Why can’t we just speak plainly?
The evils of jargon have been in the news recently, when local governments were taken to task for excessive use of management-speak in their literature. Coincidentally, the topic has also reared up in several vitriolic comment threads in the scientific blogosphere. One irate reader – apparently not a scientist himself – even went as far as to accuse scientists of purposefully using jargon in their everyday professional lives to muddy the waters around their research and to keep ordinary people in ignorance (of, presumably, their shifty, nefarious intentions as much as their actual data).
While I would be the first person to expound passionately on the importance of scientists learning how to explain their research to the public in ordinary language, I am absolutely bewildered – and a little angered – at the suggestion that jargon amongst scientists is merely a vehicle for underhanded obfuscation and not, as I always assumed, a useful tool at the heart of peer-to-peer communication in science. Jargon has a bad reputation, true, but what is it, really? Yes, it’s a complicated word or phrase that requires training to understand, but it also – more significantly – offers those in the know a substantial shortcut for communication in exquisitely precise terms.
Ponder, if you will, the following phrase of pretty standard and relatively lucid cell biological jargon:
We used immunofluorescence analysis to assess the phosphorylation status of JNK and ERK, and concluded that these two effectors are downstream of Ras signalling and involved in damage-induced apoptosis.
Yes, it sounds a bit scary if you don’t know anything about cell biology, and I’m sure your average person on the street couldn’t follow it. But they’re not the intended audience, and the complexity is not just cosmetic. Just imagine if we were expected to stand in front of an audience of fellow researchers in the field and convey the equivalent information in normal speech:
We used a test where we probed for the presence of a small chemical decoration on the side of a protein, which is a fancy name for one of the building blocks that helps make our cells work properly. The decoration, or phosphate group, on this protein building block we’re studying is a thing that helps convey energy, so when you put it on or take it off, you can influence whether a protein is “on” or “off” and therefore able to act as a sort of cellular message-boy, telling other parts of the cell what to do. So anyway, this test involved using special proteins called antibodies, which happen to be key weapons deployed by our immune systems to fight off germs, but in this case we are using them because they can home in on any other protein we want and stick to it. The antibodies are invisible, so we have to stick a fluorescent decoration on it so we can see if the target protein is there or not. …
Are you as tired as I am yet? And that’s only conveyed, quite vaguely and not very usefully, the first eight words of the sentence. And in fact I didn’t do a very good job even at that; each noun in my sentence could probably launch an entire chapter in an undergraduate science textbook – assuming you did biology in high school as a firm grounding. Which is a pretty big assumption these days.
Far from fettering science – and other diverse professions ranging from law and medicine to women’s studies and history – and probably more prosaic professions like plumbing (“Bob, could you pass me that longish metal tool with the ring-like structures on both ends, each of which is canted up at opposing seventy-degree angles?”) – jargon frees us gloriously from vague and roundabout descriptions whose meaning could easily be misunderstood – that is, if we didn’t fall asleep before the end of the explanation. I’ve sat through a few scholarly meetings in the humanities, and even though I don’t understand half of what these academics are saying, when someone says “post-humanism” and the rest of the room nods earnestly, I don’t think they’re being pretentious and showing off; no, I accept that I am witnessing first-hand the transmission of an extremely complicated concept on which entire theses have been written – all in five syllables. Jargon allows us to say exactly what we want to say in a few words as possible, so we can spend most of our time discussing the implications of our research – or better yet, doing more of it.
Jargon sets us free.
Why can’t we just speak plainly? Because, amongst ourselves, it would be a disaster. So next time you hear someone complaining about the evils of jargon, remember what a little life-saver it actually is.
Now if you’ll excuse me, I’ve got to dash off and co-IP my RIPA lysates – ta ra.
Heh, very very true. Where are the vitriolic comment-and-reply conversations on the diary-type entries on the networked system of computers worldwide of which you speak?
When I gave my introductory seminar at Sydney, I got a question from the floor accusing me of skimping the NMR and crystallography data I’d showed (one slide each). I’d simply showed the stats and the structures and said ‘these are great structures and you can see…’. This person thought I should have explained both techniques more fully (this was in 2006. Neither were new!) While I gaped incredulously one PI came to my defence with “each of those topics would be a course in themselves”, which allowed me to take a more sensible question.
