you good: it's official Moderate drinkers likely to outlive abstainers’

In December 1993 Duffy was quoted again:

Other experts believe the benefits of alcohol are being kept from the public for fear it will lead to more drunkenness. 'Control of consumption has dominated the debate while the potential benefits of moderate drinking have been ignored,' said John Duffy, co-director of the Alcohol Research Group at Edinburgh University.

'Nobody is suggesting heavy drinking is beneficial and most people know it is associated with cancer and liver disease. However, this idea of how many units you should drink has been plucked out of the air and is now interpreted as some sort of magic threshold. What we need is some common-sense advice on what alcohol does to you.'

In February 1994 Duffy was again quoted:

Recommendations, embodied in official government documents such as Scotland's Health: A Challenge to Us are unaltered - 21 units a week for men and 14 for women should be your lot.

But one senior figure in the alcohol field believes this has no basis in scientific fact and its widespread promulgation discredits the medical community.

John Duffy, a senior lecturer in the Alcohol Research Group at Edinburgh University, said: "The idea of 21 units a week being a safe cut off was never true but it kind of got misinterpreted over the years. What was really a sensible level of consumption became a safe limit. "What is happening now is a great reluctance on the part of the chairs of these eminent committees that they might have to revise their position.

The medical profession is hierarchical and received wisdom is not readily challenged.

Making mistakes is not something they are very keen on admitting to."

None of these stories in the press revealed that Duffy and his research centre were supported by core funding from the alcohol industry.

Industry funding and 'cash for comment' controversy

Independent headlines collage from Alcohol Alert! journal of the Institute of Alcohol Studies, April 1995, p 3 - Image courtesy of the Institute for Alcohol Studies.

It was the activities associated with the money from the alcohol industry for which Duffy became most well known. These included the questions of whether the ARG had properly disclosed funding from the alcohol industry and most damagingly for Duffy, the controversy over the Portman Group attempts to pay academics to rubbish a book published in association with the WHO on alcohol and ill health.

On the first question it was alleged that:

Most controversially, however, the [Portman] group pays the salaries and expenses of Edinburgh University's Alcohol Research Group whose two leading figures, Professor Martin Plant and Dr John Duffy, have written academic articles without citing their drinks trade funding.

The director of the ARG Martin Plant stated in response that 'In accordance with standard procedures, all journal articles and books by members of the ARG have acknowledged related sources of funding. Details are further elaborated in the ARG's annual reports.'

This statement was, however, untrue. Given that the Portman Group funding was core funding all publications from the ARG, not just those on alcohol, should have included a disclaimer. In reality not even the alcohol publications routinely included conflict of interest statements or acknowledgments. In the case of Duffy, according to his online CV, he published ten articles referred to as 'peer-reviewed' between 1990 and 1996, the period covered by the funding from the Portman Group. A further two articles appeared early in this period but they were about Schizophrenia/affective disorder, not alcohol, and also seem to have been written before Duffy joined the ARG with the Portman Group funding.

In two of these, both co-authored with Finnish researchers who also disclosed either a funding or data source, Duffy thanked the Portman Group.

A third article contained a list of acknowledgements to specific support from funding agencies for particular elements of the paper. The list also included the following: 'additional support for both studies was provided by the Scotch Whisky Association, the Portman Group and the Economic and Social Research Council'. A fuller disclosure might have included the fact that the Portman group was supporting salaries and other core costs for the research group.

In two articles there was a statement 'this study was funded by the Alcohol Education and Research Council', a body with an arms length link to the industry, but no mention was made of the core funding from the Portman Group.

Others, however, contained no disclosures at all. For example, none of the following disclosed funding to Duffy from the alcohol industry:

• two pieces on alcohol and 'all cause mortality'
• an article on 'alcohol and consumption policy'
• two articles on suicide and age and class and suicide and alcoholism.

The first three were central to the strategy of the Portman Group at the time to attack the basis of health education work on reducing alcohol consumption.

So, we can conclude that overall the statement of the ARG director Plant was false, implying a significant issue about how the Group functioned. It was only on the second issue that Plant acknowledged an ethical issue. This was the issue that led to Duffy and Plant parting ways. The first story in the Independent coverage of the saga had revealed that:

British academics are secretly being paid thousands of pounds by the drinks industry to challenge the conclusions of a book on alcohol being published tomorrow under the auspices of the World Health Organisation and Oxford University Press.

