Scoring

You may not agree with my discussion yesterday and argue, "There is at least one thing novel in this kind of research - the test per se. Be it imaging, blood marker, or genetic test, it'd got to be new."

Quite right.

And, therefore, running out of the supply of a novel test for their study, many ingenious researchers come up with the brilliant idea: Let's lump up a few conventional markers and call that a new scoring system - and we can do everything as if we have a new test !

The result is, like what my friend VW described, some investigators come up with a scoring system which is no different from a check list of points to pay attention to during history taking and physical examination.

Alas, there's nothing new under the sun. Go read Hampton JR, et al. BMJ 1975; 2: 486-489.