I've written perhaps four articles to date and I'm already tired of defining what an "allele" is.  Granted I encounter this annoying waste of writing time more frequently because I prefer to write genetics articles, but regardless of my severe biases in writing, everyone who reads science news in this day and age should know what an allele is.  Therefore, I now REFUSE to define that term in my articles from this day forward. 

Needless to say, I am highly irritated because I realize that simply out of principle, basic scientific terms in biology should be defined in science articles.  However, this is the Sesame Street approach to scientific education because just like Sesame Street, it means that no background knowledge is ever required in order to understand what's going on.  In other words, despite the fact that your child is addicted to watching cracked out animations count for them on TV and is therefore a regular viewer, every episode is perfectly tailored for a child with a clean brain canvas.  For example, in order to learn about the letter "Z," you do not have to possess any knowledge of the existence of any other letters (by the way, stay tuned for next week's episode where we learn about "A" again).  This clean slate approach is also applied in most science articles.

The vast majority of the genetics related press releases and articles I read first describe how "mommy and daddy both donate 50% of their genetic material to their baby," prior to explaining the latest discovery in epigenetic regulation.  Cleary I have no problems defining complex terms, but at what point in time will journalists make the assumption that elementary science is common knolwedge?

Just imagine if the Sesame Street approach was how all courses were taught in school; you would learn something brand spanking new every day (a perpetual state of amazement), but surely no progress would be made because that basic knowledge you obtain during that day in class would never develop into an understanding of more complex concepts.

Therefore in my future articles, please excuse the fact that I will not explain what an allele is, nor will I explain that offspring inherit one copy of their genes from each parent, and don't you DARE think that I'll explain what a gene is and how it encodes "blue print" information for a cell.  That's right folks, I'm cutting you off cold turkey (take some acetylsalicyclic acid and you'll be fine in a few days).

Unfortunately, I do risk isolating some audience members, however, I am going to take the initiative by making the assumption that scientificblogging.com has an especially smart demographic and would therefore prefer I not insult them/waste their time by explaining basic terms in my articles.  I also encourage all other science writers to do the same in order to promote the progression of knowledge that was first taught in middle school. 

If an individual is actually interested in a subject, they will take a few extra moments to figure it out themself (i.e. Professor Google or dictionary.com).  If anything, not explaining basic terms associated with a given topic in every article will inspire people to conduct their own research which in turn, will improve their chances of remembering that term and therefore learn something in the process. 

In the mean time, I am now able to break Sesame Street dogma in science writing and spend more time providing readers with complex information so they can progress alongside the scientific community.