Two sciences separated by a common language

When I'm not writing for Ars, one of the things I do is teach at Stony Brook University's Center for Communicating Science. The Center offers various programs that help scientists communicate with both the public and each other, ranging from improv classes run by the theater school to writing courses run by journalists. The goal is to help scientists form personal connections with whomever they're speaking to and speak cogently about the topic at hand. The same general approaches apply if you're speaking to another scientist, a fourth grader, or an informed interviewer like Alan Alda (who was inspired to help create the Center after interviewing scientists for a series of PBS specials).

One thing that gets in the way of this communication is jargon. Jargon is shorthand that helps people in a field communicate with each other. Needless to say, it can be a huge problem when communicating with the public. But jargon can also be a problem when you're talking to other scientists. Not only is some of this niche speak meaningless outside its specific field, but in other fields it can sometimes mean something else entirely.

While talking over this problem at Stony Brook the other day, we started trying to come up with examples. One I thought of is CTL. If you're an immunologist, CTL means cytotoxic T lymphocyte. If you do mouse genetics, CTL means curly-tail like. In flies, it's coatless, a completely unrelated gene. After struggling to think up other examples, we turned to Twitter. People came through with the following list, which I've edited only lightly for clarity.