Biography

(The information in this section is distilled from other sections of this page and is written in third person to facilitate use by others.)

Martin (Marty) Mayer is a practicing clinician-scientist who’s extremely passionate about ensuring people receive the best care possible. As a practicing clinician, his areas of expertise are internal medicine and cardiology in both the outpatient and inpatient realms; as a scientist, his focus is in research methods, biostatistics, and evidence synthesis and application. He fervently believes providing the best care possible requires evidence-based medicine (with shared decision-making where applicable) and remembering patients are people, not just diagnoses or chief complaints. He has been practicing, teaching, and publishing on evidence-based medicine and shared decision-making since before they were an expectation in medical practice. He therefore has deep expertise in how evidence is generated, appraised, synthesized, and applied.

He maintains part-time clinical practice, with his full-time efforts being focused on his leadership role at EBSCO Clinical Decisions , where he serves as Senior Deputy Editor of DynaMed Decisions . Prior to EBSCO Clinical Decisions, he held professorial positions at two universities, reaching the rank of Associate Professor.

Marty is a member of the GRADE working group and has published widely in national and international peer-reviewed journals on various topics pertaining to evidence-based medicine, shared decision-making, clinical epidemiology, research methods, and statistics. He has been honored to have some of his articles selected as Editor’s Choice for the issue of the journal in which they were published, and he has also given presentations, facilitated workshops, and/or provided assistance, advice, or consultancy for various entities from the local to international level pertaining to these areas of expertise. Further information is available on his website.

It feels like I’ve always been ardently analytic and inquisitive; my family can attest to this, and I’m sure it even annoys them at times. However, I would say it was during my undergraduate years at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill (UNC-CH) that this passion became a full-on bonfire of conviction and drive. Although I was assigned journal articles to read in various class assignments, I also started reading journal articles out of my own interest. I was captivated by the concepts of knowledge generation and primary source verification (Nullius in verba; quaerite veritatem); I wanted to examine the articles to see if they were a fair gauge of what they claimed to be testing or demonstrating. This paralleled well with my deepening interest in epistemology and rational thinking. Coupling these things with a seemingly lifelong fascination with the human mind and human behavior, I also became interested in cognitive science. Because I was going to enter the field of medicine, I also wanted to get started early by spending time trying to make sense of articles pertaining to medicine. Relatively early in this process, I came across a paper using the term “evidence-based medicine”, and I remember thinking — rather distinctly — “As opposed to what?”. However, I was surprised to learn this concept was relatively new. Likewise, I discovered the best-available evidence wasn’t always well-represented in medical information disseminated to clinicians in practice or in training. This led me to relentlessly seek as much information as I could about evidence-based medicine, research methodology, and biostatistics, and my pursuit has continued in perpetuity since.

I graduated from UNC-CH early and with highest distinction (the equivalent of summa cum laude), earning a Bachelor of Science in Psychology. It was then time for medical training, and to say I was eager is a colossal understatement. I’d known I wanted to pursue a career in medicine since middle school, but deciding whether to do that as a PA or an MD was very difficult. I ultimately decided to pursue training as a PA. I still occasionally revisit this choice, but all in all, I’m content with my choice and would probably still do the same thing if I had the opportunity to go back in time and make the choice again. I sought medical training as a PA at East Carolina University, and I finished my formal academic pursuits by earning a Doctor of Medical Science from the University of Lynchburg. I again graduated at the top of my class at both universities. As a part of my doctorate, I completed a fellowship in internal medicine; although the fellowship was formally in internal medicine, I also practiced in cardiology during the entire fellowship. I also had a research focus in evidence-based medicine and shared decision-making in non-valvular atrial fibrillation.

Although I say I “finished my formal academic pursuits”, I consider myself a lifelong learner. There is always more to learn. Similarly, I consider myself a lifelong work in progress. I believe there will always be ways I can improve on my current self, and I am pretty restless about chasing that.

Among other honors and recognition, I was inducted as a student into The National Society of Collegiate Scholars, Phi Beta Kappa, and Phi Kappa Phi. As a professional, I was inducted into Pi Alpha after being nominated by my Department Chair in recognition of “significant academic achievement, leadership, research, service, and a high standard of character and conduct”. I was also invited to and accepted a two-year fellowship on the U.S. Board of BMJ (British Medical Journal) Fellows, being the first — and to date, only — PA to be offered such a role.

