Lianne Parkin

Lianne Parkin is a New Zealand academic, and is a full professor at the University of Otago, specialising in public health and the safety of medicines.

Academic career

Parkin completed a medical degree and a postgraduate diploma in obstetrics at the University of Otago, and practised as a GP in New Zealand and Australia. PhD titled Risk factors for venous thromboembolism at the University of Otago, supervised by Charlotte Paul and David Skegg. Parkin then joined the faculty of the university, rising to associate professor in 2019, and full professor in 2023.

Parkin has researched the association between blood clots and flying, finding that long-distance flights did increase the risk of pulmonary embolism but that dying from the condition was still rare. She and her research group have also investigated the link between the cholesterol-lowering drugs statins and the muscle disease rhabdomyolysis, and noted an increased risk of the kidney condition interstitial nephritis from the use of proton-pump inhibitors. Parkin has received grant funding to investigate how type 2 diabetics in New Zealand use metformin.

During the COVID-19 pandemic, Parkin studied the proportion of people scanning QR codes at public venues to enable contact tracing. She also looked at the proportion of students at the university reporting their Covid infections, finding that although more than 94% of surveyed student flats had cases during the study period, more than a third of infected students did not report their positive test result.

Honours and awards In 2010, Parkin and collaborators Patricia Priest and Sheila Williams won an Ig Nobel Prize for demonstrating that, on icy footpaths in wintertime, people slip and fall less often if they wear socks on the outside of their shoes. The Ig Nobel Prizes are given to "honour achievements that first make people laugh, and then make them think". The advice to wear socks over shoes on icy streets is given by Dunedin City Council, where the study was conducted, although Parkin's study noted that some people are too self-conscious to wear them even after experiencing the benefits.

Selected works