TECHNICALLY SPEAKING Simple isHard


Explaining science plainly can lead to new insight—and a challenge


by Dr. Roberto Trotta T 94


echnically Speaking is a new column for Army AL&T magazine. Its title is frankly ironic, because its aim is to challenge subject-matter experts to explain a highly technical job, a system or a concept in the plainest lan-


guage possible. The point is that, as Dr. Jacques Gansler and many other former and present defense dignitaries have noted, DOD science and technology (S&T) experts often do not do the best job of explaining what they do and why it’s important.


Every work specialty—from short-order cooking to high-rise con- struction to nuclear research—has its own language, which often is shorthand for something that would be laborious or time-consum- ing to say in plainer language when probably everyone around the “office” knows what you’re talking about. Jargon can also be aspi- rational—learning it can be a rite of passage for people on their way to becoming highly skilled professionals. But a significant gulf remains in this society between the actual work of S&T and the public’s understanding of it.


For DOD and the Army, there are potentially very real consequences to this inability to explain clearly what the work is and why it’s important. If Capitol Hill doesn’t understand the value of a pro- gram, or if it is open to ridicule because it is poorly explained, that makes the case for funding much more difficult. Complicating the technical jargon are the additional levels of government jargon.


From Alan Alda’s Center for Communicating Science to the Ten Hundred Words of Science Challenge, there are many efforts to challenge highly technical people to speak plainly about their work. Through this column, Army AL&T is joining them with our own challenge to the Army S&T community.


For this inaugural column, we reached out to perhaps the most accomplished explainer of hard-to-understand concepts, Dr. Roberto Trotta, a British astrophysicist and author of the book “The Edge of the Sky.” Trotta agreed to be our inaugural explainer.


Army AL&T Magazine


January–March 2015


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