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Say What?

Oct 24, 2011

At A Quantum Diaries Survivor, Tommaso Dorigo points out a table from a Physics Today article that compares terms that mean something different to scientists than they do to the public. The list includes scheme ("devious plot" versus "systematic plan"), theory ("hunch, speculation" versus "scientific understanding"), and manipulation ("illicit tampering" versus "scientific data processing"), among others. The Southern Fried Scientist has posted a table that his writing class came up, and that includes E. coli ("tainted food" versus "laboratory culture"), mutant ("X-men, abnormal" versus "change in gene"), and significant ("meaningful" versus "statistically supported").

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