# Worst named scientific concepts **URL:** \ **Category:** Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share\ **Created:** [March 29, 2025, 7:00pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/worst-named-scientific-concepts/1016316 "2025-03-29T19:00:05Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 7
**Author:** ![Mangetout](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/mangetout/32/19_2.png) [@Mangetout](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Mangetout)\ **Post date:** [March 31, 2025, 8:29am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/worst-named-scientific-concepts/1016316/121 "2025-03-31T08:29:20Z")
It’s perfectly reasonable for ‘organic’ to have it’s own meanings distinct from the context of chemistry. It’s really the chemistry term that is the oddity, since it originated to mean ‘chemistry of or pertaining to biological organisms’, but doesn’t specifically mean that any more. ---
**Author:** ![Smapti](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/smapti/32/17938_2.png) [@Smapti](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Smapti)\ **Post date:** [March 31, 2025, 9:46am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/worst-named-scientific-concepts/1016316/122 "2025-03-31T09:46:27Z")
> [@dougrb](#): > > I alway thought it should be higgs bosom. I recall a poster ages ago referring to it as “the Higg’s boson”, implying that it was the property of some entity known as the Higg. ---
**Author:** ![HMS\_Irruncible](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/hms_irruncible/32/7394_2.png) [@HMS\_Irruncible](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/HMS_Irruncible)\ **Post date:** [March 31, 2025, 10:53am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/worst-named-scientific-concepts/1016316/123 "2025-03-31T10:53:02Z")
> [@wolfpup](#): > > The idea that information is somehow preserved is, at best, extremely contentious. The traditional view is that nothing is preserved except whatever mass and charge the object contributed to the black hole. AIUI Hawking radiation is simply the interaction with the event horizon of quantum fluctuations in the vacuum surrounding it – it conveys no information except that the intensity is inversely proportional to the hole’s mass. Fundamentally and by definition, it cannot possibly convey any information about anything inside the black hole. Be that as it may, there was a [famous bet](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thorne%E2%80%93Hawking%E2%80%93Preskill_bet) where Hawking insisted the above was true, and in 2004 he ended up paying out to John Preskill in the form of a pricey baseball encyclopedia. Though the conclusion was heavily qualified and does remain contentious: > [@](#): > > The [Euclidean](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Euclidean_space) [path integral](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Functional_integration) over all topologically trivial [metrics](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metric_(general_relativity)) can be done by [time slicing](https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Time_slicing_(physics)&action=edit&redlink=1) and so is [unitary](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unitarity_(physics)) when [analytically continued](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Analytic_continuation) to the [Lorentzian](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lorentz_transformation). On the other hand, the path integral over all topologically non-trivial metrics is [asymptotically](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Asymptote) independent of the initial state. Thus the total path integral is unitary and information is not lost in the formation and evaporation of black holes. The way the information gets out seems to be that a true event horizon never forms, just an apparent horizon. ---
**Author:** ![Tibby](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/tibby/32/17030_2.png) [@Tibby](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Tibby)\ **Post date:** [March 31, 2025, 2:46pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/worst-named-scientific-concepts/1016316/124 "2025-03-31T14:46:08Z")
I always thought the Islets of Langerhans sounded more like a luxury resort chain in the South Pacific—“_Come relax on the sugar-white sands on the islets of Langerhans!_”—not a cluster of microscopic hormone factories crammed inside a vertebrate’s pancreas. If my travel agent booked me there, I’d fire him. ---
**Author:** ![Mijin](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/mijin/32/9369_2.png) [@Mijin](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Mijin)\ **Post date:** [March 31, 2025, 3:44pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/worst-named-scientific-concepts/1016316/125 "2025-03-31T15:44:18Z")
> [@ftg](#): > > Anyway, technically it should be WZL compression although just “Welch’s” would be fine. Calling it WZL could backfire. I can’t remember any examples right now, but I think there have been a few times where a phenomenon named X-Y-Z Theory, or whatever, has been popularly abbreviated to “Z theory”, such that few people are even familiar with X or Y. Alas, I’m struggling to recall any right now, and it turns out to be the kind of search that chatGPT can’t do (like counting r’s in strawberry). ---