I was afraid someone would ask me for that link! The truth is I’ve been living in an internet-free zone at home for week (just moved, no broadband yet, militant community group having overturned a proposednew phone mast so no useful signal on the iPhone) and it’s been so long that I can’t find it now. I think it may have been on the Sb post that mentioned my blog on the post-doc problem and the article in Scientific American; but then again it might have been on the Curry/Hanage rebuttal. But I’ve seen similar comments several times in the past month.
I did find the local government jargon story, from Radio 4; http://news.bbc.co.uk/today/hi/today/newsid_8561000/8561589.stm
I can live with the jargon – just about. It’s the biochemists’ and molecular cell biologists’ relentless enthusiasm for abbreviations that gets to me.
heh – I was just caught by the phrase above: “Excessively long or offensively phrased entries will be edited.” Hope they don’t tamper with my second blockquote!
Austin, if your protein’s full name was ten words long, you might be more sympathetic. But apparently the chemists are worse…
I am absolutely bewildered – and a little angered – at the suggestion that jargon amongst scientists is merely a vehicle for underhanded obfuscation
I utterly sympathize with how you feel here. Such suggestions, and they are not rare, are indicative of paranoia in a certain conspiracy-loving segment of the general public and, sometimes, their inferiority complex.
But we have to therefore be a little tolerant of legalese in its appropriate context to not be utter hypocrites…
Heather, that’s exactly my point. I think it’s not fair for people to take offense at any sort of jargon. Legalese amongst laywers is perfectly acceptable. Where it becomes problematic is when legalese is used with the general public. If any of you has ever filled out a US tax form, you’ll know what I mean. But I suppose the IRS might argue that all the explanations are in the (book-length) instructions that go along with the form – an explanation of the jargon, which allows the form itself to be only 4 or so pages long.
Jenny – spot on, jargon is essential in its place, but needs to be hermetically sealed in there.
Having said that, in my book Studying Using the Web I did take the abstract of a paper (on photonics) and turned it into almost jargon-free English that was no longer, but vastly easier to read.
BTW, why does it take so long to submit a comment? It’s an MT4rage.
Brian, I’m sure it’s possible to transform water into the equivalent amount of wine, in some circumstances, but it probably takes a lot more energy and time to get just right. Whereas a professional shouldn’t have to waste that time and energy in the normal course of things.
(Very intrigued about the photonics thing, though, as I assume it was initially very complicated?)
Actually, Brian, if you monitor your blog in two tabs in realtime, you’ll see that the comments come up almost immediately, even though your browser claims it’s still loading (sometimes even to the point of server timeout). Hence the multiple comments people keep leaving, thinking their efforts have failed. There is a further lag on the old network.nature.com.blogs page, where the comment count doesn’t update straight away.
Jenny: Wonderful example 🙂 I think it is more than obvious for some scientist why you need to moderate your language for the intended audience. That said, I sometimes read “scientific descriptions for more lay people” and get frustrated since I can’t really figure out exactly which techniques and stuff the authors mean (_since they don’t use jargon_). Then I remember that I am not the intended audience and get more happy.
That said, I think there are times when certain members of groups use jargon to keep people out, or at least in order to make them feel humbled and stupid. It¨s like anything else, some people will use it for their advantages and being arrogant “I’m so important” person.
This kind of “ability to talk parallel language” thing is very obvious in medical courses. There is a famous line about medical students leaving University with twice the vocabulary that they started with, since they have acquired several thousands words’ worth of techno-jargon. But of course they also require the ability to explain things to people (i.e. patients) in plain language, so this is something one stresses over and over, and indeed tries to test.
We actually push this same idea to our M.Sc. / Ph.D. students too, by having “lay abstract competitions”, and other similar stuff.
Asa, can you give us an example of your experiences with scientists using jargon to exclude others?
Jenny: I wasn’t talking about scientists per se, that’s why I wrote “groups”, but when it jargon is used to exclude people who aren’t in the same area/line of work. (Like lawyers,MDs and mechanics that were mentioned as other groups with jargons too.)
I do think though, that sometimes it is hard to remember where the baseline is – and which words are considered jargon. That’s why it is so important to keep up with communicating with people outside of your/our own circle to remember that DNA might be more common knowledge today, but flow cytometry isn’t 😉 (but who knows, it might be soon?)
But have you ever actually experienced that sort of deliberate exclusion first-hand? People say it happens all the time, but I’m struggling to think of any incidents in my own experience. Sometimes you overhear jargon (e.g. in a hospital), but it’s not really meant for you. My solicitor and accountant have never tried to talk over me, nor have any of the medical consultants I’ve dealt with in recent years.
