IMS_Blog

Note: This forms part of the Norwich trip post really, it’s just that Great Yarmouth is so, well, something that it needs a post all of its own. So, read on…

Continue reading the rest of this post

A late September return to Norfolk (mainly Norwich but a trip to the coast included). Jan and I were there mainly to see Dave Gorman. but we fitted a bit more pottering around in. Day by day ramblings follow.

Continue reading the rest of this post

From this Physics Today article and originally seen various places around the web:

Terms that have different meanings for scientists and the public
Scientific term	Public meaning	Better choice
enhance	improve	intensify, increase
aerosol	spray can	tiny atmospheric particle
positive trend	good trend	upward trend
positive feedback	good response, praise	vicious cycle, self-reinforcing cycle
theory	hunch, speculation	scientific understanding
uncertainty	ignorance	range
error	mistake, wrong, incorrect	difference from exact true number
bias	distortion, political motive	offset from an observation
sign	indication, astrological sign	plus or minus sign
values	ethics, monetary value	numbers, quantity
manipulation	illicit tampering	scientific data processing
scheme	devious plot	systematic plan
anomaly	abnormal occurrence	change from long-term average
From: Somerville R. C. J. & Hassol S. J. Phys. Today 64 (10) 48 (2011)

Obviously due to coming from a paper discussing how to talk about climate change the phrases are those that would tend to turn up in such a discussion but some of them are certainly much more widely applicable and it doesn’t take much effort to think up others. This is one of the great problems with science communication, possibly increasingly so in these media frenzy rich times when any “descenting” voice is given the same weight as majority opinion (and finds an easy outlet in the internet). scientists use terms in their communications because that is what they mean, and in general are careful about the terms and words they choose. The problem is that taken away from that context the precision is lost so that what was an exacting phrase becomes a source of confusion.

The obvious solution to this is to try and communicate beyond the high towers of science with words the public will understand in a natural way. This seems to me a double edged sword however. While it may lead to a better comprehension and less of a feeling of alienation there is also the increased risk of misunderstanding due to that very loss of accuracy—this can happen to the point that what is actually a clear cut point can become bogged down in what is actually an argument over semantics.

Something else which comes across from reading the article (well worth five minutes of your time if you care about PUS is how when dealing with the public we need to break of our normal shackles of discretion. Scientists are used to couching everything in a web of caution. We place error estimates on our numbers, add numerous caveats, talk about “probably” and the like (look how even the summary for policy makers of the Contribution of Working Group I to the IPCC says Most of the observed increase in global average temperatures since the mid-20th century is very likely due to the observed increase in anthropogenic greenhouse gas concentrations. (additional emphasis mine). Perhaps it is time to throw of the constraints and be more positive, simply stating what all the evidence indicates without all the rest of it (and ignore that this may cause longer term problems given that one of the ways to spot a crank is that they don’t tend to bother with this cautiousness).

In conclusion, communicate clearly, but be careful to still say what you mean!

As a further thought this does all remind me somewhat of how we learn to “read” papers. See for instance this list of actual meanings (I’m sure there are others around; that was just the first my googling turned up). I’m pretty convinced that one of the major barriers to science study and understanding is actually getting used to the language.

Simple enough physics, cool results:

More info