My clinical background is in internal medicine and cardiology in both outpatient and inpatient practice. I also have a strong interest in palliative care, end-of-life care, and hospice, and I consider Being Mortal by Atul Gawande and When Breath Becomes Air by Paul Kalanithi to be essential reading for everyone (not just health care professionals). I have immense respect for teamwork and the vital contributions of all members of the health care team; every person plays a critical role in offering people the best care possible, and I believe failure to recognize and actualize this can result in suboptimal care. I consider the plea from Patch Adams — as portrayed by Robin Williams in the namesake movie — to be essential to the practice of medicine: “You treat a disease, you win, you lose. You treat a person, I guarantee you, you’ll win, no matter what the outcome.” Patients are people, not just diagnoses or chief complaints. I also firmly and passionately believe evidence-based medicine (which, by definition, includes shared decision-making wherever applicable) is fundamental in providing people the best care possible.

These beliefs ultimately prompted me to split my time between the clinical and academic realms when I accepted a professorial position at East Carolina University. I loved — and still love — caring for patients, but there was much about medicine that I thought I could help improve (even if only on a small level) by taking on an academic role. My original vision of my career never involved me entering academia; in retrospect, it’s kind of laughable I never saw what now seems like an inevitability. In addition to being a nerd (which I consider to be a positive descriptor rather than a pejorative one), I’d tutored formally or informally since about the 6th grade, and I really enjoyed it. More importantly, people told me I was good at explaining things in an understandable way. I also served as a preceptor when I was in full-time practice. I greatly enjoyed this as well, and I got the same feedback regarding my teaching. As such, when the opportunity arose to take on a faculty position, it presented the potential to impact each cohort of students I would have the privilege of teaching and to pursue opportunities that might otherwise be more elusive if I remained in full-time clinical practice. To the extent these two things would be true, it seemed my impact would be greater if I split my time between the clinical and academic realms. So, the decision seemed obvious. That said, it was heart-wrenching to leave full-time practice, because it meant saying goodbye to the people with whom I’d built incredible relationships while caring for them. And it was all the more bittersweet due to the letters my patients wrote me thanking me for my care (but these letters meant the world to me, and I actually still have a few of them). Fortunately, I was able to continue practicing part-time, and I also found a new love in working with students.

My academic experience started at East Carolina University as a Clinical Assistant Professor. As much as I knew I’d miss full-time practice, I quickly fell in love with my new academic role while still getting to practice medicine part-time. In many ways, it felt like having the best of both worlds. I had primary teaching responsibilities in the Clinical Medicine course series, the Evidence-Based Medicine course, and Introduction to Clinical Practice (the capstone course for the didactic curriculum that helps fine-tune students' medical aptitude and secures their readiness to transition from students in the classroom to student clinicians). In all my primary teaching responsibilities, I either created brand-new content and curricular structure (e.g., the Evidence-Based Medicine course) or substantially revamped existing content and structure (e.g., the Introduction to Clinical Practice course). I also always participated in standard secondary teaching responsibilities (e.g., physical examination competence assessments, helping with lab sessions), and I regularly volunteered to give guest lectures. Despite not having protected time for scholarly activity, I was the most prolific faculty member in my department in terms of scholarly works. As a result, I met criteria for promotion early (aside from the criterion regarding years of service in a given rank, hence the bit about being early).

After several years at East Carolina University, I transitioned my academic career to High Point University as an Associate Professor, where I had primary teaching responsibilities in the Evidence-Based Medicine, Master’s Project, and Clinical Decision-Making course series. During my tenure there, I again created brand-new curricula for the entire Evidence-Based Medicine course series and also substantially revamped the Master’s Project course series. I again participated in standard secondary teaching responsibilities and gave guest lectures, and I continued my scholarly activity.

I loved — and still love — working with students in a way comparable to how I love caring for patients. My passion also resulted in numerous commendations and awards for my teaching, and I value these greatly. However, what I cherish most is the time and conversations I had with my students and the individual letters and notes of thanks they wrote me over the years. But much like my decision to split my time between clinical practice and academics was fueled by my desire to have as much positive impact as possible, an opportunity with EBSCO Clinical Decisions — another opportunity I never envisioned as part of my career — led me to step away from my academic position.

I accepted a role with EBSCO Clinical Decisions (formerly EBSCO Health) in the middle of 2018. As part of that, I functionally had to choose whether I would step away from my academic position or from clinical practice, as I simply didn’t have enough time in the day to do all three. I decided to step away from my academic position. I knew I’d really miss working with students and other elements of my academic position, but I just couldn’t walk away from clinical practice; it’s the foundational essence of why I do anything I do professionally. Additionally, I still do some light adjunct teaching work, which is nice.

