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| Olivia Bullock |
Congratulations to Ph.D. student Olivia Bullock, MA student Daniel Amill, and faculty Hillary Shulman and Graham Dixon, on their recent publication "Jargon as a barrier to effective science communication: Evidence from metacognition" in
Public Understanding of Science. The paper addresses
some of
the unintended consequences of jargon use on people's acceptance of scientific
technology. Basically, they found that when descriptions of technology
included scientific jargon, people reported that the technologies in question
seemed riskier, participants were more likely to argue against and refute the
information provided, and reported less support of these technologies, than
when jargon words were replaced with easier to understand terms. This experiment
shows the effects of complicated language extend beyond misunderstanding, and
can affect people's feelings towards the topic at hand. This can be especially
problematic when the subject matter lends itself to jargon (as in the case of
politics, health, and law). The implication is that if you want people to
engage with complex subjects, create messages that are easy to process. You can access the paper here: https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/0963662519865687
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