What's in a name?

Andrew Matheson

In the book Alice in wonderland when the leading character is told 'you should say what you mean' she replies 'I do ... at least I mean what I say - that's the same thing, you know'. Especially in science, this is not the case, and the increasingly common use of computers to store and retrieve our data means that we must be precise in our terminology. People using different terms for the same concept - meaning what they say, but not necessarily saying what they mean - will result in valuable information being lost. The terms used for bee diseases, parasites and pathogens, and the conditions caused by them, provide a good example of this type of imprecision.