What's in a Name? In Science, a Lot
Shakespeare famously asked the question about what’s in a name. In science, the answer is: “A lot”. That sounds so wrong: after all, isn’t science a “wholly objective pursuit that allows us to understand the world through the lens of neutral empiricism”, as Ed Yong puts it. And yet… Take the term “dark matter”, used for the common type of matter in the universe, one very different from the stuff we see/feel/are made of ourselves. The problem with the name? Lisa Randall explains in Dark Matter and the Dinosaurs : “We see dark things, which absorb light, and because the ominous-sounding label makes it sound more potent and negative than it actually is. Dark matter is not dark – it is transparent.” Svante Pääbo made the same point of the problems with naming in his excellent book, Neanderthal Man: In Search of Lost Genomes : “It has a tendency to elicit scientific debates that have no resolution. For example, if researchers refer to Neanderthals as “Homo neanderthalenis”, ...