a Mr Linder snip...
'I have seen way too many quotes of both scientist and beekeepers warning of  " suggestive evidence that neonics may have delayed effects"  or " solitary bees may be negatively affected"     

The key words in that line  to us is MAY,  but to casual readers and politicians  that word gets missed.'

my comments...
This is an important point you are making here Mr Linder and one I have tried to emphasize over and over again on various forums and talks.  Evidently many many folks don't get the point and I suspect many may believe 'the pointy head guy' is just trying to confuse the conversation when you (I) make this rhetorical point.  Beyond the 'casual reader' and 'politician' this tendency seem to infect much more of the population than the two groups you seem to enjoy calling out.  Past discussion here (if you wish to call them that) seems to suggest that some 'authorities' do this on every occasion that suits their purpose.   This seem to me to be the cognitive flaw in lots of folks thinking in that if some statement agrees with a person's agenda 'may' pretty quickly gets retranslated into an absolutely 'will'.  A bit of 'peer review' might correct these folks reasoning but of course they can't jump thru that hoop either.

Science largely works on probability statements and generally avoids absolute statements of certainty.  When I read some 'geeky' text my own tendency is to think of the use of 'may' as being the author(s) thinking that in the future this would be an interesting question to investigate.  It is speculative in it's use but for many many folks this 'possible' quickly gets translated as 'fact'.... fantasy become fact.   

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