Newspeak

We scientists are using some odd language to describe our careers these days: we are undergrads, then grad students, then postdocs, then perhaps PI's. We're sponsored by the NSF and the NIH.

Why can't we speak in English? Does it really save so much time to leave four letters out of the phrase "graduate school"? Perhaps it has more to do with a distaste for being reminded that we're still in school, despite having already graduated.

Neologisms can change the way we think. Take, for example, the term "NIH". Most people outside of science don't know what the NIH is, but told that it stands for "National Institutes of Health", could probably infer that it is a part of the federal government concerned with medical matters. Those of us who are intertwined with the NIH know that this description is far too general. For sure, the NIH supports health scientists, but the term "science" has a much broader meaning than the kinds of activities the NIH actually supports. For example, imagine a scientist who proposes an exciting yet unlikely hypothesis (let's say a 1 in 10 chance of being right). To test the hypothesis, the scientist designs a set of experiments, which will be pursued to completion no matter what the "preliminary" results. The results of the experiments will be published, whether they confirm or deny the hypothesis. Is this "science"? I think yes, but anyone seriously hoping to get NIH funding would never submit a proposal like that. To get NIH funding, you submit preliminary results in support of a hypothesis you know is probably correct. This may be a good way to do science, at least some of the time-- it's not that the approaches promoted by the NIH are bad, it's just that for many scientists NIH is so dominant that it's easy to forget that there are other approaches. "NIH" is not just an institution but a whole culture of science, indeed a way of life for some. The acronym therefore has a meaning far more precise and far less flexible than can be conveyed by the mere English phrase "National Institutes of Health". Perhaps by concentrating on our "NIH RO1", rather than on our "National Institutes of Health Research Proposal", we can avoid the unpleasant thought that we lack the freedom to define "research", "proposal", and "science" as broadly as the English language would allow.

That's why when someone talks about their "pubs", I question whether they are really just trying to save the time it takes to say "-lications". At least we're not calling ourselves "FirstAuth" yet.

That neologisms should be a red flag was pointed out, of course, half a century ago:

Even in the early decades of the twentieth century, telescoped words and phrases had been one of the characteristic features of political language; and it had been noticed that the tendency to use abbreviations of this kind was most marked in totalitarian countries and totalitarian organizations. Examples were such words as Nazi, Gestapo, Comintern, Inprecorr, Agitprop. In the beginning the practice had been adopted as it were instinctively, but in Newspeak it was used with a conscious purpose. It was perceived that in thus abbreviating a name one narrowed and subtly altered its meaning, by cutting out most of the associations that would otherwise cling to it. The words Communist International, for instance, call up a composite picture of universal human brotherhood, red flags, barricades, Karl Marx, and the Paris Commune. The word Comintern, on the other hand, suggests merely a tightly-knit organization and a well-defined body of doctrine. It refers to something almost as easily recognized, and as limited in purpose, as a chair or a table. Comintern is a word that can be uttered almost without taking thought, whereas Communist International is a phrase over which one is obliged to linger at least momentarily. In the same way, the associations called up by a word like Minitrue are fewer and more controllable than those called up by Ministry of Truth. This accounted not only for the habit of abbreviating whenever possible, but also for the almost exaggerated care that was taken to make every word easily pronounceable.

In Newspeak, euphony outweighed every consideration other than exactitude of meaning. Regularity of grammar was always sacrificed to it when it seemed necessary. And rightly so, since what was required, above all for political purposes, was short clipped words of unmistakable meaning which could be uttered rapidly and which roused the minimum of echoes in the speaker's mind... The use of them encouraged a gabbling style of speech, at once staccato and monotonous. And this was exactly what was aimed at. The intention was to make speech, and especially speech on any subject not ideologically neutral, as nearly as possible independent of consciousness. For the purposes of everyday life it was no doubt necessary, or sometimes necessary, to reflect before speaking, but a Party member called upon to make a political or ethical judgement should be able to spray forth the correct opinions as automatically as a machine gun spraying forth bullets. His training fitted him to do this, the language gave him an almost foolproof instrument, and the texture of the words, with their harsh sound and a certain wilful ugliness which was in accord with the spirit of Ingsoc, assisted the process still further. So did the fact of having very few words to choose from.

-- George Orwell, "1984"