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It is with deep sadness that we report the passing of our long-time colleague and friend, Domenic V. Cicchetti, Ph.D (Born April 5th 1937) on Sunday June 30th 2019. For the Journal of Autism and Developmental Disorders, Dr. Cicchetti served as a statistical consultant and conducted numerous reviews over the years in addition to having been a member of the editorial board. From 1955 to 1965 he obtained a B.A., M.A., and Ph.D. in social psychology and biostatistics from the University of Connecticut. He was a Senior Research Scientist at the Yale School of Medicine in the Child Study Center and Department of Psychiatry and School of Epidemiology and Public Health. He was an adjunct professor in the Department of Psychology at the University of Windsor in Ontario, Canada and served as a Visiting Professor in the Division of Neuroscience & Psychological Medicine, Department of Public Mental Health, Imperial College of Science, Technology, and Medicine, St. Mary’s Campus, London, England.

As a renowned expert in biostatistics, he developed the Vineland Adaptive Behavior Scales with his late wife Sara Sparrow, and he authored or co-authored over 200 research publications in behavioral and biomedical research, computer science, and biostatistics. The Vineland would become the most widely used adaptive behavior assessment instrument in the world. For the development and publication of the Vineland, Dom and Sara received the first Connecticut Psychological Association’s Award for Distinguished Effort by a Connecticut Psychologist in 1984. Dom was an elected fellow in Division 5 of the American Statistical Association (Evaluation, Measurement, and Statistics). He was internationally known for his work in the development of methods for assessment of psychometric properties, and in field applications of major clinical instruments in behavioral and biomedical research. He also developed several highly innovative statistical methodologies, primarily in the areas of reliability and validity assessment, and studied intensively the peer-review process, leading to contributions that were widely adopted. An enthusiastic oenophile, Dom was both a collector of wine and author of a number of papers in wine journals. Many of these scientific articles have been cited thousands of times, indicating how important his contribution to not only the field of autism and developmental disability research but more broadly has been over decades.

Personally, Dom enjoyed hosting parties for friends and colleagues and actively sharing his wine expertise with others. He also had a passion for the arts and became a talented painter in his own right.

Within the Yale School of Medicine, Dom was well known for his mentorship of countless students and for his willingness to help colleagues cope with complex clinical data sets. Dom was active until the time of his death at the age of 82 years. His active engagement with, and ability to evolve and assimilate new scientific findings and statistical methods have kept his research timely, and, at the time of his passing, Dr. Cicchetti had active scientific work in progress. Therefore, his scientific contributions will continue to affect the scientific community in the future. His abilities, mentorship, and willingness to promote and help young researchers will be deeply missed.

We will end with two quotes from Dr. Cicchetti from 2018:

The peer-review process is far from perfect, but still it is the gold standard to evaluate scientific work.

When referring to the term gold standard of psychometric instruments, ‘gold standard’ should be conceptualized as a relative, rather than an absolute term.