What if scientists dropped the jargon?

This is a question asked by Alan Alda, a tireless advocate for clear communication of science to the public. He has been the host of the PBS series "Scientific American Frontiers" for many years and has worked since 2005 on a novel and amazing idea: scientists should drop the jargon and actually try to communicate clearly to the public.

Apparently if you drop the big words that are relatively inscrutable, most medical procedures begin to sound a little more comprehensible. Alan used the example of the end-to-end anastomosis, an inscrutable surgery that he performed on M.A.S.H. often, but when a doctor had to perform this same surgery on him, it was explained a little more clearly, in that a part of the colon that had gone bad needed to be removed and the healthy ends needed to be re-attached.

This does not take a genius to understand, but the terminology in medicine and science in general can be so full of jargon that scientists in adjacent fields have trouble. In fact, here is a sentence that I wrote, but would be hard pressed to ask anyone outside of a small field of neuroscientists to interpret correctly "In CNQX, ACPD only decreased EPSPs, but APV or bicuculline did not change the effect of ACPD." This was not meant for a general audience, but I can see that we must do better in explaining our findings to each other, if not the general public. Why have we built a system that has become so difficult to understand?

If we think that this system is not a good system, like Alan Alda suggests, what can be done to change this?

Alan, for one is not sitting around asking questions, this year at Stony Brook University he will be starting a new chapter in his illustrious career as an academic. In 2009, he launched the "Alan Alda Center for Communicating Science" and has been touring universities, teaching workshops and campaigning since. This is a great effort and I for one, wish him the best of luck and hope that more scientists can think and talk clearly about science.

For more, see:
http://www.centerforcommunicatingscience.org/alan-alda/