In 1970, Nobel Prize winner William Shockley made a dramatic declaration: that the average IQs of black people were significantly lower than those of whites, and that blacks of low intelligence should be paid by society to be sterilized. Shockley's Nobel was for work he conducted at Bell Telephone Labs that contributed to the discovery of the transistor. He was not an expert in genetics, biology, sociology, or anything to do with the human mind, behavior, or reproduction. Yet he was able to use his status as a “Nobel laureate” to get vast amounts of media coverage for his sterilization plan. Why did journalists give Shockley so much ink? Would they—or their editors—send a troubled child who needed help to a TV repair shop, or send a broken computer to the office of a psychologist at Harvard University? Why, then, would they quote a physicist like Shockley when writing about race and intelligence? The subject of the biology and genetics of behavior raises many questions like these. It is a fascinating field to write about, but it will take you into some pretty tricky terrain. You'll often find yourself (and your sources) moving back and forth across two vastly different scientific domains—the laboratory, which has traditionally been based on chemistry, biology, and experiments that can be duplicated and proven, and theoretical science, which aims to uncover and explain broad concepts about life. The people you encounter will have specific areas of expertise, but some may (consciously or not) attempt to make grand statements about how a particular idea or discovery may affect humanity. This is a huge, complicated, controversial subject just waiting to suck journalists into its hungry maw, from which it will spit us out in little pieces. Okay, I'm exaggerating (a little). But it can be overwhelming to figure out even how to begin. There's Darwin and cell biology, psychology, sociology, religion, and politics. There are historical figures such as B. F. Skinner and current stars such as Noam Chomsky at MIT and Harvard's E. O. Wilson and Steven Pinker. And there's the whole issue of racism at the edges.
On Translation Obstacles of Metaphorical Language