**Author:** ![Wendell\_Wagner](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/w/8491ac/32.png) [@Wendell\_Wagner](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Wendell_Wagner)\ **Post date:** [March 31, 2025, 3:48pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/worst-named-scientific-concepts/1016316/126 "2025-03-31T15:48:32Z")
The naming of the cluster of microscopic hormone production units inside the pancreas in this way isn’t that surprising. When they were first seen (using a microscope) by the pathologist Paul Langerhans in 1869, he called them islets because they looked like islands in an ocean under his microscope. The use of an older word for a new item (possibly by a clever analogy) is standard in the history of languages. Later scientists then called them the Islets of Langerhans. Many science fiction fans know that there is a short story by Harlan Ellison called “Adrift Just Off the Islets of Langerhans: Latitude 38° 54’ N, Longitude 77° 00’ 13” W". The first part of the name is just an obvious joke. But why that latitude and longitude. When you give a latitude and longitude to the degree, minute, and second, you’re giving the location to within a few feet. So what is that latitude and longitude? The answer is that it’s in Washington, D.C. It’s on the sidewalk on the west side of 2nd Street NE, about 25 feet south of the intersection of that street with H Street NE. If you look west from that spot, you see the entrance to the Union Station Bus Terminal. It you look north from that spot, you see a bridge above the street. This is extremely unlikely to be a random choice of a latitude and longitude. A randomly chosen one would be very unlikely to be in the middle of a big city. So why did Ellison title the story that way? I don’t know. Anyone want to do a seance and ask Ellison? ---
**Author:** ![Exapno\_Mapcase](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/exapno_mapcase/32/1051_2.png) [@Exapno\_Mapcase](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Exapno_Mapcase)\ **Post date:** [March 31, 2025, 5:10pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/worst-named-scientific-concepts/1016316/127 "2025-03-31T17:10:35Z")
> [@markn\_1](#): > > Are you sure it wasn’t Abstract Algebra? That is a more advanced topic suitable for a college class. I was in college, so the class was over 50 years ago. Misremembering the name? Sure. What can I remember from then? I do remember that the name wildly misrepresented the class. And the experience helped drive me out of math. We had a Chinese teacher who had just come from Switzerland and had barely comprehensible English. And the students he had taught in Europe had a different development path, so he thought he was building on what we knew rather than concepts we had never heard before. My most miserable class ever. ---
**Author:** ![markn\_1](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/f9ae1b/32.png) [@markn\_1](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/markn_1)\ **Post date:** [March 31, 2025, 5:14pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/worst-named-scientific-concepts/1016316/128 "2025-03-31T17:14:10Z")
That’s a shame. Abstract algebra is a very cool and interesting topic. My class in that topic was one of my favorite college classes ever. ---
**Author:** ![inf](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/i/8797f3/32.png) [@inf](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/inf)\ **Post date:** [March 31, 2025, 5:46pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/worst-named-scientific-concepts/1016316/129 "2025-03-31T17:46:46Z")
[Theory of mind](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Theory_of_mind) (it’s not a theory about the mind). Authors of psychology books often complain about this term but I have yet to read an alternative name for the concept. ---
**Author:** ![Exapno\_Mapcase](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/exapno_mapcase/32/1051_2.png) [@Exapno\_Mapcase](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Exapno_Mapcase)\ **Post date:** [March 31, 2025, 6:22pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/worst-named-scientific-concepts/1016316/130 "2025-03-31T18:22:17Z")
The Id. “Id” was a Latin term used by a translator to convey Freud’s “Ich,” which is German for “I.” The word is similar to the dark in dark energy, an unknown that drives processes relentlessly. Think of Cousin Itt on the _Addams Family_ tv show. People speak of the id with as much scientific precision as they use “black hole.” Latin “ego” - the self - was combined with the German “über” to form über-Ich - the “over-I”, which controls the Id. But in translation that became superego, with “super” meaning “above” or “over” much like über. Superego doesn’t convey the concept in the same way. Psychiatrists surely understand this, but the wording in English equally surely causes vast confusion among laypeople. ---
**Author:** ![Wendell\_Wagner](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/w/8491ac/32.png) [@Wendell\_Wagner](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Wendell_Wagner)\ **Post date:** [March 31, 2025, 6:36pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/worst-named-scientific-concepts/1016316/131 "2025-03-31T18:36:44Z")
> [@Exapno\_Mapcase](#): > > The Id. Unless you know about the id, how do you control the machinery of the Krell? ---
**Author:** ![markn\_1](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/f9ae1b/32.png) [@markn\_1](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/markn_1)\ **Post date:** [March 31, 2025, 6:40pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/worst-named-scientific-concepts/1016316/132 "2025-03-31T18:40:06Z")
Superego is the most obnoxious superhero ever. ---
