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: 3, Interesting) by MostCynical on Friday August 14 2020, @11:16PM (4 children)
What does UA mean?
This list [thefreedictionary.com] only seems to have two of the medical versions.
The issue is context-specific knowledge.
Some inorganic chemistry papers [rsc.org] require advanced chemistry to even understand the topic. There is no possible way to 'dumb down' chemical compounds.. why should medicine or any other field of science?
"I guess once you start doubting, there's no end to it." -Batou, Ghost in the Shell: Stand Alone Complex
(Score: 2) by c0lo on Saturday August 15 2020, @12:06AM
Lately, it became hard to get "my ignorance is as good as you knowledge" accepted.
The solution: dumb down the science. And be quick, the post-truth world is barely holding up with this pandemic; why do you want the work of all the Runaways of this world go wasted?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
(Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday August 15 2020, @01:44AM (2 children)
Urinalysis
Upon Arrival
Upper Airway
Upper Arm
Uric Acid
Umbilical Artery
Uterine Artery
Uterine Activity
Universal Anesthesia
Unicystic Ameloblastoma
Ultrasonic Arteriography
Unstable Angina
Those are the ones I can think of when put on the spot. There are probably more that I will think of the instant I post this or at 4 A.M.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday August 15 2020, @01:56AM (1 child)
United Artists (a movie studio)
Universal Adapter
man this acronym just keeps going and going
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday August 15 2020, @02:36AM
I was trying to limit myself to the medical field, but the acronym is definitely overloaded either way. I would think most two letter combinations are.