Misusing scientific terms in writing


The direct inspiration for this article was a piece (by a friend I won’t name) that complained about a “quantum increase” in something. The idea of a “quantum increase” or “quantum leap” is that at a sub-microscopic level, changes in the state of particles are discrete, not continuous. A particle’s energy goes from one level to another without going through intermediate levels. In other words, a quantum leap is the smallest amount of change possible. A lot of writers must think it means something else.

That’s just one of many scientific terms that get mangled in popular writing. Let’s look at a few more.

“Meteoric rise.” Meteors don’t rise; they fall. I always have to look up the difference among “meteoroid,” “meteor,” and “meteorite,” and sometimes sources disagree, but I think NASA’s definitions are safe to go with. A rock orbiting in space is a meteoroid. If it enters a planet’s atmosphere and burns up, it becomes a meteor. If it makes it to the ground, it’s a meteorite.

“Theory” is an egregiously abused term. It has a different meaning in popular use from science, but the problem comes when people mix the two. In ordinary use, a theory is a tentative explanation. In everyday usage, you can say, “Why did Russia invade Ukraine? Here’s my theory…” In science, it means a set of principles that describe or account for something in nature. No matter how solid the evidence is, it remains a theory. The usage that implies uncertainty seems to be the newer one. It’s well-established now, but if you say the theory of, let’s say gravitation, is “just a theory,” so maybe meteors can rise, you’re using the word wrong.

“Natural” is an old favorite for messing up. If something exists, it’s part of nature. That doesn’t mean it’s good for you. Volcanoes, blizzards, and disease-causing bacteria are all natural. Sometimes the term means “not created by humans,” but then houses, agriculture, and social structures aren’t “natural.” Even “natural remedies” aren’t “natural” if they’re extracted, purified, and bottled, as opposed to consuming the raw plant. And then there’s the idea that some kinds of sex are more “natural” than others.

While we’re talking about sex: “Gender” originally meant a grammatical classification of words. Many languages have masculine and feminine genders, sometimes along with a neuter gender, but they don’t have any consistent relationship to sex. In German the sun is feminine and the moon is masculine; in French it’s the other way around. The same person can be masculine, feminine, or neuter, depending on which word you use. Some languages have genders that don’t even have a nominal relationship to sex. In more recent usage, “gender” has become a euphemism for “sex.” In still more recent usage, it’s part of a wildly unscientific notion that being male or female is unrelated to biology and is a matter of the sexual stereotypes you conform to. You aren’t born male or female; your parents “assign” you a “gender.” If you don’t conform to a macho male or fragile female stereotype, you’re “non-binary.” The best response is to use “gender” just in the grammatical sense and “sex” to indicate biological status.

At the same time, we have to recognize that biological sex is more complicated than just genitalia. To avoid silly circumlocutions like “people who menstruate,” we need to recognize that trans issues are tricky; the same person may be physiologically male for some purposes and female for others. Science is subtler than we often think, and claiming that we merely “identify as” or are “assigned” a “gender” throws scientific sense out the window.

“Chemical” often means something like “scary-sounding substance.” The Philcon weapons policy bans “chemicals of any kind.” That bans literally everything, with the arguable exception of monatomic substances. People have signed petitions to ban dihydrogen monoxide (H2O).

DNA stands for “deoxyribonucleic acid,” which plays a central role in genetics. The term “in our DNA” to mean “a part of our culture” is a metaphor, not a scientific mistake, but sometimes it gets into cringe territory. In 2015, Barack Obama said that racism is “still part of our DNA.” The point was well meant, but the choice of words is disturbing if you think carefully about them.

I’ve previously talked about the misuse of “phobia” and other psychological terms, so I won’t repeat it here. Likewise for mathematical terms like “exponential.”

Scientific terminology is tricky, and words often mean something different in scientific usage and ordinary discussion, but let’s try not to get it wrong.