Actually I think both cancer and plastics needs to remain as jargon for their respective fields, and instead media should focus on specifying the important elements that are easily digestible to the public and also not too wide reaching. Somewhat of a lost art apparently.
To stay with your example, it would be like discouraging the media from saying "cancer is cured" when they actually might mean "this specific type of lung cancer has a cure". To bring it back to "plastic", the media could focus on saying things like "teflon coating encourages these negative reactions..." as opposed to "plastics are poisoning us" which is way too vague to matter.
Re:How Plastics Are Poisoning Us
by marcosdumay on Wednesday June 28, 2023 @12:09PM
(#36508526)
> General terms exist for a reason.
And on the case of plastics, that reason is that they are molded by the same processes.
It's about as relevant as talking about "metal contamination" of food when you are measuring mercury.
Re:How Plastics Are Poisoning Us
by concordDance on Wednesday June 28, 2023 @01:14PM
(#36509463)
I'd actually say that cancer as a general term is in fact very unhelpful given the varieties and probably does need to die.
I disagree, because, that's like me telling you "The word 'Cancer' needs to die." etc.
That would imply you'd be required to tell me the specific cancer you refer to when you say "you aren't going to get cancer from PLA or Teflon" etc.
General terms exist for a reason.