It never ceased to amaze me how John has always been able to remain cool and stand as the voice of reason amidst the criticism and chaos of these conferences. Clearly, John was the calm during the storm. He's going to be hard to replace. Ferguson, who at 11 years on the job is the longest- serving OMAR director in NIH history, said his proudest accomplishments at OMAR include the steady improvements that have been made to the Consensus Development Program. In addition to having reviewed the program at national and international meetings and having the critiques published in peer-reviewed journals, he established a program to measure the impact of the CDP on health care.
Many program managers use intuition and anecdotes to guide their decisions.
John always seeks data and evidence. Under his leadership, OMAR has engaged in a continuing series of process- and impact evaluations, both of individual conferences and of the entire Consensus Development Program. Ferguson has also written several papers on the use of science in the courtroom and taught judges how to evaluate scientific evidence. I've seen many directors come and go. You always knew where he was coming from and his responses were always based on fairness and honesty.