{"slug": "scientists-speak-their-brains-please-don-t-call-us-boffins-2023", "title": "Scientists speak their brains: Please don't call us boffins (2023)", "summary": "Scientists are urging the media to stop using the term 'boffins' to describe them, arguing it is patronizing and undermines their expertise. The campaign, led by researchers from various fields, calls for more respectful language in science reporting.", "body_md": "### MOST POPULAR\n\n[AI](https://beta.theregister.com/tag/ai)\n\n-\nDATABASES\n\n#### Elastic stretches workforce 7% thinner as AI does more of the heavy lifting\n\nCEO says automation is enabling leaner teams as engineering is split into three core areas\n\n-\nSYSTEMS\n\n#### IBM stacks up a sub-nanometer chip future\n\nBig Blue shows off process node it claims can scale down to 1 Angstrom\n\n-\nChannel\n\n#### Infosys boss says vibe coding is no threat because there’s more to writing software than writing software\n\nDespite warnings of revenue deflation, chairman predicts AI will make more work, not less, for services orgs\n\n-\nsystems\n\n#### Micron locks in historically high memory prices for five years\n\nBig buyers agree to deals that will deliver historically enormous margins and profits\n\n-\nDevops\n\n#### Companies are not looking before they're leaping into the AI playpen\n\n93% of organizations report infrastructure incidents attributable to AI\n\n[Infosec](https://beta.theregister.com/security)\n\n-\nSecurity\n\n#### Russians are posing as Signal support to launch phishing attacks\n\nPLUS: US takes down Iranian propaganda sites; Marketing company asks 'Why Do We Have Your Information?' And more!\n\n-\nSecurity\n\n#### Microsoft patches failed to fix on-prem SharePoint, which is now under zero-day attack\n\nPLUS: China upgrades smartphone surveillance tools; Ring eases anti-snooping stance; and more\n\n-\nBlack Hat and DEF CON\n\n#### DEF CON Franklin project enlists hackers to harden critical infrastructure\n\nVoting village reports have been so successful, says Jeff Moss, that the whole of DEF CON will now be included\n\n-\nSecurity\n\n#### EQT buys majority share in Swiss cybersecurity biz Acronis\n\nWent at equivalent of $3.5B+ valuation for entire firm, though portion sold not specified\n\n-\nMalware Month\n\n#### Ten years since the first corp ransomware, Mikko Hyppönen sees no end in sight\n\nOn the plus side, infosec's a good bet for a long, stable career\n\n[FOSS](https://beta.theregister.com/tag/FOSS)\n\n-\n#### Blast from the past as GIMP 0.54 is revived in Flatpak form\n\nRetro-computing fun for the nostalgic with first (and last) release to use Motif instead of GTK\n\n-\n#### Bcachefs exits experimental status in new 'performance release'\n\nMore Rust, but more trouble with AI slop, too\n\n-\n#### France's digital sovereignty push is struggling to escape the Microsoft gravity well\n\nNextcloud rollout shows locally controlled storage is one thing; getting users off Office is quite another\n\n-\n#### History of CentOS: How a biochemist's Linux hobby project became the enterprise world's default operating system\n\nWhen a community came together after Red Hat said Windows was 'probably the right product'\n\n-\n#### Netflix wiz creates app to slash AI bills, then open sources it\n\nProject Headroom could save you big money, too\n\n-\n#### OpenBSD 7.9 arrives, a diamond in the rough proud of every sharp edge\n\nSixtieth release adds more cores, delayed hibernation, and basic Wi-Fi 6 without losing its ascetic streak", "url": "https://wpnews.pro/news/scientists-speak-their-brains-please-don-t-call-us-boffins-2023", "canonical_source": "https://www.theregister.com/offbeat/2023/03/29/scientists-speak-out-please-dont-call-us-boffins/1188823", "published_at": "2026-06-25 10:35:04+00:00", "updated_at": "2026-06-25 11:14:56.760576+00:00", "lang": "en", "topics": ["ai-research", "natural-language-processing"], "entities": ["scientists", "media"], "alternates": {"html": "https://wpnews.pro/news/scientists-speak-their-brains-please-don-t-call-us-boffins-2023", "markdown": "https://wpnews.pro/news/scientists-speak-their-brains-please-don-t-call-us-boffins-2023.md", "text": "https://wpnews.pro/news/scientists-speak-their-brains-please-don-t-call-us-boffins-2023.txt", "jsonld": "https://wpnews.pro/news/scientists-speak-their-brains-please-don-t-call-us-boffins-2023.jsonld"}}