The definitions here are
all original and were coined by me at the Elixir Laboratories of Panacea
Pharmaceuticals. They seem to have spread rather like a virus and now often
appear unattributed elsewhere. If you do quote them I
would appreciate your giving, me, Guernsey McPearson,
the credit.
Oscar Wilde. How I wish I had said that
James McNeil Whistler. You will, Oscar you will.
Global
Development - A
development which takes place in
Head of Drug Development - A temporary Pope. One who is
infallible for two years and leaves by the means by which his arrival was
announced - a cloud of white smoke.
Global Compromise - Implementing the American system.
Clinical Trial - An experiment which any damn fool
can design and frequently does.
Sequential Analysis - A means of stopping a trial
before it becomes useful.
Marketing Forecast - Twice what you dare not even hope
the product might earn multiplied by three.
Marketing
Graph - A pictorial
representation which uses three dimensions, four colours
and five cartoons to show one fact which probably isn't true.
Rapid
Development - A
bold, imaginative and creative plan. Any drug development programme which has just begun.
Slow Development - An unfolding rapid development.
IT Support - 1) Wheelchairs for the blind. 2)
The daily renewed promise of help tomorrow.
Consultant - Stress the first syllable.
Good Clinical Practice - A typographical error. For 'li' read 'y'.
Statistics - A subject which most
statisticians find difficult but in which nearly all physicians are expert.
Data-base - A rubbish dump built like a
library.
Team Alignment - A process whereby sharks teach
gulls to behave like lemmings.
Statistical Significance.- The opposite of
Medical Statistician - One who won't accept that
Generic Companies - The Amerigo
Vespuccis of drug development: they profit by what
others discover.
Equivalence Trials - Proving that apples are pears by
comparing the weight.
Marketing
Man - An expert at
selling drugs, sometimes, and himself always.
Regulatory Affairs - The Eskimos of drug development.
They have 180 ways of saying perhaps.
Pharmacoeconomics Departments - Experts at hiring experts.
Clinical Relevant
Difference - That
which will produce 80% power given the supposed standard deviation and the
number of patients the medical advisor is prepared to recruit.
Trend Towards
Significance - An
ever present help in times of trouble.
Matrix Management - Two dimensional confusion.
Management Consultant - 1) Executioners disguised as
judges. 2) Those who, having failed in drug development themselves, advise
others how to do like-wise.
Global
Strategy - A plan
which is universally valid except locally.
Regulatory
Dossier - A
document which takes a forest of trees to obscure the wood.
Restructuring - Reverting to the previous organisation.
Me-too - Sixth drug in its class.
Innovation - Fifth drug in its class
Wonder cure - A treatment with no financial
future. To be avoided like the plague.
Intravenous - A formulation which marketing
consider unusable unless they work for the Mafia.
ASCII - Esperanto for computers.
Patient Listings - So called because they take an
age to produce.
CANDA - A submission which is printed out
by the FDA rather than by the sponsor.
Software - 'That liquefaction of her clothes
' (Some mistake surely, Ed.)
Open Study - a means of using prejudice and
regression to prove effectiveness.
Validated - Has been tried once before.
Reliable - Consistently producing the wrong
answer.
Power
Calculation - A
guess masquerading as mathematics.
Sums
of Squares -
Statistical calculations. (Think about it.)
Bayesian - One who, vaguely expecting a
horse and catching a glimpse of a donkey, strongly concludes he has seen a
mule.
Quality of Life - The means by which it is hoped to
rescue boring drugs from the rubbish dump of history.
Standard
Operating Procedure
- A vitally important document whose rate of obsolence
exceeds its rate of implementation.
Statisticians - Twice as boring as accountants
and half as rich.
Homeopathic Medicine - That which is to pharmacology
what the emperor's new clothes were to men's outfitting.
Pharmacokinetics - One of the magic arts of
divination whereby needles are stuck into living dummies in an attempt to
predict future profits.
Executive Search
Consultants -
People who make money by throwing names at vacancies.
