What is the most ‘elegant’ lie or oversimplification that your field tells the public to make complex systems sound

Question: What is the most 'elegant' lie or oversimplification that your field tells the public to make complex systems sound simple?
- Keywords:
  complex,
  research,
  scicomm
Asked by pard532meed78 on 8 Apr 2026.
- Martin McCoustra answered on 8 Apr 2026:
  
  Scientists always make over-simplifications to try and explain complex ideas. But we also simplify complex systems to simpler models… We reduce the complexity to make the problems easier to understand and then gradually make them more complex. We are taught as scientists to think that way.

Question: What is the most 'elegant' lie or oversimplification that your field tells the public to make complex systems sound simple?