Worst new omics word award: material degradomics

And the bad omics words just keep getting worse. This one really takes the cake. A story from BBC News Online (Sniff test to preserve old books)
discusses how

“Researchers report in the journal Analytical Chemistry that a new “sniff test” can measure degradation of old books and historical documents.”

The work they are doing actually seems quite interesting. But alas, the way they describe it does not. They refer to this method as “material degradomics“. I fortunately do not have access to the paper at home but a google search reveals some text from their paper

Through similarities with metabolomics,(15) we propose to define a new field of material degradomics (and related terms, Table 1).

I literally dread what is in table 1. For creating a new omics term that seems thoroughly unnecessary and distracting, I am giving Matija Strli and colleagues one of my coveted “Worst New Omics Word Awards.” Hat tip to PaulBo who posted a comment about this on my “Fermentome” award post.

Author: Jonathan Eisen

I am an evolutionary biologist and a Professor at U. C. Davis. (see my lab site here). My research focuses on the origin of novelty (how new processes and functions originate). To study this I focus on sequencing and analyzing genomes of organisms, especially microbes and using phylogenomic analysis View all posts by Jonathan Eisen