Five atrocious science cliches

A black hole is the perfect place for stuff you never want to see again. So Wired Science is joining Wired.com's extended black hole party by chucking in some of the worst, most overused science cliches.

 

1. Holy Grail

To me, this is the mother of all bad science cliches, the worst offender. And I recently learned I have backup on this opinion from the venerable journal Nature which has literally banned scientists from putting holy grails in their papers.

But outside of Nature, grails are running rampant through science writing. A Google search for "holy grail" + science OR scientists OR researchers yields 2.6 million hits. Among those hits, the holy grail of: physics, climate change, biofuels, cancer research, crystallography, bodybuilding, pain relief, plant biology, nanoscience, cardiology, optical computing, catalyst design and human gait analysis.

Here are just a few examples: Discover asks: "Can Engineers Achieve the Holy Grail of Energy: Infinite and Clean?" and The Telegraph (UK) says: "'Holy grail'" drug can help scars heal, new research shows." And yes, Wired Science is not immune: "Astronomers Closer to Exoplanet Holy Grail." But no more. I hereby decree all holy grails banned from Wired Science.

2. Silver Bullet

No more silver bullets, please. Apparently they are really only meant for werewolves, witches, and the occasional monster. While we're at it, magic bullets can go into the black hole as well. They attract too many angry conspiracy theorists. In a Google search, the two together, along with science terms, gets you 1.7 million hits. And because Alexis Madrigal hasn't read his werewolf texts very closely, he occasionally tries to put golden bullets into his stories, so we'll toss those as well.

A lot of these bullets are aimed at medical targets. The LA Times asks if there's "A magic bullet for pandemic flu?" And I can't tell if this instance, "Scientists to Tackle Illness with 'silver bullet,'" is made better or worse by the fact that the thing being called a silver bullet is actually silver.

Things that are not silver or magic bullets: antioxidants, carbon capture, disk encryption, GM crops, vitamins, and carbon dioxide mosquito traps. At Wired Science, there is no magic or silver bullet for: cancer, the energy crisis, and cloning endangered turtles.

And as long as we're tossing all the bullets, we might as well send the smoking gun in after them.

3. Shedding Light

Why must everything always be shedding light on something else? In addition to the light I shed on dark matter in 2006, light has also been shed on virtually everything you can think of: quantum computation, primate eye evolution, the connection between brain and loneliness, consciousness, catalyzed reactions, air quality, and even the Hope diamond. Googling "shed* light" + science OR scientists OR research returns 6.66 million hits, including these:

Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory: "Robotic Floats Shed New Light on the Iron Hypothesis," the Washington Post: Researchers "Shed More Light on Bird Flu," and The Boston Globe: "Scientists shed new light on invisibility." And, of course, Wired Science has been known to shed a bit now and then. A couple gems: "Semen Proteomics Sheds Light on Loyalty and Evolution," "Sea Cucumber Sheds Light on Healing Mechanisms."

Not everyone is trapped in this shed, however. Notably, Nature reporter Erika Check has been known to throw light on stuff like the origins of life. (Full disclosure: Erika is on my soccer team.) UPDATE: Alex Witze has taken full responsibility on behalf of Nature's editors for any cliches that have appeared in Erika's stories.

4. Missing Link

Don't even tell me you aren't sick of all the missing links constantly being discovered. It's an epidemic. Googling along with science terms gets you 4.2 million missing links. I mean, what could possibly still be missing after all that? There must be an unbroken, fully linked chain running from kindergarten art projects through Lucy all the way to the Creationist Museum.

Of course, a huge proportion of those links are fossils, including Ida, the supposed missing link between humans and lemurs that clogged up the science news cycle for days in May. Some of the other lucky things that have found their links: black holes, cancer gene therapy, industrial relations and the southern ocean.

Slate has wondered: How Many Times Will Paleontologists Find the "Missing Link"? Wired Science is also lousy with lost links including: "Missing Link in Pulsar Evolution Is a Cannibal" and "Viral Missing Link Caught on Film." But my favorite example is this New York Daily News story on "Ida: Missing link found?" Scientists unveil fossil of 47 million-year-old primate, Darwinius masillae, which also has a holy grail thrown in.

5. Paradigm Shift

According to Google, science paradigms have shifted 1.9 million times. I'm actually surprised it's not more. Because really, when you get down to it, what doesn't qualify as a paradigm shift these days? Science writing can actually take the blame for creating this beast and then letting it escape into the rest of the world. It was first used in Thomas Kuhn's "The Structure of Scientific Revolutions" in 1962, and yes I learned that on Wikipedia, but I also have a copy of the book on my shelf, so there.

Wired Science has only shifted a handful of paradigms in fields including drug research and genetics, and happily, no paradigm has shifted since the current editor (me) joined the team. But these shifts may have infected some other corners of Wired.com including Autopia and Game Life. And elsewhere in the world, paradigms are super shifty, especially in scientific papers. For example, the journal Sexualities: "Reading Porn: The Paradigm Shift in Pornography Research." According to the Institute of Physics, space science in the U.K. was on the verge of a shift in May (not sure of the current status of this paradigm). Even science fairs have apparently shifted: "A Global Paradigm Shift in Science Fairs."

"5 Atrocious Science Cliches to Throw Down a Black Hole," Wired Science, July 17, 2009.

(NASW members can read the rest of the Fall 2009 ScienceWriters by logging into the members area.)

November 17, 2009

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