The story had not mentioned the ARG or Duffy, but after Nick Heather refused an approach to write one of the anonymous reviews, Duffy reportedly contacted him to seek alternative reviewers.

This was first reported on an edition of Channel Four's Dispatches programme broadcast in December 1996, some two years after the first disclosures. In the programme, the presenter, investigative journalist Sarah Spiller, interviewed Nick Heather:

SARAH SPILLER: Professor Heather says he then received a phone call from this man, Mr John Duffy, who, at the time, worked at the Portman-funded Edinburgh University Unit .

PROF NICK HEATHER: 
He just asked me if, had I received the letter .

SARAH SPILLER: Was it your understanding that he was involved in this scheme, as it were ?

PROF NICK HEATHER: Yes .

SARAH SPILLER: Mr Duffy told us he saw nothing wrong with his approach to the academic and that it happened during a friendly conversation . But the head of the Edinburgh Unit admits to concern at this episode .

SARAH SPILLER: 
What does it say about this unit if that sort of thing is going on ?

PROF MARTIN PLANT: Well if that sort of thing went on then that was very, very serious breach of the ethical code that's always been the basis for our very existence and, and would be in future.

This appears to have been the issue over which Duffy and Plant split. Plant later said 'We reported this to the university and dissociated ourselves from Duffy... The issue was anonymity. Researchers have to maintain a transparent and open relationship about their funding agencies.'

According to the THES Duffy 'later left and now works in the Chief Scientist's Office at the Scottish Office in Edinburgh.' Other reports state that Duffy was 'seconded' from Edinburgh University 'to be research manager to the chief scientist at the Scottish Office.'

The split became what Martin Plant much later described as a 'long-running and acrimonious dispute'. Over the course of the next three years the 'fall-out… rippled through the team, affecting its work'.

Duffy's response to the split seems to have started in 1995. It was in that year that Duffy

made a formal complaint about the legitimacy of a number of Professor Plant's expenses claims and financial transactions.

Leaving Edinburgh University - 1996

In August of 1996, just before leaving Edinburgh University, Duffy complained that his review of the book by Griffith Edwards at the heart of the controversy in late 1994 had not been published. Duffy was said to be:

mystified by a decision by Timothy Peters, the editor of Addiction Biology and professor of clinical biochemistry at London University's Institute of Psychiatry, not to publish his review of Alcohol Policy and the Public Good edited by Griffith Edwards, the editor of Addiction Biology's sister journal Addiction.

According to the THES:

In a letter to Mr Duffy, Professor Peters said: 'You may be aware of the possible litigation by certain elements of the liquor trade in Edinburgh...I have been advised that publication of material from liquor trade-associated individuals or organisations would be inappropriate at the present time.'

The THES reported Duffy's response:

Mr Duffy said: 'Mine would be one of the few reviews of the book which has not been extremely fulsome, but it is by no means rubbishing it.'

In August 1997 the Scottish Office 'Chief Scientist's Office announced that it was suspending further grant payments' to Plant 'following the discovery of various "irregularities" related to' a project.

According to Plant, however,

the 'irregularities' stem from nothing more serious than a dispute over items that were billed to the project, such as 'project workers attending a training seminar, the costs of which were charged to the grant'. Such disputes, he says, do arise and are usually resolved quietly with a minimum of fuss between the parties involved. In this case, he suggests, someone making 'anonymous' phone calls tipped journalists off about the Scottish Office's concerns - including the suggestion that there are methodological flaws in the research.

In October 1997 Plant's centre was removed from Edinburgh University though it continued 'operating as an independent agency in accommodation rented from Edinburgh's City Hospital'.

But Plant left:

with yet another allegation hanging over him - that he had harassed a university colleague. 'I have responded to that with my own counter harassment claim,' he says. 'It was related to the fall-out from the Portman affair. (The allegation) was not sexual harassment.'.

Back to Edinburgh University – 1999

Duffy moved back to the department of Statistics at Edinburgh University in October 1999, according to his online CV. His return to Edinburgh did not stop Duffy from criticising Plant.

