These Are The Craziest Acronyms Scientists Use

[Buster's Uncle]

These Are The Craziest Acronyms Scientists Use
Business Insider
By Kelly Dickerson  3 hours ago



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We never knew science could be so witty, creative, and in some cases blunt and even kind of rude.

A Quora user recently asked "What are some of the best scientific acronyms?" and brilliant answers started pouring in.

He kicked off the thread with:

BRAINS: Biobehavioral Research Awards for Innovative New Scientists. Obviously these award-winning scientists are brainy.

WEIRD: This one stands for Western, Educated, Industrialized, Rich and Democratic.

Quora user Leo Horie said this is from a behavioral psychology study that pointed out that "It's a shocking fact, but pretty much everything we think we know about human behaviour derives from studies of US undergraduates - the psychologists' 'lab rat'! These people are WEIRD (Western, Educated, Industrialized, Rich, and Democratic) in more ways than one."

SPRM: Selective progesterone receptor modulators. Quora user Sebastien Chartrand said this one is used to treat uterine conditions.

CLARITY: Clear Lipid-exchanged Anatomically Rigid Imaging Tissue hYdrogel. This one comes from user Chetan Raj.

INADEQUATE: Incredible Natural Abundance DoublE QUAntum Transfer Experiment. Quora user Lars Elgaard said the name is perfect because the test is not very reliable.

HERP: Human Exposure Rodent Potency, and DERP: Drug Effectiveness Review Project. Quora user Josh Velson said these acronyms cracked him up when they were used in a problem set he had to solve in school.

Quora user Anson Lam gave some great astronomy acronyms:

FLAMINGOS: FLoridA Multi-object Imaging Near-infrared Grism Observational Spectrometer

BIGASS: Bright Infrared Galaxy All Sky Survey

WISEASS: Weizmann Institute of Science Experimental Astrophysics Spectroscopy System

GANDALF: Gas AND Absorption Line Fitting algorithm

And Quora user Giridhar Sekar pointed the way to a whole list of NMR spectroscopy acronyms. Here are some of the gems:

FLOPSY: FLip-flOP SpectroscopY

DOUBTFUL: Double Quantum Transitions for Finding Unresolved Lines

HOHAHA: HOmonuclear HArtmann-HAhn spectroscopy

SECSY: Spin Echo Correlated Spectroscopy

See more acronyms on Quora >


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