SEB Bulletin March 2007
Ratbag
Dr Workhard was proud of his prowess with words. He took great care with his manuscripts which often went through ten or more drafts before he was satisfied that they were ready to be submitted. He knew from the poorly written, ungrammatical papers he had dealt with during his time as Editor-in-Chief of Diabetes Research into Practice that this was not something all authors did, but he felt standards had to be maintained and always tried for efficient sentence construction and use of the active voice. His fascination with words extended to not using abbreviations in SMS text messages, and he relaxed by doing crosswords.
But today words were giving him great difficulty. He had to find a good acronym for the title of an EU grant proposal he was coordinating and the task was defeating him. Already he had spent a week trying to come up with the right abbreviation that would both convey the sense of the project and yet make a sensible title when expanded to its individual component words. He had been told that a good acronym was an essential part of the success of EU applications and failure was certain without one. So success depended on Workhard's imagination and at the moment it was not working. He stared dejectedly at some of his efforts so far.
DIRT: Diabetes and Insulin Research for Tomorrow;
MURDER: Microarrays Underpinning Research on Diabetes for European-wide Remedies;
INEPT: Insulin and Neuropeptides in European Population Types.
Unfortunately none of these conveyed the correct emphasis, covered the full scope of the project or indicated its quality. He had tried to get EU or EURO in at the start but the few efforts were not inspiring.
EUROCRINGED: European Cooperative Research for Innovative and Novel Genomic Expertise on Diabetes;
EUROPIDDLE: EU Research on Proteomics for Indices of Diabetes Disease and Langerhans Efficiency;
TEUTONIC: Trans-EU Trialling Network for Novel Insulin Cures.
He was in despair. All the acronyms he came across for other projects seemed so apt, simple, and memorable. So why was he finding it so difficult? Finally, he had a brainwave. He would use a word that had no relation to the project but which conveyed quality or was easily remembered. It would be even better if he could get it to fit a proper title for the project. So now instead of arranging words to make a sensible abbreviation, he started with the abbreviation and tried to think of words that would fit it. His first effort was promising.
SyBIL: Systems Biology of the Islets of Langerhans.
His next, he felt, was a further improvement.
EUCLID: EU Cooperative Linkage on Insulin and Diabetes.
But his favourite, and the one he finally went with, was:
DIAMOND: Diabetes, Insulin And Microarray-based Omics for Novel Diagnostics
In the end he was rather proud of his effort. The abbreviation suggested quality as well as firmness of purpose, while the title it represented indicated the key area of research, highlighted the use of modern technologies, and implied outcomes of benefit. No doubt about it, he still had a way with words. He just hoped he wouldn't think of a better one after the application was submitted.