A year later, Duffy and another former member of the ARG Wendy Loretto then of the Department of Business Studies at Edinburgh wrote to denounce Plant querying his statistical analysis suggesting that increases in alcohol related deaths were 'not a surge, but a trend (and a cause for concern)':

We write in connection with your report of November 24 quoting Dr Martin Plant as claiming that deaths from alcohol-related liver disease in Scotland have "surged". It is worth pointing out that the data on which this was based have only been published in their present form since 1996.

The letter closed with a personal attack on Plant:

One expects, and your journalists and readers deserve, rather more considered analysis from a person claiming expertise in this area, a claim lent credibility by the rental from a local NHS trust of disused accommodation in a virtually closed hospital.

These are our own views and do not represent the views of our employer.

The dispute did not end there. In 2001 Duffy was again quoted in the press criticising Plant:

John Duffy, senior lecturer in statistics at Edinburgh University, revealed yesterday Dr Plant left the university four years ago after allegations he had abused research grants…

…Mr Duffy said he had reported Dr Plant to the university authorities four years ago. "I was told it would be investigated but, because his contract ran out, the university let him go.

'There were irregularities on his expenses and he had to pay the money back. The money was given for specific purposes - and they didn't include the purchase of furniture or flights down to London at the same time certain concerts were on.'

In 2002 Duffy's allegations were again cited

Edinburgh University this week confirmed for the first time that it had found financial irregularities after investigating Professor Plant's conduct when he was running the university's alcohol and health research group during the 1990s. And details have also emerged about the Scottish Office's decision to halt a Pounds 131,000 research project headed by Professor Plant in 1997 that call into question his claims that all allegations of financial and scientific irregularities with the project were proved to be without foundation.

It has emerged that Professor Plant claimed expenses twice for an overseas trip when he was at Edinburgh. After a trip to the Netherlands in May 1995, he was reimbursed the Pounds 197 cost of the flight from the Dutch centre he visited and from the university.

Professor Plant, who now runs his alcohol and health research centre at the University of the West of England, told The THES: "I once mistakenly made a duplicate claim for travelling expenses. The university authorities brought this matter to my attention, and as soon as I realised what I had done I repaid the money."

He said that the allegations were "all rapidly shown to be without foundation". The allegations materialised, he said, only after his former Edinburgh colleague Mr Duffy, whose relationship with Professor Plant was still acrimonious, had moved from Edinburgh University to the Scottish Office as a research manager.

But the Scottish Executive, formerly the Scottish Office, this week confirmed that Mr Duffy "did not have anything to do with the project at any stage" and confirmed that it had indeed found irregularities.

A spokeswoman said that the project was suspended to investigate "the legitimacy of some of the items of expenditure that were not (obviously) allowable under the grant conditions. Subsequently, Edinburgh University, which employed Professor Plant at the time, accepted that Pounds 8,052.62 had been wrongly paid," she said. In 1998, Edinburgh returned the Pounds 52,000 already allocated.

She said that important changes to the design of the project had been made "without the approval of the Scottish Office or the Local Ethics Committee, which is required under the terms and conditions of the grant", and that the changes "encompassed significant alterations to the nature of the study that compromised the experimental design of the project and led the Scottish Office to the conclusion that it would be totally inappropriate to reinstate it".

Notwithstanding the claim that Duffy had nothing 'to do with the project', it can be noted that the grant had been awarded by the Chief Scientists Office of the Scottish Office and that this was where Duffy was seconded as a 'research manager' after being moved out of Edinburgh University.

By this stage Duffy's return to Edinburgh University had come to an end, his position there lasting some eighteen months. In May 2001 he had taken up a post as Head of Statistics 

in the Department of Primary Care, University of Birmingham, a post he held for almost two and a half years until November 2003. Duffy's online CV does not record what he did between then and August 2009 when he took up the post of Deputy Director Knowledge Management at the Scottish Further and Higher Education Funding Council. In that period he was second author on two journal articles (published in 2004) and third co-author on another (published in 2007). Duffy retired in March 2012 and set up John C Duffy Statistical Consultants in April of that year.

Later career

Both his LinkedIn page and his online CV include a period (from November 2003 to August 2009) during which no employment is listed. After he retired (in 2012) Duffy set up a consultancy firm John C Duffy Statistical Consultants. Duffy states that his 'Existing client base includes Universities, professional accreditation agencies and trade associations', but does not identify any of them.

