January 8, 2008

What’s wrong with scientific jargon

Posted by Eric at 10:09 pm | Category: Academia, Literature

There’s something I’d like to point out to people, which is the absolute stupidity of mammalian gene and protein naming. Everyone wants their particular name, and names change over time in little petty feuds fought over the years, so now we have situations like this:

interferon- promotor stimulator protein-1 (IPS-1, also known as MAVS, VISA and Cardif)

Can’t we all be friends and agree to some sort of naming convention? Chemistry’s not perfect, but it certainly gets more orderly than we do…

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3 Responses to “What’s wrong with scientific jargon”

  1. Ben Says:
    January 8th, 2008 at 11:05 pm

    lol… well:

    1. they were discovered “simultaneously” by three groups
    2. MAVS makes the most sense to me b/c it describes where it is (and was founded by the group who actually discovered where the protein was and had the best paper out of the bunch)
    3. Cardif is based on the fact that the protein has CARD domains
    4. VISA was coined by a bunch of people who wanted to be cute and name a whole bunch of proteins after the “Card” naming motif (ie Mastercard would have been next)

  2. Eric Says:
    January 9th, 2008 at 10:45 am

    Yes, I realize that they all have their origins, but let’s face it, there’s no need for four different names.

  3. Ben Says:
    January 12th, 2008 at 3:47 am

    But how else are scientists supposed to exert their intellectual and egotistical dominion over others? :-P

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