Analysis
plan. The drug development equivalent of marriage vows.
Type
III sums of squares
1) That which is to statistics what the Senate is to Congress*. 2) A powerful means of ignoring
information whilst appearing to use it.
*
International Conference
on Harmoni(z)(s)ation. 1) A body which brings together physicians from all over the developed
world and statisticians from the
Pharmacoeconomics. 1) The application of sound economic and
business principles to drug development as a means of increasing the
profitability of external consultants. 2) A mysterious discipline with whose
help reimbursers expect to be able to contain costs
at the same time that sponsors expect to boost prices.
Pharmaeconomist. 1) A sort of solar-panel, second hand car and
double-glazing salesman rolled into one. 2) One who pedals
pipe-dreams to those who pedal drugs.3) One who asks not only if the cure for dysentry was effective but also after the price of toilet
paper.
FDA. A body which fulfills that function
in drug-development which the bogeyman fulfills in child-development. It provides the argument of last
resort as in.Q "Well why should
we use these stupid type III sums of squares?" A. "Because if
you don't the FDA will get you."
Downsizing. 1) An activity which reduces current costs at
the expense of future profits. 2) A cost-cutting exercise which applies across
the board but not to the Board.
Survival
analysis.
Downsizing
proportional to the hazard.
Integrated
report. Tables and fables.
Basic
Drug Information. Labels and fables.
Pharmaceutical
development. People who
take years and millions of pounds to achieve what others manage in a matter of
seconds with a miror, a razor blade and a rolled up
five-pound note. (It is hoped that this line is self-explanatory and doesn't
get up your nose.)
Non-linear
random effects. The process by which salaries appear to be determined in the
pharmaceutical industry.
The
bootstrap.
Examining
a chicken's entrails whilst having the efrontery to
call it statistics.
The brastrap. A resampling plan for
bimodal distributions. See software. (Some mistake, surely, Ed.)
The
jockstrap.
See hardware.
The jacknife. (Let's cut these resampling "jokes"
now. Ed.) .
Gibbs-sampling. How Bayesians came to love frequencies after
all.
Management
consultant.
1) One who offers succour to suckers. 2) One whose
motto is "suck up, suck blood, succeed". 3) One who flatters the
CEO's ego but flattens his profits.
Blood
pressure.
1) If you can
reduce it in patients your profits will rise but if your profits fall yours
will increase. 2) A force which determines that a cushy job will be found for
the chairman of the board's daughter.
Theoretical
statistician. A second class mathematician who imagines that he is a first class
statistician.
Applied
statistician. A second class statistician who imagines that he is a first class
scientist.
Medical
statistician. A second class scientist without any imagination.
Marketing forecast. False profits predicted by false
prophets.
Contract
statisticians. The dentists of pharmaceutical statistics. They fill in on all the boring
jobs.
Vision. That which the chairman hopes that the
workforce will be stupid enough to share, which the workforce hopes the
chairman isn't stupid enough to believe and which the public will think is just
plain stupid.
Adverse
reaction.
Suffered
by many when reading Guernsey McPearson.
Luck. See blockbuster.
Decision
Analysis.
Something you would
be well advised to apply before deciding to use decision analysts.
Binary
outcome. "Get this product registered or
else".
Portfolio
management.
A method of
repeatedly assessing products in development until the CEO's pet project comes
out with the highest ranking.
PC 1) A handy tool which assists the
statistician in his work. 2) An attitude which dictates that women and other demographic groups
shall be "adequately represented" in clinical trials. See Nonsensical
Incoherent Hysteria.
Blockbuster. Any product which treats common,
mild and incurable disease in the developed world.
Drug
Development Physician. One who having failed in treating patients individually has moved on to
misunderstanding them wholesale.
Merger. A rape described as a marriage.
Pipeline. 1) For "line" read "dream".
2) For "pipe" read "bottom". 3) The sum of the products you
are developing and those you would like to convince the financial analysts you
are developing. 4) A pile of postdated cheques. 5)
Piglets in a poke but will you bring home the bacon?