I mostly agree with you Jenny. I can’t remember many incidences in science, medicine, finance, etc that jargon was used to exclude myself or others directly.
The only situation I can come-up with is men sometimes talking about sports, using a lot of jargon, that they know their “better halves” have no concept of and will eventually grow bored and leave them alone 🙂
And there are those protein names which are only made to give a witty abbreviation. For example Bad (Bcl2 antagonist of cell death)
Elizabeth – I find it impossible to talk about sports without using jargon, and those boyfriends probably do too – for all the reasons I mentioned in my post.
Viktor, I agree that the calculated abbreviations that mammalian biologists use are very clever and creative – it’s the only way we could think of to one-up the fly geneticists. (And we didn’t do a very good job, admittedly.)
Great post! I just think of jargon as another language, or an extension of vocabulary. When we were six, we might not have known what certain words meant (like compile or analytical, as totally random examples) – but we learn them when we need too.
I think every profession has jargon – words and phrases that only the people working in that field know/understand. As long as we are still able to explain things to the general population, then who gives a hoot how we talk to each other? 🙂
Hypothesis: science jargon is easier to learn for non-scientists than cricket rules are to understand for non-cricketing nations.
Experimental design:
Yeah, I actually wrote this all out, but then realized I was a huge nerd and removed it. I have an experimental design, though. It doesn’t have controls, though, I just realized, so it might still need some tweaking.
I have a big problem with cricket rules, even though I’m a whizz at American sports. You can use me for a control if you like. (i.e., I have all the machinery to appreciate complex sports, and also learned soccer after moving here, so have all the machinery to acquire the knowledge of foreign sports – but I just can’t get cricket rules to ‘stick’).
Hypothesis: science jargon is easier to learn for non-scientists than cricket rules are to understand for non-cricketing nations.
so what’s your excuse, Eva?
(crossed comments)
Jenny, I think we need to have you play the game for them to stick.
Aren’t the wickets the sticky things?
Perhaps the waters were permanently muddled because my very first exposure to cricket was that scene in one of the Hitchhiker’s Guide novels when the Chesterfield sofa materializes on a cricket pitch right in the middle of the match.
Ford Prefect: “Eddies in the space-time continuum.”
Arthur Dent: “Oh, is that his sofa, then?”
Ha ha! Yes, I can see that would be confusing. The sofa usually only appears in the seven day game (except in alternate leap years).
Having a cricket team does not make one a cricketing nation per se. It’s the actual following and watching of the sport that does.
(For extra LOLs, here again (I must have linked it somewhere before) the Dutch comedy take on cricket on YouTube The comments and video are a FANTASTIC take on jargon/cricket)
I’ve been thinking a little bit more about scientific jargon since I wrote this post last night, and it’s occurred to me that there is a form of excessively complicated jargon employed in scientific papers, typically by newbies. They think they have to write in a complicated fashion to fulfill some sort of preconceived notions that ‘science papers have to be complicated’. I’ve suddenly recalled that I stumbled over my undergraduate honors thesis recently and the introduction is incredibly flowery – and using the passive voice is part of that. It’s a habit that most scientists grow out of. Most.
Great post! Your plain language example reminds me of the first draft of a progress report written by a non-native English speaker who spoke English very well, but had not yet grasped the differences between informal, spoken English and the formal, written version. I think there even was a “so anyway” in there, as well as “[protein x] has tons of phosphorylation sites”.
Cricket is similar to baseball in that the basic rules are very simple, but the subtleties of the game can take forever to master. I haven’t succeeded in either case, although I do enjoy going to live games of both kinds every once in a while. (I refuse to watch either on the telly).
I’ve promised to take Jenny to a rugby match (in return she’s going to take me to see an American Football game) (Leicester Tigers, if you must know): but it looks like I’ll have to take her to see some cricket too.
Praps an NN outing? We can eat watercress sandwiches.
I’ve occasionally tried to explain cricket in a jargon-free way to ‘Er Indoors (who is both German and utterly uninterested in sport), but she usually glazes over after half a sentence.
I am old enough for all this talk of jargon to have reminded me of a very fine sketch by Messrs Fry and Laurie which can be found here. It starts at 4:16 and lasts for two and a half very worthy minutes.
Tried embedding. Failed.
Haha, I forgot that sketch! I have seen all of Fry&Laurie, though, so don’t feel old. =)
back to the subject at hand, Grrlscientist was asking me to get a paper for her. This is the title:
At least least I understood one word before the colon (well, OK two words).