In 2012 he worked with Christopher Snowdon on a report for the Adam Smith Institute published in November of that year, which attacked the research undertaken at Sheffield University supporting the policy of Minimum Unit Pricing. The listing of Duffy's 'client base' appears not to include the work for the Adam Smith Institute.

Career overview

• April 2012 - Director at John C Duffy Statistical Consultants
• August 2009 - retired 30 March 2012 Deputy Director Knowledge Management Scottish Further and Higher Education Funding Council
• May 2001 – Nov 2003 Department of Primary Care University of Birmingham. Head of Statistics 


• Nov 1999 - May 2001 Department of Mathematics and Statistics University of Edinburgh. Director of STATLAB and senior lecturer
• Nov 1996 - Nov 1999 Chief Scientist Office Scottish Office Department of Health. Research Manager (NHS Senior Manager Grade 7) 


• May 1990 - Oct 1996 Alcohol Research Group Department of Psychiatry University of Edinburgh Director of Statistics and Information Professorial Research Fellow – AR4 


• Sept – Nov 1988 Inveresk Research International Full-time Consultant Head of Statistics (secondment) 


• Jan 1971 - May 1990 Department of Statistics University of Edinburgh and MRC Unit for Epidemiological Studies in Psychiatry Royal Edinburgh Hospital, Joint appointment as lecturer 
and research scientist (Promoted to senior lecturer, 1990) 

• Oct - Dec 1970 Group Technical Department British Steel Corporation Ravenscraig Motherwell. Statistician

Resources, publications, contact, references

Publications

• John C. Duffy and Christopher Snowdon The Minimal Evidence for Minimum Pricing The fatal flaws in the Sheffield Alcohol Policy Model London: Adam smith Institute, 2012.

Books

• Duffy, J.C., (1992) Alcohol and Illness: the Epidemiological Viewpoint, Edinburgh University Press.


• Duffy, J.C. (1991) Trends in Alcohol Consumption Patterns 1978-89, Henley on Thames: NTC Publications.


• Duffy, J.C. (1989) Generalized Linear Models In Epidemiology, EUSTAT, Vitoria, Spain. 


• Buglass, D., Kreitman, N. and Duffy, J.C. (1980) A register of social and medical indices by local government area in Edinburgh and the Lothians - Parts I and II (sep.). Central Research Unit Papers, Scottish Office. ca 150 pp.

Journal articles

2001-2015

• Lowe, R., Chung, C., Heim, D., Duffy, J., Davies, J., Pennebaker, J. In verbis, vinum? Relating themes in an open-ended writing task to alcohol behaviours (submitted to Addiction).
• Penny, K., Morton, I., Ashraf, M., Duffy, J. Imputing Scottish student retention rates using propensity score matching (submitted to Journal of the Royal Statistical Society Series A).
• Ballesteros, J., Santos, B., Duffy,J. (2012) The combination of final and gain scores to summarize the effect size of clinical trials by means of the standardized mean difference could bias the overall efficacy estimate. J Clin Psychopharmacol (in press).
• Penny, K.I., Ashraf, M.Z. and Duffy, J.C.(2007) The Use of Hot-deck Imputation to Compare Performance of Further Education Colleges, Journal of Computing and Information Technology, 15(4), 313-318.
• Moayyedi, P., Duffy, J. and Delaney, B. (2004) New approaches to enhance the accuracy of the diagnosis of reflux disease. Gut 53: 55-57.
• Ballesteros, J., Duffy, J.C., Querejeta I., Arino,J., Gonzalez-Pinto, A. (2004) Efficacy of brief interventions for hazardous drinkers in primary care: systematic review and meta-analyses. Alcohol Clin Exp Res.28: 608-18.
• Forbes, F.C.M., Duffy, J.C. and Mok, J. (2003) Early intervention service for non-abusing parents of child sexual abuse victims. British Journal of Psychiatry 183: 66-72.
• Duffy, J.C. (2003) Association between aspects of drinking pattern and experience of alcohol-related problems. Addiction Research and Theory, 11, 195-205.
• Cohen, G.R., Duffy, J.C. (2002) Are nonrespondents to health surveys less healthy than respondents? Journal of Official Statistics, 18, 13-23
• Leonard, T., Duffy, J.C. (2002) A Bayesian fixed-effects analysis of the Mantel-Haenszel model applied to meta-analysis. Statistics in Medicine, 21, 2295-2312.