Outlier. The chairman's salary.
Bioequivalence. A type of study originally
conceived to reduce the costs of drug development but now primarily used to
boost the fees of consultant statisticians.
Placebo
run-in. A period in which dummies give dummies in the hope that patients
are as stupid as they are.
Bandit
design. So
called because once you've run one you wish you'd banned it.
Minimisation. 1) A 'platinum standard' for treatment
allocation favoured by platinum blondes. 2) A
sort of arithmetic in which apples and pears are added together to make
turkeys.
World wide
web. The litmus paper of social relationships. If your boyfriend
finds this interesting you need a lover with more bandwidth.
Volume
of distribution. At last: a topic that marketing and pharmacokinetics can talk about
together!
Clearance. Redundancies
amongst the pharmacokineticists following a merger.
Cmax. What your girlfriend missed while you were
pursuing areas under the curve.
Tmax. A concept with sexual dimorphism: invariably
shorter in the male than in the female.
Telephone
randomisation. It's good to hawk.
Mobile
phone. 1)
Nerd label. 2)
'The future is bright but the present is horrid,' due to that noisy idiot next
to you shouting "it's me I'm on a train" to 40 people who know that
already and wish it wasn't true and one other who couldn't care less.
Genotyping. A mysterious
science by which marketing expects to increase profits whilst reducing the
scope for drugs.
Pharmacodynamics. Who are they kidding?
Bonus. A means of
rewarding marketing staff for that serendipity which outweighs incompetence.
Management
consultants.
Advisors whose expertise has been recognised by
managers who have failed to recognise useful drugs.
Pharmacoeconomists. 1) Just like bossom:
neither one thing nor the other. 2) Crack at no trades, disaster at one.
Statistician. Someone who
thinks that the rest of the world gives a damn whether he bores as a Bayesian
or a frequentist.
Epidemiologist. One who thinks that an odds-ratio
is an approximation to the relative risk as opposed to a statistician who knows
the opposite.
Sequential
analysis. A
means of stopping a trial early when ethical considerations dictate this is
imperative and so that the next trial can start.
Dummy
loading. The process by which the new CEO gains total control of the
company.
Biotech company. A company that finds patients too difficult a market but pharmaceutical
sponsors a soft touch.
Laptops. 1. So called because they
are executive toys for lapdogs. 2. A means of allowing those who want to
join the eight mile high club to do so playing solitaire.
Alpha
spending function. The marketing department.
ACE
inhibitor. The statistics department.
Beta
blocker. The regulatory department.
CRO. Pronounce 'crow'.... or vulture.
Millennium
bug. Impending nemesis for those who did not get their digits out.
Millenium BUGS. 1) What it seems we shall all be using for
statistical calculations in the next century. 2) The topless darts of
statistics. Who cares if it hits the target; look at all that talent.
EMEA. The latest
NICE. 1) A fine town on the
Genetic
engineering.
The son also rises... if daddy is the CEO.
Nicotine
patch. A dangerous addictive treatment, dependence upon which can be
completely eliminated by smoking.
Individual
bioequivalence. A means of developing treatments for head-lice: beloved of nitpickers.
Homeopathic
medicine. A
treatment that is so safe you could pour it into your car radiator.
Homeopathic
practitioner.
One who should be paid a homeopathic salary.
Merger. A means of
allowing companies that have failed separately to do so together.
Canyoning holiday. What to buy your boss for Christmas.
Trial
simulation. An attractive option for those who don't understand the difference
between dice and data.
Simulation
software. The gypsy's tea-leaves.
Learning
curve. An example of the sort of pathetic vocabulary favoured
by those who never got very high on theirs.
Streamlined
development.
Rushing roulette.
CEOs. The generals of drug development:
General Custers, that is.
Medical
writers. 1)
Hacks who think they can present subtle statistical concepts that they don't
understand so that others can. 2) Those who think they can write stuff
without the right stuff.
