Are you frightened by quarks? Do you think that RNA splicing is something done between reels of bad movies starring genetically altered space creatures? Would you rather read your horoscope than an article about a new quasar?

If you answered "yes" to any of the above questions, you're not alone.

As scientists search for the next planet, the "top quark" and more effective vaccines, they often need also to search for new words to describe their findings. And while some of their etymological innovations, like "DNA," are incorporated into daily usage, most are as incomprehensible to the non-Ph.D today as they were the day they were coined.

This increasingly esoteric vocabulary contributes to popular anti-scientific sentiment, whether on Mass. Ave. or on Capitol Hill. While non-scientists may be willing to support federal cancer research grants, they are unlikely to want $3 billion of taxpayer funds to go toward the often controversial Human Genome Project if they are unable to understand why it is significant, let alone what it is.

Numerous commentators pointed to a growing mistrust of the scientific establishment, following a Congressional probe in 1990 into universities' billing practices for government-sponsored research.

Investigators uncovered a number of fraudulent billing items, but the probe only served to underline already existing skepticism about science and scientists on the part of elected representatives and private citizens.

According to Cornell professor of sociology Donald P. Hayes, scientific jargon is becoming more difficult to understand not only for non-scientists but for many scientists as well.

Scientists need to subscribe to increasingly expensive science journals--subscriptions begin at a couple hundred dollars--because the scope of each is becoming increasingly limited, says Hayes, who has been studying issues related to the English language for more than a decade.

The sociologist published a report last April in the British science journal Nature which compared the difficulty of vocabulary used in situations such as mothers talking to their three-year-old children with a scientific journal article on a complex biochemical reaction.

Using modern international English language newspapers as a standard of zero difficulty, Hayes found that science journal articles, near zero in the 1930s and 40s, have soared to extremely high levels of difficulty in the decades since--and there's no end in sight, as papers become more and more complex and specialized.

Hayes says that scientists invited to Cornell's chemistry department sometimes only speak with four or five faculty members within their particular interest, just because their work is unintelligible even to fellow chemistry Ph.D's.

More specialties mean "very narrow specialists judging very broad specialists," says Hayes, and a reduction in the flow of ideas between areas like chemistry and other scientific fields.

"If your field of expertise has enormous depth but not as much breadth as it did before, there are less referees and people to review papers," he says. "If you want recognition, you have to write to those who can grant it."

And while Hayes is reluctant to consider the issue of the public's trust in the science establishment, calling it "a bit of hand waving," he says a lay person may have trouble understanding fully the differences of opinion between two groups of scientists on matters of public policy--and may therefore be less willing to allow tax funds to go to basic research.

Without "pressure" foundations like the American Cancer Society, which use education to convey the immediate need for scientific research funding, the lay person is lost in a smorgasbord of scientific information impossible to digest without the help of scientific writers.