In my role at EBSCO Clinical Decisions, I have had and continue to have multifaceted and broad-reaching opportunities to maximize the usefulness of my expertise in and passion for evidence-based medicine and shared decision-making. This will, in turn, help further the goal of making these paradigms more accessible and feasible for all involved parties. It does not seem practical to catalog all I’ve been involved with since joining EBSCO Clinical Decisions (…or at least not here and not now; I’m very busy).

I was promoted in July of 2020 to an editorial leadership position as Senior Evidence Editor, promoted again in December of 2021 to Deputy Editor of DynaMed Decisions , and once more in November of 2023 to Senior Deputy Editor of DynaMed Decisions.

I have advanced expertise in R, including scraping, wrangling, analysis, reporting, visualization, and development of dashboards, websites (like the one you’re viewing now), and apps. R is still incorrectly typecast by many as a language (only) for statistics and data wrangling. While R absolutely excels in those domains, it’s a shame for people to mistakenly think those are the only things for which R is a great choice. The same thing is true for people who still hold on to an antiquated — if ever true in the first place — belief that R can’t be used in production. That’s just … not true.

I’m equally comfortable with base and tidyverse (and data.table where it might have performance advantages), and I dislike the idea that there is a “better” choice here: That discourse is a false dichotomy and waste of time. The same is true for so-called “language wars”, where some people seem intriguingly fixated on elevating one programming language as superior while implicitly or explicitly denigrating others. The simple truth is all languages have pluses and minuses, elements that seem superb and elements that seem idiosyncratic or even annoying, etc. Vastly more important is adherence to good coding practices and respecting the mantra of “right tool(s) for the right job” while also realizing the “right tool(s)” may depend on the expertise of the person doing the job, the audience, and the use case. But there are certainly limits to this, and one still has to adhere to best practices. “Square peg, round hole” approaches are always ill-advised, as are things like the programming equivalent of trying to use wood glue to hold together a submarine: Wood glue is a wonderful tool, but even if someone is an expert in wood glue, it’s a decidedly bad idea to use it to hold together a submarine.

In any case, the point is the “language wars” are pointless and tiresome. For example, although I strongly favor programming in R, I also have no problem recognizing the power and attractiveness of other languages, such as Python. Speaking of Python, I have at least a passing familiarity with several other languages, though in most cases I often favor using R as a sort of “meta-API” for other languages, or as a replacement for those languages or to foster interoperability (yes, R can often do that, at least for the types of use cases I’ve encountered!).

In addition to what I discuss elsewhere herein, my passions and areas of expertise have also led me to:

• publish widely in peer-reviewed journals on various topics pertaining to evidence-based medicine, shared decision-making, clinical epidemiology, research methods, and statistics, also being honored to have some of my articles selected as Editor’s Choice for the issue of the journal in which they were published;

• be invited to and accept a two-year fellowship on the U.S. Board of BMJ (British Medical Journal) Fellows, being the first — and to date, only — PA to be offered such a role;

• become a member of the GRADE working group ;

• give presentations, facilitate workshops, and/or provide assistance, advice, or consultancy for various entities from the local to international level;

• be interviewed by media; and

• provide critiques and commentary via peer review and various other outlets, such as:

  • detailed analysis of statistical errors in Cochrane reviews (e.g., here and here for the abridged comments in the Cochrane Library for one of the three Cochrane reviews where my critique applies, and here for my figshare account, where I posted the full contents of my critique at the direction of Cochrane given the length of my critique and the fact I include equations and mathematical notation in my critique),
  • contributing to invited blog posts (e.g., here and here ),
  • PubMed Commons commentaries, and
  • similar things (e.g., here ).

The accompanying pages provide abbreviated lists of professional interests and scholarly activity. For further information regarding my clinical practice, teaching experience, or scholarly activity, or for inquiries about speaking, training, or consultancy, please use the contact form.

Outside the realms of medicine and science, I also enjoy:

• weightlifting (I fell in love with it in 6th grade),
• wide variety of music,
• poetry (even publishing some myself),
• non-fiction books (I like some fiction as well, but I tend to favor non-fiction more), and
• stand-up and improvised comedy.

However, the thing I enjoy most is spending time with my wife, Jessica , and our two children.