If I went to my doctor with a physical complaint, and he/she suspected some specific ailment, no doubt a specific test would be ordered to confirm the diagnosis. If the test results showed that I did not have that specific disorder or, indeed, if a battery of tests showed that I did not have any disorder whatsoever, the results of the tests would be characterized by the medical people as "negative". Personally, I, being the person with the most interest in the process, would be most likely to term the results positive!
It seems to me that the medical professionals ought to look at the absence of disease in a more positive way! To call a test result negative almost suggests an air of disappointment that no disease was found...that somehow the test itself, rather than the patient, has become the center of interest.
Do any other professions employ this reverse usage?

Duncan, I see your point; try to see the doctor's: s/he's reporting on the result of tests attempting to establish the presence of a pathogen. The negative result is that there is no pathogen present.

The outcome (for you) is positive, but the result (of the test to establish presence) is negative.

Maybe this'll help: If you ask "Doctor, do I have cancer?", wouldn't you be delighted to hear the doctor say "Negative!"?

David

I work with producing a document containing statistics relating to schools in England. One of the statistics is the percentage of unauthorised absences (playing truant). The stats give the actual percentage, and the percentile in which that school falls (top 5%, top 30%, bottom 30% of schools, etc.)

I often hear from schools complaining that their figures are close to zero and we've placed them in the bottom 5%. For the the other measures, the higher the better, but some teachers don't seem to appreciate that, in this case, the lower the better!

quote:

The outcome (for you) is positive, but the result (of the test to establish presence) is negative.

In other words, we're polarized.

Of course your doctor might tell you that he/she has a positive diagnosis that the tests are negative.

There is this impression that many people seem to have that positive things are always good and negative things always bad. Whereas this might be the case, it is by no means an invariable rule.

In addition to the examples cited, there is the financial arena where credits are generally considered good and debits bad, even though all that the terms really indicate is which side of the account an item appears

We discussed the phenomenon of the long lines at our last presidential election here.

One of the factors that made the lines move more slowly was the wording of the "issues" that were on ballot. You have to read them all very carefully, because sometimes a yes vote will raise your taxes (for good or ill reasons) and sometimes a yes vote will mean that an important service will be discontinued. The Politicians word them in odd ways - I believe it's an attempt to swing the vote the way they'd like it to go.

Off topic a bit, I just found this quote by Adlai Stevenson: In America any boy may become President, and I suppose that's just the risk he takes.

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quote:

In America any boy may become President, and I suppose that's just the risk he takes.

In America any boy may become President, but in Canada no boy ever becomes Queen.

To return to the theme, there's the phenomenon known as "negative-option marketing". This thing raised its ugly head in Canada a few years ago and there was a nation-wide protest. I really think it was thought up by some bright-eyed-and-bushy-tailed Harvard MBA. Here's how it happened...
A large, established, national cable TV provider made an offer to its subscribers...they were offered a new higher-priced selection of cable channels (Package A). If a subscriber did not want the new package, the onus was on the subscriber to notify the cable company - otherwise the new higher-priced package would be automatically delivered. (This was only the first of two negative options in the plan. Read on...). If a subscriber did notify the company that he/she didn't want Package A, the subscriber lost the package he/she had had all along (Package B) and was delivered a new Package C which had significantly fewer channels. In other words, by not acting, the subscriber lost money, and by acting the subscriber lost channels. Negative option marketing. A marketer's dream!
I called the cable company to protest. I compared it to a door-to-door salesman threatening to take away my old vacuum cleaner if I didn't buy the new one he was selling. They weren't impressed or moved.
There was a nation-wide uproar over this. (In Canada, TV is important on those loooooong winter nights! Believe it or not, it landed on the floor of the House of Commons and negative-option marketing was OUTLAWED. Rightly so. I'm waiting for positive-option marketing to appear.

This type of thing of thing happened a few years ago in the States regarding privacy issues, except it was called opt-out. If you didn't want companies to share (sell, in many cases) your personal information, you had to notify them, or opt-out. Not opting-out was taken as tacit permission. There was a push on to outlaw this and to make it so you had to opt-in before your information could be shared. I don't know what happened to that. I don't know if the Cable companies use this tactic or not, since I don't have cable.

Tinman

In America any boy may become President, but in Canada no boy ever becomes Queen.[/QUOTE]

Now that is queer.

quote:

Originally posted by Richard English:
There is this impression that many people seem to have that positive things are always good and negative things always bad. Whereas this might be the case, it is by no means an invariable rule.

This highlights the way that the fashionable positive/negative has become debased by overuse.
Their use is acceptable in certain scientific contexts. For example positive or negative electric charge, or the unambiguous results of a medical / scientific test when the meaning is unequivocal. That apart, I attempted to eliminate them from my vocabulary years ago. Good and bad, right and wrong, are much better, shorter words— though doubtless, these too are open to subjective judgement.

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