Treatment
Emergent Signs and Symptoms (TESS). A concept favoured
by those who believe that gravity has no effect on the moon because it still
circles the same way it did when they first noticed it.
Meta-analyst. One who thinks that if manure is
piled high enough it will smell like roses.
Medical
ethicist. 1).
The one you would all eat first in an
Independent
Data-Monitoring Committee. A jury with all the self-importance of judges.
Stochastic
curtailment.
The answer to all our prayers...eventually the wheel of fortune turns and flings
the monkey at the top out of the circus.
'Surfing the net'. A glamorous and
inaccurate term that geeks have invented for their favourite
pastime. Should be called 'golfing the links' on the grounds that it is
slow, boring, circular and practised by f**ts.
(As statistical
tradition requires, these are in random and not alphabetical order.)
NICE. 1. Ration roulette. 2. A sort of
five-a-side venue for the game played in the grown up version at the MCA. 3. A
means of allowing pharmaco-economists to pretend they
understand clinical trials.
Closed test procedure. 1. A magical mystery tour through
the sample space. 2 A frequentist freak-show. 3 That
which is to statistics what the moiré pattern is to graphics: busy, distracting
and conveying no information. 4. A vitally important topic with no known useful
application.
Pharmacogenomics. 1.A cutting-edge
science that will start delivering miracle cures the year after next§ . 2. A subject with great promise.
3. Ready payment for those who prefer cheques to
cash.
Computer aided trial
design. 1. A
virtual approach to drug development that will virtually develop some. 2. A
modern miracle by which you can take five-loaves and two fishes and multiply
them to get baskets full of half-baked red-herrings.
Bioinformatics. A science devoted to finding wonderful
patterns in data-bases.
Peer review. A rigorous
approach to screening papers that ensures that only those which cite the
referees' get published.
Numbers Needed to Treat. The only way
that physicians can understand probabilities - odds being a difficult, abstract
and advanced concept only comprehensible to statisticians, bookies, punters and
Sun-readers.
Herbal
remedy. One which is
natural and therefore safe. See tobacco.
Relevant
difference. Used in power calculations:
clinical in theory but cynical in practice.
Gender. The politically correct term for
"sex" favoured by those who use the slang
term for sexual intercourse.
Physician. 1. A scientist with 100 gigabytes of hard-disk
and a one kilohertz processor. 2. One who never got beyond the fuzzy to the logic.
Statistician. 1. One devoted to generating statements that
are probably true and definitely useless. 2. One who wears a condom for
telephone sex. 3. One who thinks that loving your data
is more exciting than dating your lover. 4. One who can't run experiments
himself, prefers to tell others how they should, steals the data and expects to
be thanked for it. 5.One who thinks that the way to be
efficient is to measure as little as possible in a trial that costs millions to
run.
Data-mining. 1. That awfully clever science that helps you sell beer with your disposable nappies. 2. A synergistic fusion
of enormous data-bases and bad statistics.
Decision
analysis. A very complex
topic capable of finding logical solutions to elementary problems. (For
the other sort of solution to elementary problems the pharmaceutical industry
employs CEOs.)
Merger. A means of rewarding
short-term at the expense of long-term investors.
Mobile
phone. A means of
allowing those who have no brain to cook it.
Bootstrap. An interesting
topic for those who have mistaken simulation for stimulation. See MCMC.
Pharmaco-economist. Half drug developer and half economist, making
half a scientist.
Power. That which statisticians are
always calculating but never have.
Minimum
effective dose. A fundamental concept in drug
development whose meaning changes with the sample size.
Maximum tolerated dose. The highest dose you could bribe
the medical students to take and not complain.
Academic
researcher. One who, apart from being motivated
by tenure, fame, money and professional ambition acts always from the purest of
motives and whose work can therefore always be trusted, which is just as well
since nobody ever checks it.
First
author. 1. The
most important opinion-leader Marketing could find. 2. A physician who is prepared
to stick his or her name to the mess that the medical writer has made of the
statistician's report. 3. One who receives top billing and presents a large
bill.
