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posted by martyb on Friday August 14 2020, @10:59PM   Printer-friendly
from the IDK-AMIIC dept.

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?


Original Submission

 
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  • (Score: 3, Interesting) by MostCynical on Friday August 14 2020, @11:16PM (4 children)

    by MostCynical (2589) on Friday August 14 2020, @11:16PM (#1036812) Journal

    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
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  • (Score: 2) by c0lo on Saturday August 15 2020, @12:06AM

    by c0lo (156) Subscriber Badge on Saturday August 15 2020, @12:06AM (#1036835) Journal

    why should medicine or any other field of science?

    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)

    by Anonymous Coward on Saturday August 15 2020, @01:44AM (#1036880)

    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)

      by Anonymous Coward on Saturday August 15 2020, @01:56AM (#1036888)

      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

        by Anonymous Coward on Saturday August 15 2020, @02:36AM (#1036908)

        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.