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Full list of all 24 ‘harmful’ terms scientists want to ban – including ‘female’, ‘survival of the fittest’ and ‘invasive’: Here’s what they want to say instead…
‘Female’, ‘invasive’ and ‘survival of the fittest’.
These are just three of the terms scientists now argue deserve to be banned.
In a new crackdown on ‘harmful terminology’ in science, members of the Ecology and Evolutionary Biology (EEB) Language Project – founded by scientists in the US and Canada – have published a list of 24 ‘harmful terms’ regularly used.
Deemed ‘offensive’, they’ve instead suggested a revised list of ‘replacement terms’.
Writing in the journal Trends in Ecology and Evolution, researchers said efforts to ‘champion inclusive language’ in science is ‘particularly important for redressing the ongoing marginalization of many groups’.
So which 24 terms are in the firing line?
| Harmful Term | Context | Replacement Term |
|---|---|---|
| alien / non-native / exotic / invasive | Xenophobic, anti-immigrant, and militaristic | Non-endemic species / Newly arrived species / Non-Indigenous species / Introduced species / Nuisance species |
| blind / double blind / plant blindness | Disability metaphor | Awareness |
| citizen science | ‘Citizen science’ is harmful to non-citizens who are excluded by that language | Participant science / Community science / |
| feminized / masculinized | Feminized implies that ‘feminine’ and ‘masculine’ are biological traits rather than social constructs | Describe the specific traits |
| gypsy | Racial slur used to incite violence against Romani people | ‘Spongy moth’ |
| man / woman | Highly anthropomorphic / Biases towards men or male traits | Male or female / Human |
| names after racist / eugenic / colonizers | They hold up problematic figures as noteworthy/someone to remember or celebrate | Use Indigenous names / Use local names / Name based on appearance or morphology / Remove names from concepts |
| survival of the fittest | Eugenics, ablelism, and social Darwinism | Natural selection / Survival differences |
| Gender | Gender, a social construct, is often conflated with sex | Sex |
| Hermaphrodite | Derogatory term used to cause harm to the intersex and trans individuals. | Monoecious/intersex/bi-gametic |
| Indian | A discrominatory, racist, term used to describe indigenous people | Indigenous |
| Male/female | These terms are used to reinforce societally-imposed ideas of a sex binary, emphasising cis-normative and hetero-normative views | Sperm-producing/egg-producing or XY/XX individual |
| Mother/father | These terms perpetuate a non-universal heteronormative and cisnormative view of the parenting and birthing process. | Parent/egg-donor/sperm-donor |
| Noose | Term associated with anti-Black violence and lynching | Lasso |
| Primitive/advanced | Used derogatorily towards humans or human practices, and also scientifically inaccurate as implies an evolutionary hierarchy | Ancestral/derived |
| race | Perpetuates the idea that human race is a biological rather than social construct when used to describe non-human subspecies | Population/subspecies/ecotype |
| virgin | A social construct that reinforces heteropatriarchal norms | Unmated |
| colonization / colonizer | Terms are harmful and triggering for Indigenous people that have been subjugated to colonialism, racism, and genocide and use of the term describes normalizes it as natural phenomonen rather than a destructive one with human context. | established / early successional species |
| discover / discovery | Erases the longstanding, detailed ecological knowledge of Indigenous communities that have been involved with local environments and ecosystems before colonialism and western science. | identified / described |
| harem | Perpetuates offensive stereotypes of human cultures, particlularly those of the Middle East, and evokes a sexualized human power structure in which women are assumed to be subjucated to men. | mating group / polygny |
| master / master file / master equation / master variable | Perpetuates harmful stereotypes and connotations to the enslavement of people of color and normalizes language implicated with slavery and enslaved people. | primary / main document / primary equation or variable |
| Old World / New World | Perpetuates a colonial and Eurocentric view of the world that is offensive to the international community and Indigenous peoples that lived in the region and contributed to scientific knowledge before European colonialism. | the relevant location |
| rape | Equates rape with a reproductive strategy rather than a violent and traumatic act, which can lead to dangerous misconceptions that is a natural behavior, and the use of the term forces survivors to be confronted with it which is traumatic. | forced copulation |
| slave and/or master / slave-making ants / slavery | Normalizes slavery and colonoliasm as a natural phenomonen in the wild, which if harmful to cultures and people of color subjugated to these practices and does not represent the animal behavior accurately. | host and parasite / ‘pirate’ ants / coercion |
In a new crackdown on ‘harmful terminology’ in science, members of the Ecology and Evolutionary Biology (EEB) Language Project – founded by scientists in the US and Canada – have published a list of the ‘top 24 harmful terms’ used in science