You see, this is why I hate the internets.
Just got back from a performance at the Pawns' school (Elder Pawn was first clarinet in a fantastic rendition of Pirates of the Caribbean) and am now supposed to be washing up, but I happened to stumble across Emma PeelTigtog's rant on paradigm shifts:
I’m not the only person to be annoyed over the years by the egregious overuse of the term “paradigm shift”. I knew people were misusing the term, but not having actually read Kuhn’s seminal work wherein he coined the term, I never had the properly grounded basis to articulate why.
"Paradigm shift" gets nearly fourteen hundred hits in PubMed. That's a lot of paradigms being overthrown. I really can't be arsed going through and thinking about which ones are really paradigms, but much like my own bugbear, "quantum leap" (111 hits in PubMed) — why people get so excited about the smallest possible discrete advance is beyond me —, I suspect that even (especially?) in the proper sciences the term is much abused.
I'd say more, but the suds are getting cold.
Comments
You need to blame pharma companies and the marketing agencies without the wit to stop them from falling into the trap of calling everything a bloody paradigm shift. The number of satellite symposia I have seen and, in some cases, had the misfortune to be associated with that profess a paradigm shift is simply staggering. Other overused phrases include:
New perspectives
Emerging trends
New horizons
Revolutionising
... and a whole truckload of colon separators.
Pressure comes in part from the need for Wall Street to see a 'blockbuster'. Blockbuster should mean blockbuster - that is a drug with truly colossal revenue potential. Unfortunately, the clots on Wall Street don't think they can deal in anything but the shares of companies that have a bollockbuster in their portfolio; so everyone hypes up their drugs to the same degree. And can these blockbusters shift paradigms? You bet your ass they can!
Posted by: Nige | October 30, 2007 02:04 AM
And can we see these blockbusters at the movies?
Posted by: bk | November 2, 2007 07:46 AM
...and how about a prize for overuse of the word "egregious"...?
egre·gious
Pronunciation: \i-ˈgrē-jəs\
Function: adjective
Etymology: Latin egregius, from e- + greg-, grex herd — more at gregarious
Date: circa 1534
1archaic : distinguished
2: conspicuous; especially : conspicuously bad
Don't get a lot of play down around our parts.
Posted by: retroid | June 26, 2008 06:13 AM