One of the first things you need to realize, when dealing with scientists, is that a lot of the time words have different meanings than you are used to. This leads to a lot of misunderstandings in communications between scientists and policy-makers or the general public. No one does this intentionally, but a lot of the time they are unaware that their points are not landing as they should.
One example of this can be found in the common words 'accuracy' and 'precision.' Ideally, every scientist would like their work to be both accurate and precise, and I think you would agree that that is, on the face of it, a good thing. But what if I were to tell you that those two words mean very different things to a scientist than they do to a policy-maker?
When we say 'accurate', we normally mean 'correct' or 'true'. Scientists see accuracy as a range, and the closer their results get to reality, the better.
'Precision' is a bit more complicated. If something is scientifically precise, it means the results are repeatable, and that repetitions of the experiment will produce similar results.
The easiest way to envision this is through the analogy of a dart board. A player with neither accuracy nor precision would produce target A: the darts are nowhere near the center, so they are not accurate, and none of the darts are near each other, so they are not precise.
A player with high precision would group all the darts near each other. It is possible to be very precise, but not at all accurate, such as target B. Imagine a series of studies which all produce similar results, but which do not reflect reality.
Ideally, a dart player wants to possess both accuracy and precision, continually hitting the bull's eye. And ideally, a scientist would produce work that is both close to reality and easily repeatable.
This is only one example of the specialized terminology used in the scientific community, though it's probably the most common. Other terms to be aware of include theory, law, and hypothesis. First commenter to provide good definitions of those gets a place on my blog roll!