Wednesday, June 6, 2012

The trial acronymania menace


As if there's not enough for us to remember, we're supposed to remember endless acronyms for trials too now. There's even a wiki to help us keep them straight and a call for a register of trial acronyms to reduce multiple use of all the words ending in T!

Somewhere along the line this became marketing: not much equipoise in ACHIEVE, MIRACLE, PROMISE, or IMPROVE-IT, eh? A study has classified this as a form of coercion. Ivan Oransky called for a HALT (Help Acronyms Leave Trials). If you're irritated by the next outbreak of trial acronymania or acronymesis you come across, you're not alone!


Another trial acronym here at Statistically Funny.....Meet the AGHAST Investigators!

(Updated with IMPROVE-IT on 16 July 2019.)
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5 comments:

  1. UnknownJune 8, 2012 at 11:13 PM

    HB what a brilliant ( and very talented) idea

    ReplyDelete
  2. Hilda BastianJune 10, 2012 at 7:36 PM

    Shucks - thanks!

    ReplyDelete
  3. John HJune 16, 2012 at 3:26 PM

    Hi Hilda. How about a follow-up cartoon marking the fine outputs of those venerable committees... PRISMA, EQUATOR, CONSORT, STROBE, etc - relation between word choice and guideline adherence?

    ReplyDelete
  4. Hilda BastianJune 16, 2012 at 4:49 PM

    G'day! Thanks, hadn't thought of that! Have added these potential characters to my sketchpad.

    ReplyDelete
  5. FischerMay 13, 2017 at 12:43 PM

    Still not as ridiculous as NMR acronyms...

    ReplyDelete

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