The NN cricket outing sounds a great idea. If you can fit in in round solo10, we might be able to educate GrrlScientist as well. Just tell her we’re going birdwatching.
Re the hypothetical NN cricket game, have been debating whether to opt to field at short leg or at a very silly point… but in the end I bags deep backward square leg. Since if I’m fielding near the boundary at least I will be able to keep a cooler of ice-cold tinnies within reach.
Can I be the wicketkeeper for the fielding team, and first down in the batting team? These are my my staple positions – both allow me to enjoy the game to the fullest without exerting much! 🙂
Back to the topic. Dr. Rohn, you bring up the most interesting topics! Jargons are inevitable, I think, for specific disciplines, since they compress a complex concepts into bite-size chunks that are easier to communicate amongst professionals – concepts that would take considerably large number of words and roundabout expressions to translate to common parlance. This is what makes a non-technical presentation so challenging.
That said, I find the abbreviations of molecules in the signalling pathways, particularly those associated with cancer, very daunting and difficult to remember. I hope I stumble across a mnemonic someday that would help.
OMG, NN vs Sb cricket?
I can bowl a wicked chinaman. Turn it across the stumps. Or from outside off to third slip. Depends.
On the original subject (so I’m not breaching the guidelines), I can but agree. So there.
Bob
If we have anything that’s NN vs. SB I would suggest some science.
But if we must stoop to a sport then I suggest Rugby. They won’t be able to wear any armour in that one.
And Jennifer’s topic raises another question to my mind – a question that has been bothering me for quite some time. In how many ways can one say, “Ligand X simultaneously binds to receptor Y and co-receptor Z, and that leads to downstream signaling through the ABCD pathway, involving protein A and B, and enzyme C”? Jargons are essentially limited in scope by design, so that in a few iterations, a sentence describing this event is bound to be very similar to the original (say, published) statement. Would writing such a sentence amount to plagiarism?
A post that will resonate with journal subeditors and developmental editors, who regularly ponder and balance these issues. Nice take.
Slightly off topic, you may have seen this but in case not:
http://network.nature.com/groups/G15E49475/forum/topics/6929
Hmm, Kausik has taken my fave fielding position. I’m pretty handy in the slips though, and do like silly mid-on in an attacking field.
Hi Maxine – yes, I was alerted to that forum post this morning. He came across as quite offensive – the personal attack about me being only being interested in money, for example, was the final straw, especially given that he knows absolutely nothing about me. (Ironic, too, given that my career choice has seen me turning away from a much more lucrative and stable career in publishing to pursue my dreams in science.) Perhaps it’s a personal failing, but I can’t bring myself to engage with someone who needs such cheap shots to score points; even if he hadn’t completely misread the original post, he could have discussed it in a more courteous and balanced manner. Since both you and Eva have carefully explained exactly how his interpretation exhibited a poor grasp of my original post, I think it’s best if I just let it rest with your excellent defense. Besides, I’m not sure he wanted my response; if he had, I assume he would have been more courageous and posted a comment on the actual blog, instead of behind my back.
Agreed, Jenny, 100 pre cent.
I think a NN cricket match is an excellent idea. Shall we wait til the weather is a bit warmer and watercress is in season?
Kausik, it’s interesting, your observation about how jargon forces repetitive sentence structure – I hadn’t thought about it that way before. But there are many ways to vary word order and verb choice, so I think with a bit of creativity it’s not too much of a problem. I agree that the acronyms are a pain, but can I suggest an absolutely excellent website (http://www.ihop-net.org/UniPub/iHOP/) that you can use, among many other things, to keep track of synonyms and abbreviations in protein names.
‘Pre’ cent, Maxine (*grin*)
Oh my, I just forced myself to read that cove’s article again, but only managed to get as far as
Cloistering into the upper echelons of the scientific elite will only further the gap between the “two cultures” I have made it a personal goal to diminish before I fell off my chair with laughter.
PS I would like to point out that cucumber sandwiches are canonical for cricket matches.
Cricket jargon explained.
You have two sides, one out in the field and one in. Each man that’s in the side that’s in goes out, and when he’s out he comes in and the next man goes in until he’s out. When they are all out, the side that’s out comes in and the side that’s been in goes out and tries to get those coming in, out. Sometimes you get men still in and not out.