**Author:** ![Andy\_L](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/c67d28/32.png) [@Andy\_L](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Andy_L)\ **Post date:** [March 31, 2025, 7:30pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/worst-named-scientific-concepts/1016316/133 "2025-03-31T19:30:13Z")
[![](https://img.youtube.com/vi/Qb6OckmgLUc/maxresdefault.jpg "Every Sci-Fi Movie in the 50s") ](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Qb6OckmgLUc) ---
**Author:** ![Exapno\_Mapcase](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/exapno_mapcase/32/1051_2.png) [@Exapno\_Mapcase](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Exapno_Mapcase)\ **Post date:** [March 31, 2025, 7:52pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/worst-named-scientific-concepts/1016316/134 "2025-03-31T19:52:56Z")
One of my favorites. [The secret afterlife of Robby the Robot](https://www.flyingcarsandfoodpills.com/holmes-and-walston). ---
**Author:** ![ftg](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/ftg/32/2801_2.png) [@ftg](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ftg)\ **Post date:** [March 31, 2025, 9:41pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/worst-named-scientific-concepts/1016316/135 "2025-03-31T21:41:36Z")
Another in the realm of mind stuff is schizophrenia, although it was merely a poor choice by the originator and the corruption by the public to confuse it with multiple personality disorder took off from there. (Although it did require seeing how two Greek words got turned into a Latinized term.) OTOH, it is an incredibly poorly defined syndrome that creates all kinds of problems in diagnosis, etc. OTOOH, many Psychiatric conditions are poorly defined. ---
**Author:** ![Chronos](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/chronos/32/134_2.png) [@Chronos](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Chronos)\ **Post date:** [March 31, 2025, 9:58pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/worst-named-scientific-concepts/1016316/136 "2025-03-31T21:58:09Z")
> [@Exapno\_Mapcase](#): > > I had a sophomore math class called something like Elementary Algebra. > > Like the Holy Roman Empire it was neither elementary nor anything I recognized as algebra. The current methods of teaching mathematics expect students to already understand algebra when they’re being taught arithmetic (that’s what the standards refer to as “number sense”). Which is fine, because algebra is much simpler to understand than arithmetic… except for some reason, we wait to teach algebra until after then, and even then, only teach one tiny piece of the subject, algebra of numbers, instead of the simpler forms. You don’t learn the easy algebra until you’re taking advanced college math classes. ---
**Author:** ![Lumpy](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/lumpy/32/446_2.png) [@Lumpy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Lumpy)\ **Post date:** [March 31, 2025, 10:16pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/worst-named-scientific-concepts/1016316/137 "2025-03-31T22:16:02Z")
Would’ja believe that at one point epilepsy was referred to as ‘seizure schizophrenia’, because it was thought that sufferers were “throwing fits” because they were insane? ---
**Author:** ![Pleonast](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/pleonast/32/1183_2.png) [@Pleonast](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Pleonast)\ **Post date:** [March 31, 2025, 10:34pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/worst-named-scientific-concepts/1016316/138 "2025-03-31T22:34:25Z")
My favorite humorous name is the [spherical square well](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Particle_in_a_spherically_symmetric_potential#Sphere_with_finite_%22square%22_potential) much beloved by neophyte quantum physicists. ---
**Author:** ![Smapti](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/smapti/32/17938_2.png) [@Smapti](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Smapti)\ **Post date:** [March 31, 2025, 11:03pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/worst-named-scientific-concepts/1016316/139 "2025-03-31T23:03:14Z")
> [@Chronos](#): > > The current methods of teaching mathematics expect students to already understand algebra when they’re being taught arithmetic (that’s what the standards refer to as “number sense”). Which is fine, because algebra is much simpler to understand than arithmetic… except for some reason, we wait to teach algebra until after then, and even then, only teach one tiny piece of the subject, algebra of numbers, instead of the simpler forms. You don’t learn the easy algebra until you’re taking advanced college math classes. Well, now I’m not sure I even know what algebra is, let alone whether I know it or not. ---
**Author:** ![Thudlow\_Boink](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/thudlow_boink/32/320_2.png) [@Thudlow\_Boink](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Thudlow_Boink)\ **Post date:** [March 31, 2025, 11:06pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/worst-named-scientific-concepts/1016316/140 "2025-03-31T23:06:39Z")
> [@Exapno\_Mapcase](#): > > The Id. “Id” was a Latin term used by a translator to convey Freud’s “Ich,” which is German for “I.” Actually, if I understand correctly (and I checked Wikipedia, which seems to agree), it’s the ego that Freud called “Ich.” The id is “Es” (“it”). [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/worst-named-scientific-concepts/1016316.md?page=6) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/worst-named-scientific-concepts/1016316.md?page=8)