Trying to match plain English with technical definitions. 🧵 1/
This episode points out that "vegetable" is, scientifically speaking, MEANINGLESS. npr.org/2021/06/10/100…
You may have gotten into arguments about whether a tomato is a fruit or a vegetable. 2/
What I did NOT know what that many things we call berries - strawberries 🍓, raspberries - are NOT berries.
You learn something new every day. 3/10
This problem is rampant in biology. We have all these plain English words for groups of creatures that we had before scientific investigation of them.
We somehow expect those two things to line up. 4/10
Why anyone would expect logic in English puzzles me. I mean, have you seen how we SPELL words versus how we say them?
"Tough"
Why
"F" is a perfectly good letter, why we gotta end that word with a "gh"? 5/
I do crustacean biology, and many questions end up revolving around plain English meanings of words like "crab" and "lobster".
"Lobster? Do you mean clawed lobster, spiny lobster, slipper lobster, or squat lobster? They're not that closely related." 6/
A lot of questions, like "Are birds dinosaurs?" are also hard for people to grab, because they can't align their plain English understanding with the technical terms. 7/10
People sort of get the point when I say, "Birds are dinosaurs for the same reason bats are mammals."
But then I get strange looks when I point out that humans are fish. All vertebrates are descended from a common fish ancestor. The logic is exactly the same.
8/10
I think too often in #SciComm, we should just say, "Plain English isn't up to the job here" rather than trying to align the plain English with a scientific definition. 9/10
P.S. -- I like @DoctorKarl's distinction of fruit versus vegetable.
If you eat it with ice cream, it's a fruit.
To heck with what botanists saying a tomato is a fruit. 10/10
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I want to try to articulate ideas that have been running around in my head this week about
how often we treat good #SciComm as an individual problem
instead of a systemic problem. 🧵 1/15
I just released a book that mostly focuses on helping scientists - particularly early career researchers - be better communicators using the poster medium.
I think that's a pretty classic #SciComm concern. "Here's help with your skills!" 2/15
In retrospect, I'm glad I wrote a section for conference organizers.
Earlier this week, I live tweeted a webinar that reminded us how many design (and communication) decisions are made by a few people with power.
If you believe the circular bar chart is good, why put the same data in a table, too?
Why not just have the "second dose" 💉💉 data in the table?
Or make another circular bar chart ⚪📊 for the second dose data? 2/5
The colour scheme seems completely arbitrary. Different colours represent anywhere from a 1% difference in "first dose" 💉 percentages (people in their 70s vs. people 80 and older) to a 16% difference (people 18-29 vs. younger teens). 3/5
On my workout this morning, I heard my instructor talk about yawning 🥱 and saying it was because "brain 🧠 needs oxygen".
My understanding is that best current hypothesis is that yawning cools 🥶 the brain. E.g., frontiersin.org/articles/10.33… 1/4
Nuance alert! Yawning 🥱 could be multifunctional, and have physiological and social roles that influence its frequency. 2/4
This reminded me that Wiki has a list of common misconceptions (though yawning isn't on it): en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_c… I think every time I go through it I learn at least one 1️⃣ new thing! 3/4