<story><title>Psychological and psychiatric terms to avoid</title><url>https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4522609/</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>Alex3917</author><text>&amp;gt; Gold standard. In the domains of psychological and psychiatric assessment, there are precious few, if any, genuine &amp;quot;gold standards.&amp;quot; Essentially all measures, even those with high levels of validity for their intended purposes, are necessarily fallible indicators of their respective constructs.&lt;p&gt;The reason we refer to double blind trials as being the &amp;quot;gold standard&amp;quot; isn&amp;#x27;t to imply that they have some level of validity, but because they were popularized by Harry Gold.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>codingdave</author><text>The reason this list exists is to discourage phrases that are, among other things, misunderstood. So your argument that people don&amp;#x27;t understand the reference simply strengthens the case against using the phrase.</text></comment>
<story><title>Psychological and psychiatric terms to avoid</title><url>https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4522609/</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>Alex3917</author><text>&amp;gt; Gold standard. In the domains of psychological and psychiatric assessment, there are precious few, if any, genuine &amp;quot;gold standards.&amp;quot; Essentially all measures, even those with high levels of validity for their intended purposes, are necessarily fallible indicators of their respective constructs.&lt;p&gt;The reason we refer to double blind trials as being the &amp;quot;gold standard&amp;quot; isn&amp;#x27;t to imply that they have some level of validity, but because they were popularized by Harry Gold.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>FalcorTheDog</author><text>Do you have a source for that? Whether he popularized them or not, that&amp;#x27;s not where the expression comes from.</text></comment>