{"id":485,"date":"2019-02-11T05:48:30","date_gmt":"2019-02-11T05:48:30","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.tylerjford.com\/landing.html\/?p=485"},"modified":"2019-02-11T05:58:24","modified_gmt":"2019-02-11T05:58:24","slug":"simple-things-stated-in-a-complex-way","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.tylerjford.com\/landing.html\/2019\/02\/11\/simple-things-stated-in-a-complex-way\/","title":{"rendered":"Simple things stated in a complex way"},"content":{"rendered":"

<\/p>While I no longer do laboratory research, I still proudly consider myself a scientist and believe anyone can be a scientist if they have a curious mindset and fuel their actions with critical thinking. Nonetheless, those who consider themselves scientists do often have a few stereotypical quicks. One of these quirks is an infatuation with jargon<\/a> and making communication more complicated that it needs to be. Part homage, part chastisement, in this blog post I provide examples of the complex ways scientists might say simple things. <\/span>\n

*As a side note, the idea for this blog post came from a conversation about linguistics and my first example is the summation of that conversation.<\/span><\/p>\n

$\"Drawing$ #1
\nComplex<\/strong>: In many ways, language is shaped by biology and must conform to the shapes and structures of our mouths and airways.
\n<\/span><\/strong>
\n<\/span><\/span>Simple<\/strong>: We avoid saying words that are difficult to pronounce.<\/span><\/p>\n

$\"Drawing$ <\/a>#2
\nComplex<\/strong>: Continued exposure to damaging agents can lead to a series of genetic changes that ultimately enable otherwise quiescent cells to start dividing rapidly and dangerously spread throughout the body.<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

Simple<\/strong>: Certain types of chemicals and radiation can cause cancer.<\/span><\/p>\n

$\"Sketch$ <\/a><\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n

#3
\nComplex<\/strong>: The key to keeping a conversation going is to identify the activities, ideas, and people that excite your conversation partner and work these things into the conversation.<\/span><\/p>\n

Simple<\/strong>: People like to talk about themselves.<\/span><\/p>\n

<\/span><\/p>\n

$\"Sketch$ #4
\nComplex<\/strong>: If your metabolism is predisposed to store excess dietary calories in fatty acids and other macromolecules, you\u2019re more likely to increase your body mass index on a given diet and activity regimen than someone who is predisposed to excrete excess calories.<\/span><\/strong><\/strong><\/strong><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

Simple<\/strong>: Some people gain weight more easily than others.<\/span><\/p>\n

$\"Sketch$ #5
\nComplex<\/strong>: It can be easier to associate phenotypic traits in purebred dogs with particular genetic variations because of the level of genetic identity within and between different breeds.<\/span><\/p>\n

Simple<\/strong>: Dogs are inbred and that can sometimes make their genetics easier to understand.<\/span><\/p>\n

I should point out that the majority of these aren\u2019t real examples and were just fun to come up with. Feel free to tweet your own whether real or imagined\u00a0@tyfordfever<\/a>.<\/span><\/p>\n<\/body>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

While I no longer do laboratory research, I still proudly consider myself a scientist and believe anyone can be a scientist if they have a curious mindset and fuel their actions with critical thinking. Nonetheless, those who consider themselves scientists do often have a few stereotypical quicks. One of these quirks is an infatuation with … <\/p>\n

Continue reading “Simple things stated in a complex way”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":490,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[21,6],"tags":[25],"class_list":["post-485","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-biology","category-science-communication","tag-scicomm"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.tylerjford.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/02\/Puppy.png?fit=500%2C667&ssl=1","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/pap2RX-7P","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.tylerjford.com\/landing.html\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/485","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.tylerjford.com\/landing.html\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.tylerjford.com\/landing.html\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.tylerjford.com\/landing.html\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.tylerjford.com\/landing.html\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=485"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/www.tylerjford.com\/landing.html\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/485\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":496,"href":"https:\/\/www.tylerjford.com\/landing.html\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/485\/revisions\/496"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.tylerjford.com\/landing.html\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/490"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.tylerjford.com\/landing.html\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=485"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.tylerjford.com\/landing.html\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=485"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.tylerjford.com\/landing.html\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=485"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}