Blog post: swansont: Jargon is the Scott Evil of Science Communication

Well it's true! It's true! You're semi-evil. You're quasi-evil. You're the margarine of evil. You're the Diet Coke of evil. Just one calorie, not evil enough.

Why do kidneys need cells?

The point is valid; I would characterize this as being similar to the dose makes the poison. The problem is that once you label everything as jargon, the adoption of the the attitude that jargon is evil means you can't use any words. Which is silly.

It's basically a no-win situation. If you underestimate your audience, you can sound patronizing and insulting — a mistake I recall when I was talking to Garrett Reisman, the astronaut (when the crew of STS-124 visited the lab), and I started into an explanation of laser cooling by describing the periodic table, something with which I'm sure he's familiar. That's when I mentally kicked my self.

However, if you assume some bit of knowledge and your audience doesn't have the background, you lose them. The trick is to tailor your discussion to the background of the people to whom you are speaking; as the author says, speak the same language as your audience. Where I part ways with some is that I don't subscribe to "jargon is evil" as an absolute — I think it's OK, to some point, to insist that people speak a little science when they come to visit science-land. It limits your audience, but that's OK, if that's what you want to do
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