Bonus : The Perils of Science Communication

<p><strong>Update! </strong>Best place to find associated references are linked in our substack essay:</p><p>This is an essay that we originally posted on our <a href="https://pasayteninstitute.substack.com/">substack page</a>:<br><a href="https://pasayteninstitute.substack.com/p/the-perils-of-science-communication">https://pasayteninstitute.substack.com/p/the-perils-of-science-communication</a></p><p><strong>A Bonus Episode for The Field Guide to Particle Physics : Season 3<br></strong><a href="https://pasayten.org/the-field-guide-to-particle-physics">https://pasayten.org/the-field-guide-to-particle-physics</a><br>©2022 The Pasayten Institute <a href="https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/">cc by-sa-4.0</a><br>The definitive resource for all data in particle physics is the Particle Data Group: <a href="https://pdg.lbl.gov/">https://pdg.lbl.gov</a>.</p><p>The Pasayten Institute is on a mission to build and share physics knowledge, without barriers! <a href="http://pasayten.org/heysean">Get in touch</a>.</p><p><strong>A History Lesson</strong></p><p>In the film “<a href="https://www.pbslearningmedia.org/resource/nvfb-sci-einsteinsidea/wgbh-nova-einsteins-big-idea-full-length-broadcast/">Einstein’s Big Idea</a>”, French Scientist <a href="https://www.acs.org/content/acs/en/education/whatischemistry/landmarks/lavoisier.html">Antoine Lavoisier</a> is portrayed just as he discovers how to split water into oxygen and hydrogen gas, thereby realizing the conservation of mass in chemical reactions.</p><p>Lavoisier is generally credited with disproving the <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phlogiston_theory">phlogiston</a> theory of combustion and reframing Chemistry as a quantitive science.</p><p>This shift from the qualitative is emphasized in a specific scene where Lavoisier meets with an excited young man who is pitching his apparatus for observing heat. Lavoisier assertively dresses down the man for failing to meet the modern, quantitative standards of scientific experiment.</p><p>This man is la