When a man goes out to go in, the men who are out try to get him out, and when he is out he goes in and the next man in goes out and goes in. There are two men called umpires who stay out all the time and they decide when the men who are in are out. When both sides have been in and all the men have been out, and both sides have been out twice after all the men have been in, including those who are not out, that is the end of the game.
Simple!
What about the Chesterfield?
And when do they eat the sandwiches?
Hi there,
There is a difference between bloated language used to sound smart or officious and using the appropriate terminology for the field. Good writing considers the audience as well. I write differently for scientists within the field than for intelligent readers outside of the field. And, I always keep in mind, that even though a person can read a piece that has a FOG index of 20, she usually doesn’t want to. Most people (including me) get into trouble when we use words we don’t understand in order to sound intelligent.
I can’t comment on Cricket. But, I have commented a lot about science writing.
Hi there,
There is a difference between bloated language used to sound smart or officious and using the appropriate terminology for the field. Good writing considers the audience as well. I write differently for scientists within the field than for intelligent readers outside of the field. And, I always keep in mind, that even though a person can read a piece that has a FOG index of 20, she usually doesn’t want to. Most people (including me) get into trouble when we use words we don’t understand in order to sound intelligent.
I can’t comment on Cricket. But, I have commented a lot about science writing.
On the “pre” cent, Richard – on this occasion, instead of going away, switching the kettle on, making a cup of tea and drinking it before my comment posted to live, I read it. I hastily changed the “pre” to “per”. However, even though it still took the comment a good while to post through, it ignored my correction.
So, all I can say is, touche. (or do I mean touchee?)
Hi there,
There is a difference between bloated language used to sound smart or officious and using the appropriate terminology for the field. Good writing considers the audience as well. I write differently for scientists within the field than for intelligent readers outside of the field. And, I always keep in mind, that even though a person can read a piece that has a FOG index of 20, she usually doesn’t want to. Most people (including me) get into trouble when we use words we don’t understand in order to sound intelligent.
I can’t comment on Cricket. But, I have commented a lot about science writing.
Hi Michele. I couldn’t agree more. But it made me giggle when you referred to the FOG index – this must be jargon because I have no idea what it is! (Apologies if that was meant to be a joke – I’m a bit stressed in the lab today and not thinking very clearly)
The point is basically that language should always be adopted to the audience, but if your audience is your peers in the same field, you shouldn’t be ashamed to be as complicated as you want, provided everyone else is on the same page.
p.s. The browser may tell you your post didn’t load, but if you check in a new window, you can confirm whether it did or not before trying again. (Usually it has!)
bq. “PS I would like to point out that cucumber sandwiches are canonical for cricket matches.”
Yes, definitely cucumber – dunno how this “watercress” meme got started. I did try and point this out to the Scienceborgs crew, who seemed very watercress-focussed, but no-one seemed to notice.
Blame Heather, I think. She’s the one with the cress fetish.
Hi Jennifer,
Oops, sorry about the double post. My computer told me that a “server error” had occurred, so I hit the submit button a second time and got a second cup of tea. I’m sure the second cup of tea was the problem.
The FOG index is a metric that is used to determine “readability” of a piece of writing. Twenty is graduate-level reading. I’ve always thought it rather humorous that a something used to measure “clarity” is called a FOG index (the real name is the Gunning FOG index).
I seeded both watercress and tomatoes a few weeks ago, but only the tomatoes have sprouted. I don’t mind, I was rooting for them anyway. (Puns on roots and SEED are entirely unintended.)
My tomatoes inspired me to read up on plant biology, though (I need to, for work) and that means I have to learn a whole new jargon. But it has pretty words like “phloem” so it’s okay.
Actually, I picked it up from Steffi. But if we’re talking cucumber will someone make sure we accompany the game with liberal quantities of Pimm’s punch? (preferentially the one known as original). I’d be willing to retain cricket rules for that long.
But I became a rugby convert in the southwest of France. Don’t knock it until you’ve watched it, live. I guess GrrlScientist, Bora, or Eric would have to be refs.
Touché … and Maxine, thanks for the pointer to the other thread, which seems to be adequately addressed, indeed. Strange he didn’t take it up in the blog comments where it might have been better noticed. And maybe Ian Brooks could have told him that some scientists do successfully unionize.
Uh, I have no way to really bring this back on topic.
That’s OK, Heather. I think not allowing digression is one of those rules that’s never going to be enforced (hopefully!). The strangest thing about that forum post, to me, was how out of place the tone was. I think maybe he’s not been around NN much yet, or he’d know this isn’t the sort of place where people make personal attacks on one another. I hope he’ll learn.
