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Originally Posted by mrdarcy
This is a fundamental problem that I have with science writers (note that I say science writers and not scientist - two different species entirely)
They want to take an observable event in the natural world and define it narrowly, then argue infinitum that something or other doesn't fit in their narrowly defined definition.
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I think the problem that science writers have is that their targeted audience is usually not knowledgable about the subject. Therefore, the writer usually oversimplifies, throwing away nuance for the sake of clarity. It's the same way with education. In elementary school, we are taught that negative numbers have no square roots. But as we learn more and more about the subject, we can understand more about the complexities. When we reach highschool, we are taught about imaginare and complex numbers. The science writer is like the math teacher in elementary school. They are aware (even they don't necesarily understand) of the complexties in the subject, but must simplify it so that the students aren't overwhelmed.