WTF, when will scientists learn to use fewer acronyms?:
Have you heard of DNA? It stands for Do Not Abbreviate apparently. Jokes aside, it's the most widely used acronym in scientific literature in the past 70 years, appearing more than 2.4 million times.
The short form of deoxyribonucleic acid is widely understood, but there are millions more acronyms (like WTF: water-soluble thiourea-formaldehyde) that are making science less useful and more complex for society, according to a new paper released by Australian researchers.
Queensland University of Technology (QUT) Professor Adrian Barnett and Dr. Zoe Doubleday from the University of South Australia (UniSA) have analyzed 24 million scientific article titles and 18 million abstracts between 1950 and 2019, looking for trends in acronym use.
[...] "For example, the acronym UA has 18 different meanings in medicine, and six of the 20 most widely used acronyms have multiple common meanings in health and medical literature," according to Dr. Zoe Doubleday.
Journal Reference:
Adrian Barnett, Zoe Doubleday. Meta-Research: The growth of acronyms in the scientific literature, (DOI: 10.7554/eLife.60080)
Are scientific papers meant to communicate to a lay audience, or to other scientists?
(Score: 2, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday August 15 2020, @12:09AM (4 children)
Bureau of Land Management (since 1946)
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday August 15 2020, @12:19AM
The Boston Lunatic Museum begs to differ.
(Score: -1, Offtopic) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday August 15 2020, @12:50AM (2 children)
Who the fuck modded this "flamebait" ? Some autistic nerd who's never leaved his mother's basement and who doesn't know what BLM lands are ?
To the downmodder: You want to mod a post flamebait, fucktard ? Mod this one. At least it fits the criteria of "flamebait".
(Score: 3, Insightful) by Phoenix666 on Saturday August 15 2020, @11:40AM (1 child)
Yes. There are some who've drunk so much Kool-Aid they've turned Hawaiian Punch pink.
Washington DC delenda est.
(Score: 2) by kazzie on Saturday August 15 2020, @05:37PM
And others turn orange.