6 ms·
UK meaning the University of Kentucky, not the United Kingdom.
by School-Cotton 2y ago
UK meaning the University of Kentucky, not the United Kingdom.
- dyauspitr 2y ago[flagged]
- dullcrisp 2y agoWhy? Would this be more interesting if they were in the UK?
- OJFord 2y agoKind of, in the sense that it sounds like a global news headline, vs. 'University of Exeter researchers find [...]' published by exeter.ac.uk, on this globally read site.
- lemarchr 2y agoIt's global news to me. Hello from Australia! Edit: Ah wait, I think I get what you mean. By "global news" you mean it's been deemed worthy of sharing to an international audience by media outlets, as opposed to a crowdsourcing news source like HN. Is that right?
- OJFord 2y agoI mean when you write 'UK researchers find', especially to a global audience (which UoKentucky PR dept may not particularly have but HN does (Hello from the (the!) UK)) that it sounds more like the country UK than the.. no offence intended but not exactly world renowned university. (I've heard of Kentucky, probably my first time hearing of its university in its own right - though I might have assumed it had one.)
- lol768 2y agoIt seems like a fairly mediocre institution, at least in terms of research output: https://www.nature.com/nature-index/institution-outputs/generate/health-sciences/global/academic https://www.nature.com/nature-index/institution-outputs/gene... Not entirely surprised we'd never heard of it.
- genewitch 2y agoa lot of southern schools publish in a different fashion. Most of my agricultural and husbandry knowledge of the area i live in comes from various universities .pdf files. My point is merely not publishing in Nature (or wherever) doesn't mean that serious research doesn't occur at that campus. Their "customers" may just be citizens of that state (or in some cases, that county).
- NemoNobody 2y agoI don't feel like that is a correct way to measure an institutions mediocrity or not. I have found that frequently cited Universities that publish many very popular articles per year per journal become less credible with fame. Hubris aside objectivity becomes lost in the money being made. A far better measure of a University would be the people it graduates or by assessing the actual effects and impact of a research University with their published studies. If the University of Kentucky specializes in agricultural research, that's most likely why you've never heard of them - perhaps they've made huge contributions to the elimination of terrible fungus plaguing a specific crop, nobody would hear about that. Fixing the proverbial fungus is a far bigger deal tho than most of the ambiguous pop science publications coming out of far more "prestigious" institutions these days.
- goochphd 2y agoI wouldn't read too much into it. UK is one of my alma maters. Everyone in that area of the US means "University of Kentucky" when they say "UK". It isn't a dig at the United Kingdom nor is it (I assume) an attempt to gain undue credibility by associating with the country. For the people there, UK as the University is simply the first order association for that acronym, rather than what is to them a faraway country that has no bearing on their day-to-day lives.
- dyauspitr 2y agoI feel like it would be trusted a little bit more if it was a study by the NHS from the UK rather than something from Kentucky.
- kjs3 2y agoI was just reading on the BBC that people were having to go overseas for critical surgeries because the NHS so woefully incompetent that people were on many years long waiting list. So maybe put "NHS excellence" on the shelf next to "Empire" as UK delusions that have long since passed. U of Kentucky is a pretty decent school, ~25k students with (from personal experience) excellent Civil Engineering and Chemistry schools, at least.
- lol768 2y agoNIHR's research is genuinely world-leading. Any output from "a pretty decent school of 25k students" (U of Kentucky) pales in comparison to the research outputs from studies that NIHR grants fund, many of which are international collaborations. NIHR and "the NHS" are of course completely separate organisations, though NIHR studies recruit NHS patients and make use of NHS patient data for health research. The fact that you don't understand this says a lot about the judgment you attempt to make of the UK's life sciences research. https://www.nihr.ac.uk/about-us/our-impact/making-a-difference-stories.htm https://www.nihr.ac.uk/about-us/our-impact/making-a-differen... https://fundingawards.nihr.ac.uk/search/funder/NIHR%20(ODA) https://fundingawards.nihr.ac.uk/search/funder/NIHR%20(ODA) I'm sorry, but I must admit I'd never even heard of the University of Kentucky before today, and some basic research suggests it's not considered in the top 300 universities globally which is probably why. On contrast, there's plenty of universities within the top 100 (and top 10) within the (real) UK, particularly within the field of life sciences. I was also pretty happy with the one-week turnaround the NHS sorted for me when I needed something potentially cancerous checked out (endoscopy). I didn't pay a penny for that, I don't pay a penny for my long-term prescriptions and I can see a GP same-day if I need to. Again, for free.
- fao_ 2y agoThe reason for that is around 30 - 50 years of continual gutting of the NHS, aggressive implementation of perverse incentives and anti-targets (e.g. "hospitals get less money if they fail to meet X standard of care, because they do not have enough money"), and overloading of staff duties to reduce costs (e.g. Physicians now performing duties that receptionists used to handle, the lack of work force meaning they have to work long amounts of overtime on the weekend, the lack of rest contributing to bad decision-making, and so on).
- zarmin 2y agoYou have tested positive for long covid.
- School-Cotton 2y agoNot really clickbait. University of Kentucky press releases always refer to it as UK.
- creativenolo 2y agoIt is not clear from your comment why always doing it would not be clickbait-like. I am sure even the majority of Americans would assume that when the letters “UK” are used in isolation, it would mean the country and not a state university.
- dboreham 2y agoTitle should have been edited for posting here because the namespace scope is global. E.g. the local paper here has headlines like "MSU reserchers get grant" and everyone knows they're referring to Montana State University. But there's other MSUs, just two states away, so the same article carried by Reuters would need the headline changed.
- Loughla 2y agoSee you say MSU and I assumed it was Mississippi State. So anything more than hyper local sources should probably spell it out completely.
- School-Cotton 2y agoI meant they are not trying to trick people into clicking the link by using the term “UK” because it’s obvious from the context what they mean, since they consistently use the term. I agree that it’s a bad headline for HN where you don’t know the context, but that doesn’t mean they chose the headline with ill intent.
- creativenolo 2y agoIt’s not ill intent to have your article seen by as many people as possible. I find it hard to believe they have never considered there is an added benefit to publishing, on a world wide medium, the term UK.
- kazinator 2y agoResearchers are identified by country when their research institution lacks recognition or prestige. If all we know is that someone is a U-of-Kentucky researcher or else that someone is a researcher located in the United Kingdom, the former carries more prestige.
- throwaway2037 2y agoI agree that the title should changed. Depending upon the reader's location, UK is a well known uni in the area. Also, the domain gave a good hint: uky.edu
- dang 2y agoWe take university names out of press release posts anyway, so I've gone ahead and done that.