Since database retrieval is a fundamental operation, the measurement of retrieval efficacy is critical to progress in bioinformatics. This article points out some issues with current methods of measuring retrieval efficacy and suggests some improvements. In particular, many studies have used the pooled receiver operating characteristic for n irrelevant records (ROC(n)) score, the area under the ROC curve (AUC) of a pooled ROC curve, truncated at n irrelevant records. Unfortunately, the pooled ROC(n) score does not faithfully reflect actual usage of retrieval algorithms. Additionally, a pooled ROC(n) score can be very sensitive to retrieval results from as little as a single query.