1986-2000

• Duffy, J.C. (1996) Alcohol and all-cause mortality - author’s response. International Journal of Epidemiology, 25, 218-220.
• Duffy, J.C.and Pinot de Moira, A. (1996) Changes in licensing law in England and Wales and indicators of alcohol-related problems. Addiction Research, 4, 245-271.
• Alanko, T. and Duffy, J.C. (1996) Modelling compound binomial distributions: the distribution of drinking days. Journal of the Royal Statistical Society, Series D, 45, 269-286.
• Miller, P., Plant, M., Plant, M., Duffy, J (1995) Alcohol, Tobacco, Illicit Drugs, and Sex: An Analysis of Risk Behavior among Young Adults. International Journal of the Addictions, 30, 239-258.
• Pinot de Moira A., and Duffy, J.C. (1995) Changes in licensing law in England and Wales and alcohol-related mortality. Addiction Research, 3, 151-164.
• Duffy, J.C., (1995) Alcohol consumption and all-cause mortality. International Journal of Epidemiology, 24, 100-105.
• Duffy, J.C. (1993) Alcohol consumption and control policy. Journal of the Royal Statistical Society, Series A, 156, 225-230.
• Kreitman, N. and Duffy, J.C. (1993) Risk factors for suicide and undetermined death among in-patient alcoholics in Scotland. Addiction, 88, 757-766.
• Ozamiz, J.A. (Spain) and Duffy, J.C. (1992) Edad, sexo, estado civil y clase social en trastornos afectivos asistidos en el Pais Vasco: un estudio de registro de casos. Psiquis, 13, 81-86.
• Duffy, J.C. and Alanko, T. (Finland) (1992) Self-reported consumption measures in sample surveys - a simulation study of alcohol consumption. Journal of Official Statistics, 8, 327-350.
• Kreitman, N., Carstairs, V. and Duffy, J.C. (1991) Association of age and social class with suicide among men in Great Britain, Journal of Epidemiology and Community Health, 45, 195-202.
• Blackwood, D., St. Clair, D., Muir, W. and Duffy, J.C. (1991) Auditory P300 and eye tracking dysfunction in schizophrenic pedigrees. Archives of General Psychiatry, 48, 899-909.
• Surtees, P.G. and Duffy, J.C. (1989) Suicide in England and Wales 1946-85: an age-period-cohort analysis. Acta Psychiatrica Scandinavica, 79, 216-223.
• Kreitman, N. and Duffy, J.C. (1989) Alcoholic and non-alcoholic liver disease in relation to alcohol consumption in Scotland 1978-84: Part 1 - epidemiology of liver diseases. British Journal of Addiction, 84, 607-618.
• Surtees, P.G. and Duffy, J.C. (1989) Binary and rate measures of life event experience: association with illness onset in Edinburgh and London community surveys. Journal of Affective Disorders, 16, 139-149.
• Duffy, J.C. (1989) Anopille kelpaavaa olutta? Alkoholipolitiikka, 54, 208-210.
• Sales, J., Peck, D., Plant, M. and Duffy, J.C. (1989) Alcohol consumption, cigarette sales and mortality in the United Kingdom: an analysis of the period 1970-1985. Drug and Alcohol Dependence, 24, 155-160.
• Robinson, A.D.T. and Duffy, J.C. (1989) A comparison of self-injury and self-poisoning from the Regional Poisoning Treatment Centre, Edinburgh. Acta Psychiatrica Scandinavica, 80, 272-279.
• Duffy, J.C. and Waterton, J.J. (1988) Randomised response vs direct questioning: estimating the prevalence of alcohol related problems in a field survey. Australian Journal of Statistics, 30, 1-14.
• Peck, D.F., Plant, M.A. and Duffy, J.C. (1988) Trends in the use and misuse of alcohol and other psychoactive drugs in the United Kingdom: some perplexing connections. British Journal of Addiction, 83, 943-947.
• Duffy, J.C. and Latcham, R.W. (1986) Liver cirrhosis mortality in England and Wales compared to Scotland: an age-period-cohort analysis 1941-1981. Journal of the Royal Statistical Society, A, l49, 45-49.
• Duffy, J.C. and Plant, M.A. (1986) Scotland’s liquor licensing changes: an assessment. British Medical Journal, 292, 36-39.
• Platt, S.D. and Duffy, J.C. (1986) Social and clinical correlates of unemployment in two cohorts of male parasuicides. Social Psychiatry, 21, 17-24.
• Duffy, J.C (1986) The distribution of alcohol consumption - 30 years on. British Journal of Addiction, 8l, 735-741.
• Chick, J., Lloyd, G., Ritson, B. and Duffy, J.C (1986) Medical admissions in men: the risk among drinkers. Lancet, 1986, 1380-1383.

