{"id":9151,"date":"2005-09-17T21:40:39","date_gmt":"2005-09-18T02:40:39","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.discovermagazine.com\/cosmicvariance\/2005\/09\/17\/lisa-randall-on-scientific-communication\/"},"modified":"2005-09-17T21:40:39","modified_gmt":"2005-09-18T02:40:39","slug":"lisa-randall-on-scientific-communication","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/preposterousuniverse.com\/blog\/2005\/09\/17\/lisa-randall-on-scientific-communication\/","title":{"rendered":"Lisa Randall on scientific communication"},"content":{"rendered":"

All I can say is, someone must be reading Cosmic Variance. Sunday’s New York Times<\/em> has an Op-Ed piece by Lisa Randall<\/a> on how scientists communicate with the public, and it echoes many of the issues we’ve been discussing here at CV. One of her themes is how words are used differently by specialists than they are in common usage.<\/p>\n

Scientists’ different use of language becomes especially obvious (and amusing) to me when I hear scientific terms translated into another language. “La th\u00c3\u00a9orie des champs” and “la th\u00c3\u00a9orie des cordes” are the French versions of “field theory” and “string theory.” When I think of “un champs,” I think of cows grazing in a pasture, but when I think of “field theory” I have no such association. It is the theory I use that combines quantum mechanics and special relativity and describes objects existing throughout space that create and destroy particles. And string theory is not about strings that you tie around your finger that are made up of atoms; strings are the basic fundamental objects out of which everything is made. The words “string theory” give you a picture, but that picture can sometimes lead to misconceptions about the science.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

These amusing images underscore a real issue: the unintentional confusion caused when a scientist is trying to be perfectly precise, yet creates an entirely incorrect impression in the mind of a listener. Words like “energy” or “work” or “uncertainty” can mean different things to experts and non-experts.<\/p>\n

And the stakes are high:<\/p>\n

The very different uses of the word “theory” provide a field day for advocates of “intelligent design.” By conflating a scientific theory with the colloquial use of the word, creationists instantly diminish the significance of science in general and evolution’s supporting scientific evidence in particular. Admittedly, the debate is complicated by the less precise nature of evolutionary theory and our inability to perform experiments to test the progression of a particular species. Moreover, evolution is by no means a complete theory. We have yet to learn how the initial conditions for evolution came about – why we have 23 pairs of chromosomes and at which level evolution operates are only two of the things we don’t understand. But such gaps should serve as incentives for questions and further scientific advances, not for abandoning the scientific enterprise.<\/p>\n

This debate might be tamed if scientists clearly acknowledged both the successes and limitations of the current theory, so that the indisputable elements are clearly isolated. But skeptics have to acknowledge that the way to progress is by scientifically addressing the missing elements, not by ignoring evidence. The current controversy over what to teach is just embarrassing.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Word.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

All I can say is, someone must be reading Cosmic Variance. Sunday’s New York Times has an Op-Ed piece by Lisa Randall on how scientists communicate with the public, and it echoes many of the issues we’ve been discussing here at CV. One of her themes is how words are used differently by specialists than […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[31],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-9151","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-science-and-the-media"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/preposterousuniverse.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9151","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/preposterousuniverse.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/preposterousuniverse.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/preposterousuniverse.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/preposterousuniverse.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=9151"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/preposterousuniverse.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9151\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/preposterousuniverse.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=9151"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/preposterousuniverse.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=9151"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/preposterousuniverse.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=9151"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}