Sloppy Language in Science on Human Uniqueness

Blogger Calden Wloka, in his post Sloppy Language in Science on Human Uniqueness, points out the irresponsible nature of science reporting that uses florid or unscientific statements to heighten the appeal of the subsequent report. I was unable to access the article in question, from ScienceNow, from the link in the post, but here's a few snippets from Calden's assessment. His major concern is with how the reporter, Greg Miller sets up the article:

I was quite astonished to see a ScienceNOW article not only referencing Descartes in the first sentence but following it with the question, “What imbues us with this uniquely human sense of self-awareness?”

Calden notes that how we speak and think about a thing can influence our evaluation of the relative meaning of that thing:

Making such an unqualified statement irks me, as I believe it fosters an undue reverence for the human brain (despite our heavy reliance on model organisms for neuroscience research), and is reminiscent of Descartes’ baseless theological labeling of all non-humans as mindless automatons.

He hits the (to-me) heart of the matter by reminding us how deep into our own abstractions we tend to live:

The difficulty of making cross-species generalizations is further compounded by our inability to break away from our own human perspective.

He notes the irony with which Miller's over-anthropocentric hype is undone by other articles in the same magazine:

Just four short days after Greg Miller claimed that only humans were self-aware, another ScienceNOW news brief came out describing the success of pigs at learning to use a mirror to find food, a measure which, in the words of the lead author Donald Broom, gives pigs at least “some degree of self-awareness”. The article also conveniently provides a list of other animals who have passed the mirror test: elephants, dolphins, magpies, gray parrots, and some primates (including humans, which the article for some reason listed separately).

The importance of accurate language, in my view, extends far beyond the carefully crafted language we use in scientific papers. I object to a reporter using inflated language to draw in an audience, even if they subsequently convey important and meaningful information to that audience. The audience may not readily distinguish the inaccurate and overly dramatic intro from the more solid, more circumspectly written study results.

If we believe that what we say and think can affect the physical connections in our brains, then we will serve our goals best by working hard to say and think as accurately as possible.