It is time to cast your vote in the greatest polarising debate of our times. Yes indeed: should it be cheminformatics or chemoinformatics? Vote now (see poll on right).
Not to sway any undecided voters, but I'm definitely in favour of "cheminformatics". My main reason is that I'm worried that if the other camp win out, they'll probably decide to change more words: we'll end up doing chemoistry, like our Australian cousins.
You have 13 days to cast your vote...
You must know some Australians with heaps funny accents hey :)
ReplyDeleteOf course it should be cheminformatics - where's the 'o' in chemistry? Also if you play word association and say "chemo-", most people will reply "therapy".
It's too late Noel - it's officially chemOinformatics in your part of the world:
ReplyDeletehttp://infochim.u-strasbg.fr/chemoinformatics/Obernai_declaration.php
Just conform to the EU way, and leave the Oissies out of this.
Thanx, borg90210 (?? EU ??)...
ReplyDeleteOf course, there are some defectives in the EU, who persist on cheminformatics... to me, chemoinformatics is much easier to pronounce, and that counts too... By adding to 'o', there results a more clear separation of the chemistry bits, and the informatics bits, reflecting the nature of this field... neither chemistry, nor IT alone...
Maybe you could add chemAinformatics, short for chemistry *and* informatics...
Oh, and where's the Cowboy Neal option??
There is a fraction of people voting for Chemiinformatics. This is even worse.
ReplyDeleteNo, I'm still in favour for Chemoinformatics. I remember a great talk by Alex Tropsha at our GCC 2007 who had made an animated slide with the big work "Cheminformatics" in the center, and then Johnny Gasteiger (well, a stick-figure with Johnny's head :-)) came walking in from the right side of the slide with an "o" in one hand and a hammer in the other and then hammered the "o" in the word to form "Chemoinformatics". Very funny.
In the US, Cheminformatics has definitely won.
How do you even pronounce chemoinformatics? Keemo or Kemo? Maybe that's for another poll...
ReplyDeleteI saw that video at the last ACS. I thought it was pretty funny.
I've had this discussion many times with Alex Tropsha. I've seen the Gastieger movie. This discussion is like a religion! I'm a cheminformatician myself...no "O" :-)
ReplyDeleteNoel, there was already an earlier discussion about this on Wikipedia
ReplyDeleteI personally prefer clearly ChemInformatics.