Easier to change publishing systems than to change language
John Hilton, freelance medical editor
1 February 2010
Persuading publishers, institutions, societies, and others to agree to abolish possessive eponyms would take time and a fair amount of effort, when perhaps there are bigger issues for those groups to tackle. Furthermore, it requires a change to everyday language that many will ignore or resent. If the change from possessive to non-possessive forms is happening anyway, why push it? Perhaps a better solution to the underlying issues of search accuracy and confusion would be promote the embedding of medical coding systems in publishing and searching. This would have the advantage of covering non-English language variants and other naming variations.
Easier to change publishing systems than to change language
1 February 2010
Persuading publishers, institutions, societies, and others to agree to abolish possessive eponyms would take time and a fair amount of effort, when perhaps there are bigger issues for those groups to tackle. Furthermore, it requires a change to everyday language that many will ignore or resent. If the change from possessive to non-possessive forms is happening anyway, why push it? Perhaps a better solution to the underlying issues of search accuracy and confusion would be promote the embedding of medical coding systems in publishing and searching. This would have the advantage of covering non-English language variants and other naming variations.
Competing interests
No competing interests.