The gulf in the public understanding of science jargon such as the word “theory” in immense. For example, creationist love to call creationism another theory, just like evolution is a theory. In reality creationism is at best an unproven hypothesis under scientific method jargon. Creationist never calls creationism a hypothesis. The general public is poorly educated in basic science and will see creationism as another theory to be a plausible theory evolution.
Here's a big example: Heritability. The scientific definition includes "Heritability, in a general sense, is the ratio of variation due to differences between genotypes to the total phenotypic variation for a character or trait in a population." (Briannica). And, in twin studies, heritability estimates rely on some key assumptions, including a lack of gene-environment interaction and a continuous, not dichotomous, phenotype. (Autism is dichotomous.) But many people, including scientists who should know the definition, and almost everyone else, interpret heritability estimates as the proportion (aka percentage) of cases of a condition, such as autism, that is simply *inherited*. Worse, that it's inherited without any interaction with the environment. That understanding is obviously wrong. And there does not appear to be any public effort to dispel this fundamental misunderstanding. The wrong interpretation of heritability estimates is having massive adverse effects on even the most basic autism epidemiology.
To make things worse, some scientific terms match popular everyday words but have completely different meanings. Psychology offers many examples, such as intelligence, willpower, personality, and so on.
In biology, this means: “pertaining to the study of ecology or ecosystems”
The word ecology literally means study of the house, habitat or living place (from the Greek: ‘Oikos’ and 'logos' to study.) I have seen these two word. get misused a bit. For example, using ecological instead of environmental. I better not get started on this.
The gulf in the public understanding of science jargon such as the word “theory” in immense. For example, creationist love to call creationism another theory, just like evolution is a theory. In reality creationism is at best an unproven hypothesis under scientific method jargon. Creationist never calls creationism a hypothesis. The general public is poorly educated in basic science and will see creationism as another theory to be a plausible theory evolution.
Yes, that’s a good example. Theory has many different meanings within science and that ambiguity allows bad actors to mislead.
Here's a big example: Heritability. The scientific definition includes "Heritability, in a general sense, is the ratio of variation due to differences between genotypes to the total phenotypic variation for a character or trait in a population." (Briannica). And, in twin studies, heritability estimates rely on some key assumptions, including a lack of gene-environment interaction and a continuous, not dichotomous, phenotype. (Autism is dichotomous.) But many people, including scientists who should know the definition, and almost everyone else, interpret heritability estimates as the proportion (aka percentage) of cases of a condition, such as autism, that is simply *inherited*. Worse, that it's inherited without any interaction with the environment. That understanding is obviously wrong. And there does not appear to be any public effort to dispel this fundamental misunderstanding. The wrong interpretation of heritability estimates is having massive adverse effects on even the most basic autism epidemiology.
Scientists can and should do much better.
Good example, so many people get this wrong.
To make things worse, some scientific terms match popular everyday words but have completely different meanings. Psychology offers many examples, such as intelligence, willpower, personality, and so on.
Yes, so many technical terms have different everyday meanings. That’s a big challenge for communication!
Umm, Ecological:
In biology, this means: “pertaining to the study of ecology or ecosystems”
The word ecology literally means study of the house, habitat or living place (from the Greek: ‘Oikos’ and 'logos' to study.) I have seen these two word. get misused a bit. For example, using ecological instead of environmental. I better not get started on this.
Yes, that’s the etymology of the word. But it’s not the meaning of the word when used as technical jargon. This is the problem with jargon.