I like the idea of a FOG index, though for some reason it brings to mind the Beaufort Scale. “My paper was a force 8!”
Going back to a much earlier comment – sorry for arriving late to the dicussion…
We actually push this same idea to our M.Sc. / Ph.D. students too, by having “lay abstract competitions”, and other similar stuff. Austin
I think we need a lot more of this kind of thing. I think over time I got less good at putting science into more general language than I was early in my PhD when I still thought in non-specialist language.
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Thanks,
Vijay
Although I agree with your point – that every field has its jargon which is indispensible for peer-to-peer communication – there are some aspects of your post I find disturbing. First, when you translated your cellbiologese into English, you did so using language that seemed somewhat twee and patronizing, rather than making what I might call an more straightforward effort at translating for a lay audience. This exposes you to the criticism of using the kind of cheap-shot tactics used in debates (lately seen in creation-evolution barnies) in which one makes generalizations about one’s opponents based on the deliberate choice of extreme examples.
I have been translating science-speak into English for the whole of my career, and what must be borne in mind is that one should use language appropriate to the audience. Sure, that’s your point, but here is something I come across again and again. Nature is meant to be a journal that can be read by all scientists. Sure, this is honoured in the breach these days, but in my experience the worst offenders are cell biologists, who make absolutely no effort to make their science intelligible even to other molecular biologists, let alone astrophysicists or ecologists – as if cell biology was all that mattered and everything else was of no consequence – or as if Nature was a journal for them alone. This attitude seems to me contemptuous in the extreme.
I’m with Mr Gee. Jargon’s not really jargon if you’re speaking to those in the know — colleagues, fellow researchers, computer geeks, whatever. It’s jargon when the audience you’re speaking to does not have the same background or points of reference as you. Then you should speak in layperson’s terms to even the playing field.
As a general fiction and nonfiction editor, I’m all for using language that challenges the reader — the day when the New York Times Book Review no longer has me running to the dictionary is the day I start relearning Egyptian hieroglyphs — but it shouldn’t be so obtuse that an average reader in your audience can’t make heads or tails of it.
Don’t you want the uninformed to be enlightened by your amazing research that could better the lives of everyone and everything on our little planet?
The day communication breaks down to that extent is a sad day indeed.
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Hi Henry
Sorry for the delay in reply, I’m internet-free at the moment and it’s hard to keep up.
My little example was meant to be humorous while at the same time making a point that it’s very hard to translate hard-core biology into lay terms using as few words. Emphasis on the word humor. I too spend a lot of my time talking about research to a lay audience, and I’m told I’m rather good at it, which is why I keep getting asked back. I would never dream of patronizing my audience, or talking down to them, or indeed wilfully misunderstanding their background. Honestly. But at the same time, if you’re speaking to a group of kids, say, and you say a word like ‘gene’ and there is a look of panic or fear in their eyes, it is sometimes necessary to amend your words in real time, “by gene I mean the string of code the cell uses as a blueprint” blah blah blah. It may sound twee to you as a scientist, but from feedback I’ve received, it is often appreciated. Especially with kids. The example I gave above, though exaggerated for humorous effect, would probably be appropriate for the GCSE-level children I’ve dealt with.
Maryellen, you sound very enlightened. I had several fiction publishers tell me that no reader would possibly be expected to understand words like ‘gene’, ‘protein’ and (unbelievable but true) ‘microscope’, so they would have to be removed before consideration.
Also, I’m a bit confused when you wrote “Jargon’s not really jargon if you’re speaking to those in the know — colleagues, fellow researchers, computer geeks, whatever. It’s jargon when the audience you’re speaking to does not have the same background or points of reference as you. Then you should speak in layperson’s terms to even the playing field” – as if you are disagreeing with my post. That was actually the point of my post. This idea was kicked off by laypeople accusing scientists of using jargon amongst themselves with the express purpose of blinding everyone else with science. That is what I was taking exception to. If you’ll read my post again you’ll see that I say explicitly that I’m all for
scientists explaining their research to non-scientists as clearly as possible – and pitched to the appropriate level.
“We checked whether two intracellular signalling proteins–JNK and ERK–were phosphorylated, using fluorescent probes: they were, so these two proteins must be involved in the damage-induced apoptosis pathway at a later stage than Ras [why? -ed].”
Because I was just babbling jargon off the top of my head with no recourse to reality. It’s my inner novelist. 😉