[Originally published November 30, 2009, updated March 29, 2020]

One of the fundamental challenges of writing about science is choosing the right words. Science is full of jargon, which works well enough for specialists talking with one another. But if you want to share science with everyone else, jargon is toxic, alienating potential readers. Using jargon also becomes a crutch; a writer comes to depend on magical words rather than trying to explain deep concepts. Beyond jargon, writers should also avoid unnecessarily formal language, choosing visceral, potent language instead.

As a teacher, I flag words in my students’ work and encourage them to try again, to strive to do better. (So should all writers.) Over the years, I’ve collected them here. Putting a word on this list doesn’t imply that no one should ever use it. I am not teaching people how to write scientific papers. What I mean is that anyone who wants to learn how to write about science–and to be read by people who aren’t being paid to read–should work hard to learn how to explain science in plain yet elegant English–not by relying on scientific jargon, code-words, deadening euphemisms, or meaningless cliches.

Access (verb)

And/or (Logic gates do not belong in prose)

Anomalous

Anthropogenic

Breakthrough (unless you are covering Principia Mathematica)

Captive observation

Clinical setting

Community ecology (this ban does not extend to the subject of community ecology)

Component

Context

Cracked the code (especially when it comes to sequencing DNA. DNA is not the same thing as the genetic code)

Demographic leveling

Elicit

Elucidate

et al

Facilitate

Food source (when just “food” will do)

Forcings

“Further research is needed” (This phrase may be mandatory at the end of science papers, but it’s meaningless. Has any scientist ever declared further research unnecessary?)

Holy Grail

Immunocompromised

Impact (as a verb. Impacted is fine you’re talking about teeth or bowels.)

Implement (especially as a verb. Launch? Put into practice?)

In (when used in phrases like “experiments in mouse“)

In vitro (Don’t assume a Latin phrase for “in glass” means anything to a non-scientist.)

In vivo

Incredibly

Informed (people can be informed. As for “The discussion was informed…”? Ack.)

Infrastructure (Whenever possible, make readers see what you’re writing about. “Infrastructure” makes me think of a dull white paper, when I could be seeing bridges, highways, dams, and the other biggest creations of our species.)

Insult (referring to an injury)

Interaction

Interdisciplinary (The fact that a project can be characterized as “interdisciplinary” is only interesting in a grant application. But that project itself may be extremely cool. Convey to readers that coolness; don’t deploy funding labels.)

Interface (especially as a verb)

Intermediate host

Interested in (as in, “Dr. Frankenstein is interested in tissue regeneration.” Transforms passion and excitement into a boring parlor game)

It has been shown (Who showed it? How? The kinds of questions that the passive voice can never answer.)

Linked to X (where X=Alzheimer’s, autism, cancer, or any heavily funded area of research. “Linked” tells the reader nearly nothing.]

Literally (even if it’s used accurately, the word is generally useless)

Marine environment

Material properties

Mechanism

Methodology

Miracle (or miracle cure)

Missing link (don’t get me started…)

Mitigation

Modulate

Molecular systematists

Morphology

Multiple (as in many? Then just use many)

Musty (when referring to museum collections, unless those collections are in fact in an attic with holes in the roof through which rain steadily falls)

Non-marine environment

Novel (the adjective is banned. The noun, as in War and Peace, is fine.)

Optimum

Orthogonal

Paradigm shift (Thomas Kuhn only had a few things in mind when he coined this phrase: http://bit.ly/1oKwigs Don’t use it for just any slight shift in scientific understanding.)

Parameter (also, parameterize)

Pathogenicity

Phylogenetics

Predation

Predator-Prey Relationship

Processes

Proxies

Reagent

Recently (when you actually mean “ten years ago”)

Recruit, recruitment (unless you’re writing about the Army)

Regime (unless you’re referring to Mobutu in Zaire)

Robust (as in, robust data. But robust wine? Yes, please.)

Scientists have learned in recent years that… (A dodge to escape explaining what actually happened)

Seminal

Small molecule [To anyone other than a biochemist, all molecules are small]

Sociopolitical

Substrate [try things like dirt, mud, rock, etc.]

Sustainability (This word can mean many things, and those meanings can be profoundly important to the people using the word. But left on its own, it is an empty buzzword. Does it refer to the survive of wildlife? To the prosperity of future generations of humans?)

System (as in, “He chose mouse as a system to study”)

This (if there is no antecedent in sight)

Transmissibility

Trivial (in the way scientists like to use it: “This problem is trivial.” Non-trivial is even worse.)

Utilize (If you were telling a story to a friend and used this word instead of use, your friend might raise an eyebrow.)

Via

Virulence

We (as in “We now know the fatality ratio of the current H1N1 influenza epidemic.” We includes your readers, most of whom don’t know–yet.)

“What we need first to understand is…” Rather than tell readers what they are obligated to understand before reaching enlightenment, just enlighten us. Avoid addressing readers like students trapped in a lecture.

[Image of crier: Wikipedia]

I’ve written a few times here about the ongoing work of Joe Thornton, a biologist at the University of Oregon and the Howard Hughes Medical Institute. Thornton studies how molecules evolve over hundreds of millions of years. He does so by figuring out what the molecules were like in the distant past and recreating those ancestral forms in his lab to see how they worked. I first wrote about his work looking at how one molecule in our cells evolved from one function to another (here, here, and here). [Update: These links are now fixed.]

Most recently, I wrote in the New York Times about his latest experiment, in which he and his colleagues found that the evolution from the old function to the new one has now made it very difficult for natural selection to drive the molecule back to its old form. Its evolution has moved forward like a ratchet.

Thornton’s new work turned up last week on a web site run by the Discovery Institute, a clearinghouse for all things intelligent design (a k a the progeny of creationism). Michael Behe, a fellow at the Institute, wrote three posts (here, here, and here) about the new research, which he pronounced “great.”

This is the same Michael Behe who, when Thornton published the first half of this research, declared it “piddling.”

Why the change of heart? Because Behe thinks that the new research shows that evolution cannot produce anything more than tiny changes. And if evolution can’t do it, intelligent design can. (Don’t ask how.)

I pointed out Behe’s posts to Thornton and asked him what he thought of them. Thornton sent me back a lengthy, enlightening reply. Since the Discovery Institute doesn’t allow people to comment on their site, I asked Thornton if I could reprint his message here.

Continue reading “The Blind Locksmith Continued: An Update from Joe Thornton” →

On Thursday I wrote about a new paper reporting the reconstruction of a 450-million year old hormone receptor, and experiments indicating how it evolved into two receptors found in living vertebrates such as ourselves.

On Friday I took a look at the initial response to the paper from intelligent design advocates at the Discovery Institute. They claim that there exist biological systems that show “irreducible complexity,” which could not possibly have evolved. In response to the new research, intelligent design advocates claimed that hormones and their receptors do not actually make the cut as irreducibly complex systems. But to do so, they had to ignore their own published definition of irreducible complexity.

Continue reading “The Final Adventures of the Blind Locksmith” →

Yesterday I blogged about a new study in which scientists reconstructed 450 million year old proteins in order to trace the evolution of some receptors for hormones. The paper itself does not comment on the implications these results have for intelligent design, which claims that some biological systems are too complex to have evolved. But in the accompanying commentary, Chris Adami does. (Adami is the brains behind Avida, an artificial life program that I wrote about in Discover in 2005.) He writes,

Continue reading “The Blind Locksmith Continued: The Mushy Definition of Complexity” →