A Case Study in Misunderstanding
The media gets a bad rap for oversimplifying, misrepresenting, and even sensationalizing stories. Stories about science are no exception . But it is also no secret that the scientists themselves are under all sorts of pressures to oversimplify, misrepresent, and even sensationalize the science. But sometimes even good science and good reporting can lead to inaccuracies in “translation” that may look like (intentional) oversimplification, misrepresentation, or even sensationalization, when in fact these inaccuracies are due to honest, understandable, and avoidable misunderstandings. One of the sources of this honest misunderstanding comes from cognitive neuroscience’s usage of everyday mental terms. Often the scientists’ usage of mental terms differ in important respects from the everyday understanding of these mental terms, and the particular idiosyncratic (from the everyday-use point of view) ways in which the scientists are employing the terms aren’t always made explicit.[1] For an...