Oh, that? That’s just fascia.

Recently an anatomy instructor shared with us one of the fraudulent little secrets to his trade. When presented with a confusing, indiscernible, little mass of tissue, you must simply state with a confident tone “Oh, that? That’s just fascia.” People around you will usually nod knowingly, and proceed without challenge. In their minds, you’re an instant sage. Fascia refers to connective tissue that is widely distributed throughout virtually every part of the body. It’s sort of a catch-all term. Is that unidentified tissue really fascia? Who knows ! But by claiming that it is, you’ve evaded admitting any incompetence and usually no one will think twice about it!

So the expression “that’s just fascia” has now taken on affectionate application by our class. Don’t know the answer to the question? Why, it’s fascia!

This got me thinking about what the “fascia”s and catch-all terms of other disciplines are… (all of which are basically versions of “I DON’T KNOW!!!”)

• Languages: Oh that verb? It’s irregular.
• Statistics: What’s the correlation? Well, it’s multifactorial.
• Embryology: Why does the baby look like that? Must be a congenital abnormality.
• Theology: That’s one of God’s great mysteries.
• Field science: My results are off because of statistical variation.
• Lab science: My experiment didn’t work out because of measurement error.
• Fine arts: Why did they use that technique? Well, it’s up to their artistic license, isn’t it?

I’m sure that you can think of more of your own!