{"id":1789,"date":"2010-04-30T22:35:48","date_gmt":"2010-04-30T22:35:48","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/occamstypewriter.org\/vwxynot\/2010\/04\/30\/poor_choice_of_words\/"},"modified":"2010-04-30T22:35:48","modified_gmt":"2010-04-30T22:35:48","slug":"poor_choice_of_words","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/occamstypewriter.org\/vwxynot\/2010\/04\/30\/poor_choice_of_words\/","title":{"rendered":"Poor choice of words"},"content":{"rendered":"

I’ve been working with molecular pathologists for more than two years now, and one piece of their terminology still throws me every time I hear it.
\nWhen told that a protein has been found to be a “poor prognostic marker”, my first reaction is always to be disappointed that we couldn’t find more compelling evidence of a correlation.
\nBut when I say “marker of poor prognosis”, people look at me<\/em> funny.
\nAt least I’ve got prognostic and predictive markers straight (I think). I was lucky enough to attend a multi-disciplinary workshop during my first couple of months in this job, and one of the clinical presenters hastily chalked a couple of graphs onto the blackboard in order to make sure that everyone was following him. I immediately copied his scribbles into my notebook, and I’ve kept the copy to hand ever since. This seemed like as good a reason as any to create a PowerPoint version.
\n(The different colours represent marker status – positive or negative. Which colour is which depends on whether you’re looking at a poor<\/del> unfavourable or a good<\/del> favourable marker).
\n\"markers\"<\/a>
\nA picture is worth a thousand words… this visual explanation has stuck in my memory much, much better than any verbal description ever could.
\nOf course, you can also get prognostic predictive markers, like the estrogen receptor in breast cancer. But that’s far too confusing for a Friday, so here’s a Star Trek \/ Monty Python mash-up instead.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I’ve been working with molecular pathologists for more than two years now, and one piece of their terminology still throws me every time I hear it. When told that a protein has been found to be a “poor prognostic marker”, … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":10,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[97,3,99],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1789","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-cancer-research","category-science","category-things-im-not-really-qualified-to-write-about"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/occamstypewriter.org\/vwxynot\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1789","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/occamstypewriter.org\/vwxynot\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/occamstypewriter.org\/vwxynot\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/occamstypewriter.org\/vwxynot\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/10"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/occamstypewriter.org\/vwxynot\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1789"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/occamstypewriter.org\/vwxynot\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1789\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/occamstypewriter.org\/vwxynot\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1789"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/occamstypewriter.org\/vwxynot\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1789"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/occamstypewriter.org\/vwxynot\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1789"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}