{"id":39301,"date":"2017-06-02T14:36:43","date_gmt":"2017-06-02T13:36:43","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blogs.bmj.com\/bmj\/?p=39301"},"modified":"2017-06-02T14:49:04","modified_gmt":"2017-06-02T13:49:04","slug":"jeffrey-aronson-when-i-use-a-word-the-ideal-shape-of-promulgation","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.bmj.com\/bmj\/2017\/06\/02\/jeffrey-aronson-when-i-use-a-word-the-ideal-shape-of-promulgation\/","title":{"rendered":"Jeffrey Aronson: When I use a word . . . The IDEAL shape of promulgation"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"jeffrey_aronson\"<\/a>Last week I suggested<\/a> that passive diffusion and active dissemination of the outcomes of research could together be called \u201cpromulgation\u201d. To promulgate is defined in the Oxford English Dictionary<\/em> as \u201cto make known by public declaration; to publish; esp<\/em>. to disseminate (some creed or belief), or to proclaim (some law, decree, or tidings).\u201d I rhetorically suggested that it came from the same IndoEuropean root as has given us words such as milk and emulsion. However, the dictionary gives an alternative possible explanation, that \u201cpromulgation\u201d is an altered form of \u201cprovulgation\u201d, an obsolete 16th<\/sup> century word with the same meaning. Vulgare in Latin meant to make something available to the mass of the population or to make something become generally applicable, and hence to publish. The related noun, vulgus, meant the common people or general public, but also public dissemination of information.<\/p>\n

According to Everett Rogers in his 1962 book Diffusion of Innovations<\/em>, there are four phases in which promulgation of the outcomes of research occurs: introduction, early adoption, late adoption, and never adoption. Rogers called those who fill these categories, innovators, early adopters, the early majority, the late majority, and laggards.<\/p>\n

Rogers acknowledged the contribution to these ideas of earlier work still, by Bryce Ryan and Neal Gross. A hybrid corn seed, developed in 1927, was rapidly adopted by US farmers, until it was in widespread use in the 1940s. Ryan and Gross studied this process in detail, and some of their results are shown in Figures 1 and 2, which I have redrawn from the data they gave in their 1950 paper<\/a>. The several assumptions that Ryan and Gross made included the following:<\/p>\n