1974-1985

• Curson, D.A., Barnes, T.R.E, Bamber, R.W., Platt, S.D., Hirsch, S.R., and Duffy, J.C. (1985). Long-term depot maintenance of chronic schizophrenic out-patients: the seven-year follow-up of the medical research council fluphenazine/placebo trial. British Journal of Psychiatry, 146: 464-480.
• Duffy, J.C. (1985) Questionnaire measurement of drinking behaviour in sample surveys. Journal of Official Statistics, 1, 229-234.
• Roberts, M.M., French, K. and Duffy, J.C (1984) Breast cancer and breast self-examination: What do Scottish women know? Social Science and Medicine, 118, 791-797.
• Duffy, J.C. and Waterton, J.J. (1984) A comparison of computer interviewing techniques and traditional methods in the collection of self-report alcohol consumption data in a field survey. International Statistical Review, 52, 173-182.
• Duffy, J.C. and Waterton, J.J. (1984) Randomised response models for estimating the distribution function of a quantitative character. International Statistical Review, 52, 165-171.
• Waterton, J.J. and Duffy, J.C. (1984) Under-reporting of alcohol consumption in sample surveys: the effects of computer interviewing in fieldwork. British Journal of Addiction, 79, 303-308.
• Waterton, J.J. and Duffy, J.C. (1984) The measurement of alcohol consumption. SCPR Survey Methods Newsletter, Spring 1984, 2-4.
• Duffy, J.C. (1982) Fallacy of the distribution of alcohol consumption. Psychological Reports, 50, 125-126.
• Clayton, R., Cuthbert, J., Seth, J., Phillips, C., Bartholomew, R.S., McK. Reid, J. and Duffy, J.C.) (1982) Some risk factors associated with cataract in S.E. Scotland: A pilot study. Transactions of the Ophthalmological Societies of the United Kingdom, 102, 331-336.
• Duffy, J.C. (1980) The association between per capita consumption of alcohol and the proportion of excessive consumers - reply to Skog. British Journal of Addiction, 75, 147-151.
• Clayton, R.M., Cuthbert, J., Phillips, C.I., Bartholomew, R.S., Duffy, J.C., Stokoe, N.L., Ffytche, T., McK. Reid, J., Seth, J. and Alexander, M (1980) Analysis of individual cataract patients and their lenses: a progress report. Experimental Eye Research, 31, 553-566.
• Kreitman, N., Duffy, J.C. and Rennie, D. (1980) A register of social and medical indices by local government area in Edinburgh and the Lothians. Health Bulletin, 207-210.
• Duffy, J.C. (1979) Aspects of self-reported alcohol consumption in Scotland. Health Bulletin, 39-42.
• Buglass, D. and Duffy, J.C., (1978) The ecological pattern of suicide and parasuicide in Edinburgh. Social Science and Medicine, 12, 241-253.
• Chick, J. and Duffy, J.C. (1978) Application to the alcohol dependence syndrome of a method of determining the sequential development of symptoms. Psychological Medicine, 9, 313-319.
• Duffy, J.C. and Cohen, G. (1978) Total alcohol consumption and excessive drinking. British Journal of Addiction, 73, 259-264.
• Duffy, J.C. (1978) Comment on "The Single Distribution Theory of Alcohol Consumption". Journal of Studies on Alcohol, 39, 9, 1648-1650.
• Holding, T.A., Kreitman, N., Buglass, D. and Duffy, J.C. (1977) Parasuicide in Edinburgh - A seven-year review 1968-74. British Journal of Psychiatry, 128, 534-543.
• Kreitman, N., Plant, M., Miller, T.I. and Duffy, J.C. (1977) Observing public drinking. Quarterly Journal of Studies in Alcohol, 38, 867-880.
• Duffy, J.C. (1977) Frequency distribution of hospital-referred parasuicidal episodes in Edinburgh. British Journal of Preventive and Social Medicine, 31, 109-115.
• Duffy, J.C. (1977) Alcohol consumption, alcoholism and excessive drinking - errors in estimates from consumption figures. International Journal of Epidemiology, 6, No. 4, 375-379.
• Cochrane, R. and Duffy, J.C. (1974) Psychology and scientific method. Bulletin of the British Psychological Society, 27, 117-121.
• Duffy, J.C. (1974) (Appendix to) Mental illness in married pairs in a total population, by Hagnell. O. and Kreitman, N.. British Journal of Psychiatry, 125, 293-302.

