Sexual harassment and diversity in academic term

A few months ago, a paper written by a researcher at Kyoto University was focused on criticism. It was not for its content but terminology.

The original article may have been entitled as "Sexual harassment sustains biodiversity via producing negative density-dependent population."

Journal of Ecology: Sexual selection sustains biodiversity via producing negative density‐dependent population growth

The point of this article is that some animals behave competitively to others which lead to maintain a proper density of population in the field.

In the region of animal ecology, "sexual harassment" means behavior of a male for interrupting other couple's copulation. Of course, animals do not do sexual harassment to others as same as that in human society.

However, the title ignited public attention negatively. Distant from the context of ecology, the sentence "sexual harassment maintains diversity" looks shocking, indeed. Finally, the author was forced to alter the term "sexual harassment" to "sexual selection."

I am sympathetic to the author in this case. Some academic term is used in a way people do not imagine in daily life. For instance, "delusion" is a technical term in psychiatry. We often say, "I am delusional to have sex with a celebrity." Psychiatrists never use the term "delusion" in this context. Delusion is defined as a strong belief of a person which is objectively irrational but hard to be altered even with appear evidence. If I were ordered to change the word delusion in my case report because many people feel it discriminative, I would not accept the order.

Nowadays, everyone can easily access vast information. Some of them require particular skills for appropriate understanding. On the other hand, specialists have to interpret difficult concepts in their academic regions so that many can accept them.