#terminology — Public Fediverse posts

TL;DR: "Psychologist" is a problematic term

Psychology has had a #terminology problem for 100+ years, repurposing natural-language terms which then feed back into popular usage and are now ambiguous or poorly defined. In my opinion one of the worst problems here is #Psychology and #Psychologist.

What do you think of when you hear "A psychologist said..."? A researcher? A clinician? Something else?

Imagine if M.D.s were called "biologists", structural engineers were called "physicists," or attorneys were called "philosophers."

Okay the last one is a stretch.

My point is that, in other fields, there are distinct terms for the people generating domain-specific knowledge and those applying that knowledge. In psychology we don't have that; both a researcher studying cognition and a therapist doing CBT are called "psychologist," despite having radically different jobs and different relationships to knowledge about human behavior & brains.

This won't change anything, because I'm just some tiny-college prof, and I am aware that there have been multiple attempts to fix psychology's terminology problems in the past. Nevertheless, here is my proposal, to the Gods of Language:

Psychology researcher: Psychologist
Psychology practitioner: Psychologer

Although I claim no restrictive copyright on the second term or this system, any gratitude-based donations can be sent to my personal PayPal.

#research #language #labels #ambiguity #academic #professor #therapist #counselor

The Modern Water Cycle – A Collection Of High-Quality Water Resources Connecting Humans To The Water They Move [teaching resources]
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https://watercycle.byu.edu/ <-- shared technical resource
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https://doi.org/10.1525/abt.2024.86.4.242 <-- shared paper
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https://watercycle.byu.edu/00000189-9386-dc93-a7ab-f3cef8d10001/camp-core-whole-book <-- link to graphic novel, 5th to 8th Graders
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“[They] have created and compiled many new resources that emphasize the two-way connection between humans and water…”
#GIS #spatial #mapping #water #hydrology #watercycle #education #teachingresources #educationalmaterial #waterresources #watersecurity #graphicnovel #humanimpacts #agriculture #farming #bluewater #greywater #greenwater #urban #desert #terminology #coast #coastal #suburban #interactions #wateruse #infrastructure #K12 #vocabulary

To use or not to use the term "#megafire"? 🔥

After Linley et al. (2022) suggested a standardized definition (> 10,000 ha extent) to reduce ambiguity, a new perspective by Stoof et al. (2023) recommends not using the term at all in science:
https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/geb.13791

I'm a fan of clear definitions and standardization of #terminology, but at the same time also wondering if we really need a special term for fires of a certain extent?

@wildfirescience @paleofire @ecology #wildfire #wildfires