Mega-trial. A means of giving some office-based pundit all
the credit for a treatment that was discovered by scientists he has never met
working in the laboratories of an industry he despises.
Meta-analysts. Bottom feeders.
Analysis
plan. 1. In the
pharmaceutical industry. A lengthy document written well before the trial is
approved. 2. In academic research. A rare and brief
note completed after the trial is finished and the data have been inspected.
Marketing department. 1. Clever, brilliant,
amusing, innovative and witty - and that's just what they say about themselves.
2. The most hands-on professionals in drug-development: they have the greatest
personal knowledge of supply and use.
Type I
Error. Consulting the statistician.
Neuraminidase inhibitors. Vital
weapons in the fight against bird-flu that lack the efficacy to be
reimbursable. See hypocrisy, inconsistency, idiocy
and NICE.
Pharmacogenomics. 1. An exciting new science that is
vitally important to the future well-being of that section of humanity known as
molecular geneticists. 2. A discipline that is regularly finding infallible
cures for scientific unemployment. See South Sea Company and
Bubble.
Biometrics. 1. The cutting-edge science of
human identification, the proponents of which cannot even identify a name for
it that hasn’t already been assigned to mean something else. 2. A word that
used to have something to do with eyeballing data but now is being applied to
eyeball data.
In vitro development. First glass science.
Simulation. A means of
proving the validity of statistical methods favoured
by those who don’t understand proof.
Pharmaco-economists. Second class economists who have decided to
make a career as third class scientists.
Phase IV
study. A cynical trial.
Minimisation. A method of
producing marginal balance of marginal value promoted by those with a marginal
understanding of design.
Micro-arrays. A means of
building bigger haystacks as part of the search for rarer needles.
Meta-analysts. 1 Those who think that boring stuff
can be made interesting by having more of it. 2. People who are so worried
about missing trials that they count some of them twice. See Archie
Association
Bioinformaticians. Computer
scientists who think that they have discovered important new methods of
data-analysis because they are doing logistic regression, discriminant
analysis and cluster analysis badly but with new names.
Chief
Executive’s Salary
A recession-proof return that is uncorrelated with the share price.
Mixed model. For ‘model’ read ‘muddle’.
Uninformative prior. A statistical concept that exists only in the imagination of
uninformed Bayesians.
Proteomics. Named after
Proteus, the Greek god who could take on any shape at all but would tell your
future for you if only you could catch him, which you couldn’t. See Leprechaun,
Gold, Rainbow.
Dichotomy. A means by which
moronic regulators increase the size of clinical trials. See responder
analysis.
Euphemism. A word that has been used to replace another word
with distasteful connotations. Eventually the euphemism will acquire the
connotation and the process has to start again. See human resources, personnel.
Gender. A word correctly used by
grammarians to describe a sub-classification of nouns and which is incorrectly
used by just about everybody else.
Gene-Expression. Trouser press (Some mistake surely. Ed)
Standard Error of the Mean. Just what it says on the
tin. To the extent that they think it means anything those who calculate
it are committing a standard error. A common mistake made by dividing the
standard deviation by the square root of n, which is appropriate when
the observations are independently sampled from some population of interest,
which in clinical research they never are.
Thinking outside the box. The sort of phrase favoured by those who
ought to be put in one. See marketing department.
Recruitment agencies.
Companies that are experts in helping you find suitable statisticians to employ
and which are manned by persons who understand nothing about statistics, have no
idea what statisticians do, are ignorant of the sort of qualifications
statisticians have but know how to use a telephone.
Marketing department. The crème de la crème. See scum.
NICE A word that meant ‘stupid, foolish
and senseless’ in the 13th century, meant ‘pleasant’ from the 18th
to 20th centuries, but which in the 21st century is
reverting to its earlier usage.
Publication bias. A form of snobbery practiced by journals who won’t accept a first
class industry analysis unless it has been replicated by a second class
academic one.