Glossary
Medical Scientist Terms & Vocabulary
15 essential medical scientist terms with plain-English definitions: the vocabulary you’ll hear in training and on day one.
Key medical scientist vocabulary
These 15 terms come up constantly in medical scientist training, on the job and in interviews. Knowing them helps you follow instructions, document accurately and sound prepared.
- Clinical trial
- Study in people.
- Endpoint
- Outcome measured.
- GCP
- Good clinical practice.
- Grant
- Research funding.
- Hypothesis
- Testable prediction.
- Informed consent
- Permission from participants.
- IRB
- Ethics review board.
- NIH
- National Institutes of Health.
- Peer review
- Expert review of research.
- Phase I
- First-in-human safety trial.
- Phase III
- Large effectiveness trial.
- Placebo
- Inactive treatment.
- Protocol
- Study procedure.
- Replication
- Repeating results.
- Translational research
- Lab to clinic.
Practice these terms
Test yourself with the free Medical Scientist practice test: it includes vocabulary questions built from this list. For a complete course, see Medical Scientist training.
Browse terms from every career in our career glossary.