There are many words that have different meanings in different disciplines. Complaining that people using words in a non-scientific context aren’t using the definition of them that is common in the sciences is basically a status grab for scientists.
More specifically, I disagree that people use “accurate” and “precise” interchangably; they just happen to use them differently than scientists in a scientific context do.
Consider the difference between the statements:
The victim’s description of the suspect was accurate.
The victim’s description of the suspect was precise.
The former, to a layman, means that the description correlated well with the actual characteristics of the suspect; the latter means that the description was detailed to a high degree of granularity. This doesn’t correspond to the scientific usage, and… so what?
There are many words that have different meanings in different disciplines. Complaining that people using words in a non-scientific context aren’t using the definition of them that is common in the sciences is basically a status grab for scientists.
More specifically, I disagree that people use “accurate” and “precise” interchangably; they just happen to use them differently than scientists in a scientific context do.
Consider the difference between the statements:
The victim’s description of the suspect was accurate.
The victim’s description of the suspect was precise.
The former, to a layman, means that the description correlated well with the actual characteristics of the suspect; the latter means that the description was detailed to a high degree of granularity. This doesn’t correspond to the scientific usage, and… so what?
That seems to me to correspond to the scientific usage quite well.