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Archived Comments for: Badomics words and the power and peril of the ome-meme

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  1. Translation of Winkler's book title

    Paul Schultze-Motel, GFZ German Research Centre for Geoscience

    13 July 2012

    A better translation of "Verbreitung" in Hans Winkler's title is probably "distribution" or "occurrence" (as in a range of a species), rather than "spread" (as in disease).

    Competing interests

    None declared

  2. Translation of Winkler's book title, part 2

    Martin Lohr, Johannes Gutenberg-University Mainz

    19 July 2012

    The term "Parthenogenesis" in Winkler's title means the same as the english "parthenogenesis" (asexual reproduction). It has accidentally been translated as "pathogenesis" (meaning the origin and development of a disease).

    Competing interests

    None

  3. Badomics is everywhere

    Roger Carter, University of the Sunshine Coast

    26 July 2012

    This reminds me of another example of thoughtless naming (maybe I should call this "thoughtlessomics").
    "Translational science" is a new fad with its own new journals. Hearing a term like this immediately made me think it was about new advances in the theory of language translation, (yes and I do mean real human languages, that is, a branch of linguistics).
    But no; this has been used to describe the "translation" of research results into clinical practice. It does not matter that the term "extension" has been in use for decades in the field of agriculture for exactly the same purpose. Like many "omics" words, this is classic case of reinventing the wheel, and confusing myriads or people for no good purpose.
    Can I have the Badomics Word of the Day award now please for my invention of "thoughtlessomics"?

    Competing interests

    None

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