Policing the scientific lexicon

[Silurus]

https://mapress.com/mt/article/download ... .1.4/51056

Political correctness taken to absurd levels.

[TwoTankAmin]

And here I thought there was no such thing as PhD in stupidity. Apparently I was wrong.

[Shane]

This is so silly that I would have assumed it was tongue in cheek humor.
-Shane

[Jools]

Hang on, did I miss something? Is this paper not supportive of not going too far?

"I contend that undoing the perceived harm that inappropriate names and terms can cause people who belong to oppressed communities in the developed world (the West) may harm the greater part of the global scientific community whose native language is not English. "

Seems like I agree with the author on his views but then I belong to an old-school oppressed community (the Scots).

Jools

PS For fun, I asked ChatGBT to summarise the paper, it said:

The passage discusses recent calls for revising common and scientific names in taxonomy and scientific terminology that may be offensive or inappropriate. Some authors argue that these revisions are necessary to address the marginalization of oppressed communities, while others resist these proposals. The author, writing from the perspective of a scientist from Sri Lanka, argues against undoing perceived harm caused by inappropriate names and terms, stating that it may divert attention and resources from the task of describing Earth's biodiversity. The author also challenges specific recommendations made by Cheng et al. (2023), such as changing terms like "invasive" and "alien," arguing that these terms have broader usage and may not carry the same negative connotations in other contexts. Similarly, the author questions the objections to terms like "sneaky mating strategy" and "citizen science" and highlights the complexity of revising both common and scientific names. The passage emphasizes the potential unintended consequences and challenges associated with implementing terminological reforms in the scientific community.

[Viktor Jarikov]

It seems this article is a voice of reason, no? The "revolutionary works" it opposes to, IMHumO, serve as the evidence of the astronomically abysmal psychological state of the leaders of the Western civilization. The end has been drawing nigh and now it is next to our skin and making it crawl...

How green is our fishkeeping? Echoing another sister woke thread just posted, I'd say our carbon footprint is a byproduct of a positive, constructive type of activity, that brings good not only to ourselves but to others too. The revolutionists / revisionists getting education and high degrees in the Science of Inclusivity and Diversity, getting jobs as Chief I & D Officers at every corporation, and publishing their works, are, on the other hand, a dead weight, a mill stone on the neck of our societies. Their carbon footprint is a byproduct of harmful, parasitic, or at best senseless activity.

$0.02

[Bas Pels]

I read the paper, completely, and Jools summerizing is remarcably correct.

More to the point, I get the feeling that polictical correct language is something one sees especially in English. That is, especially in the UK and the USA people tell each other not to use certain words because these could be offensive for some people. As far as I know, this is les or absent in Dutch, French, Spanish and German.

Being Dutch, that is, not used to this kind of pressure, the article especially told me how far this political correctness has gone. I share the opinion of the author, it is far too far.

[Shane]

My comments were less about the paper's argument than the fact that such a debate has even crept in to the scientific community's published literature.

Agree with Bas that the entire thing is a bit language based. English lends itself to a PC vocabulary that other languages (especially Romance languages) do not.
-Shane

[Jools]

That makes sense Shane, I was thinking about the whole thing in the round.

Overall I felt it was a brave thing to publish as a response. In itself, the effort to write the paper (respond) proves the point about diverting effort and talent away from the challenge of describing the world's biodiversity.

Jools

[Viktor Jarikov]

You can't anymore describe only biodiversity and ignore bioinclusion and bioequality

[naturalart]

What Viktor said.