An example of simile/metaphor in public science discourse:
"But even after someone is infected, the host actually mounts, for all these [respiratory] viruses, a really dramatic immune and inflammatory response. So it sort of lights a fire. And even when the virus stops replicating, you know that fire continues to burn, and in a lot of cases that's what lands people in the hospital. And so you want to prevent the virus from igniting that fire, that is what really ends up causing a huge amount of damage to the patient. …
the greatest benefit [of the antiviral drug being tested] is in the outpatient setting before that fire gets ignited."
Dr Daria Hazuda
Dr Daria Hazuda, Vice President of Infectious Disease and Vaccines at Merck Research Labs and Chief Scientific Officer of MRL Cambridge, was being interviewed on an episode of 'Science in Action'. Read 'We didn't start the fire (it was the virus)'.
That the immune response to a virus 'sort of lights a fire' can be considered as a simile as the comparison is marked (by 'sort of') for the listener. The next sentence refers to how the 'fire continues to burn'. In isolation this reference would be considered a metaphor (as the immune response is described as that fire, not beng like a fire in some sense). It is quite common that once a simile has been introduced the marker is then dropped when the comparison is subsequently referred to.
Here the 'metaphor' is extended ('…you want to prevent the virus from igniting that fire…', '…benefit is in the outpatient setting before that fire gets ignited…'), so that this could be considered an implicit analogy – that is an analogy where the audience is left to map from the components of the analogue (fire, igniting, continuing to burn) back to the target concept of an immune response rather than this being made explicit by the speaker.
Read about examples of science similes
Read examples of scientific analogies