Book Chapters

2000-2013

• Duffy J.C. (2011) Single Distribution Theory of Consumption, in Encyclopaedia of Drug Policy, Kleiman, M.A.R. and Hawdon, J.E.(eds.) Sage: New York.
• Duffy, J.C. (2002) Published figures from primary studies, in Meta-analysis of observational studies, Ateliers de Formation 137: INSERM: Paris
• Duffy, J.C. (2002) Publication bias In Meta-analysis of observational studies, Ateliers de Formation 137: INSERM: Paris.
• Duffy, J.C. (2002) Problems of interpretation In Meta-analysis of observational studies, Ateliers de Formation 137: INSERM: Paris

1990-1999

• Duffy, J.C., Morrison, D., Peck, D. (1998) Research design, measurement and statistics, in Companion to Psychiatric Studies Johnstone, E.C., Freeman, C.P.L. and Zealley, A.K. (eds.) Churchill Livingstone.
• Duffy, J.C., (1992) Scottish licensing changes, in Alcohol and Drugs: the Scottish Experience, Plant et al (eds), Edinburgh University Press.
• Alanko, T., and Duffy, J.C. (1992) Experiences from using the SAS system in a large consumption simulation study, Proceedings of the SAS European Users Group International Conference, 596-607.
• Duffy, J.C. (1990) Data Collection: a methodological response, in Alcohol and Drugs: Research and Policy (Plant, M.A., Keup, W.E. and Osterberg, E., eds.), Edinburgh University Press.
• Ballesteros, J., Querejeta, I., Rivas, M-A. and Duffy, J.C. (1990) Suicide in Spain 1961-1981: an age-period-cohort analysis, in Suicidal Behaviour and Risk Factors (Ferrari,G., Bellini, M. and Crepet, P., eds.) Bologna: Monduzzi Editore.

1977-1989

• Duffy, J.C. (1989) Total alcohol consumption in a population and alcohol-related problems, in Drinking to Your Health, (Anderson, D., ed.), Social Affairs Unit, London.
• Duffy, J.C. (1988) Statistics definitions in Chambers Science and Technology Dictionary (Walker, P., ed), Chambers, Edinburgh.
• Bartholomew, R.S., Clayton, R.M., Cuthbert, J., Phillips, C.I., Duffy, J.C., McK. Reid, J., Seth, J., Truman, D.E.S., Wilson, C. and Yim, S-H. (1980) Analysis of individual cataract patients and their lenses: preliminary observations on a population basis, in Ageing of the Lens. (Regnault, F., Hockwin, O. and Courtois, Y., eds.) Elsevier North Holland, Amsterdam. 241-261.
• Duffy, J.C. (1977) Estimating the proportion of heavy drinkers, in The Ledermann Curve, (Davies, D.L., ed.) 11-24, Alcohol Education Centre, London.

Resources

• J. Bird Academic integrity. Proper review makes funding irrelevant. BMJ. 1995 April 22; 310(6986): 1068–1069. NB:This article has been retracted (See article by N Craft)
• Alan Brennan, Robin Purshouse, John Holmes and Yang Meng A public response to the Adam Smith Institute’s critique of the Sheffield Alcohol Policy Model, January 2013. Technical appendix.
• N. Craft Letter fraud. BMJ. 1995 August 26; 311(7004): 523–524.
• Martin Plant, Moira Plant and Bryan Vernon Ethics, funding and alcohol research Alcohol and Alcoholism (1996) 31 (1): 17-25.
• John Rae, Academic integrity. Most people are not disgusted by the Portman group. BMJ. 1995 April 22; 310(6986): 1069.
• R. Smith Questioning academic integrity. BMJ. 1994 December 17; 309(6969): 1597–1598.

Contact

Telephone: 07803582169

Email: john@jcduffy.eu

Web: jcduffy.eu

CV: CV