An example of metaphor in public science discourse:
"There are lots of different ways to get molecules to connect to each other, but the more complicated a molecule gets, the harder it is to control exactly where it will react, and the beauty of click chemistry as branded by Sharpless and Meldal, and bioorthogonal chemistry which is a cousin of click chemistry, these reactions have the special quality that they are so incredibly selective that the two reacting partners just ignore all the other functional groups even on really large molecules and even on large objects like human cells for example…
they find each other, but also like they might like bounce around each other until the right two functional groups find each other, right, and they'll click, and all the rest of the stuff on the molecule just, you know, just along for the ride."
Carolyn R. Bertozzi
Carolyn R. Bertozzi (Professor of Chemistry at Stanford), was interviewed on an episode ('Nobel Prize 2022: The science behind the winners') of BBC Science in Action.
