Anyone who has ever set out to transmit news of a scientific advance from the laboratory to the laity is only too well aware of the seductive call of the cliche. Like a bridge across troubled waters, the overly familiar yet compact and serviceable phrase taunts the writer with its usefulness: “Take me, take me, take me — or waste the next half-hour looking for an unsuitable alternative!”
I had been on the staff of the National Academy of Sciences only a year or so when I discovered that distinguished scientists suffered as well. No scientist at that time was more distinguished than Detlev W. Bronk — president of the Academy, Chairman of the National Research Council, Chairman of the National Science Board, and President of Rockefeller University. Yet there he stood, describing to his fellow members the outcome of the Academy’s first exercise in forecasting the research opportunities in physics, when crusty Saunders MacLane, University of Chicago mathematician, waved his hand for attention. “I’ve read the report,” said MacLane, “and it’s riddled with cliches. I counted forty-one in the introduction alone!”
“Ah,” said Bronk, his face wreathed in mock seriousness, “that comment comes from Saunders MacLane, a distinguished mathematician. And we must listen, for mathematics provides the building blocks for all the sciences...”
“Forty-two!” cried MacLane.
The problem came up again a few months ago on NASW-talk, the message center
for online members, when a science journalism student in a master’s
program at Texas A&M asked for help in researching the use of cliches
in science writing: “I’d appreciate hearing from anyone about
some of the overused expressions they’ve come across and what they
think about them.”
The query struck a nerve: Responses tumbled in. “I’d start with the word ‘breakthrough,’ wrote Joel Shurkin, nominating additional phrases such as “unlocking the secrets of....”, “someday humanity may [fill in the blank],” and “virtually any announcement of a cause of cancer in mice. Everything causes cancer in mice.”
Nell Boyce, of Clinical Laboratory News, volunteered three related phrases that caused her pain: “pieces of the puzzle,” “scientists are like detectives looking for clues,” and “hunting the elusive (blank).”
A.J. Hostetler, then with AP in Atlanta, offered the oxymoron that her favorite hated cliche was “quantum leap.” Britain’s Michael Kenward added “Especially when it is used to describe something huge.”
John Gever volunteered: “And let us not forget this overworked medical metaphor: that hormones work by binding to receptors on the surfaces of cells, much like a key fitting into a lock.”
Clearly, it was time to take the bull by the horns and devil take the hindmost. And no sooner than Ed Schiele, a freelance science writer in Concord, Massachusetts, cried out: “Sounds like we need to develop and implement a proactive cliche remediation and mitigation action plan,” there came a stranger riding out of the West.
It was Charlie Petit of the San Francisco Chronicle, sitting light in the saddle, but packing two mean-looking Toshibas. He had an answer. This is what he wrote, and it is an exclusive.
Science writers are nearing a breakthrough, perhaps a major breakthrough, in their age-old quest to unlock the secrets, even the ultimate secrets, of cliche-free prose, researchers reported yesterday.
Using cutting-edge, state-of-the-art, high-tech and other dash-laden methodologies, the science journalists sifted obscure clues to reach their tentative conclusions. “This is statistically significant,” one senior researcher said. “It is an important step forward,” said another. “This is science in action,” they agreed.
The research was reported in Science Magazine, a prestigious journal, and in Nature too, a leading British journal.
Other researchers welcomed the report, but were cautious. They called for more research. Science writers covered all the (usual) bases, quoting John Pike of the Federation of American Scientists, climatologist Stephen Schneider of Stanford University, bioethicist Arthur Caplan, live astronomer Steve Maran, dead astronomer Carl Sagan, outspoken physicist Robert Park, and neo-Luddite anti-technology gadfly Jeremy Rifkin. Stephen Jay Gould would have added class, but was unavailable for comment.
Cliches are a window into the past, even if they are redshifted like the whistle on a passing train that changes pitch when it goes by, an analogy that itself is a window into the past. They offer a glimpse of the future, too. They add to growing evidence of the cataclysm that may have killed the dinosaurs. Debate is sure to continue.
And while the latest results do not offer a cure, they point the way to better understanding of the underlying basic cellular causes to the ancient affliction. “We may never know all the answers but this is an important piece of the puzzle,” said everybody.
And did he have the last word? Of course not. Warned John Gever: “Charlie forgot to mention that years of human testing would be needed before cliche-free prose would be available to the general public.” — Howard J. Lewis