Comment by ColinHayhurst | Hacker News Reader

Comment by ColinHayhurst | Hacker News Reader

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I too have worked in academia, and in partnership with them over 3 deacdes, so seen how the sausage is made. So I understand and recognise some of your points. Still we can and should be pro-science; but recognise that science in academia is extremely political, and increasingly bending to marketing pressures and industry influence.

A big problem, as I see it, is the unwillngness of academia to engage in debate with the public. Whilst academics nowadays are supported and encouraged to engage in "outreach"; the nature of that is almost always in broadcast mode.

In the age of social media, science needs to learn how to communicate, and engage with non-tenured people asking good, evidence based, questions. Sure they get bombarded with abuse and crackpots, but that should not mean ignoring absolutely everybody that approaches them with reason and civility; as so often happens.

Trust is breaking down in society. Is there any wonder, when trust grows from interaction?

I think there are more places where this applies:

> Sure they get bombarded with abuse and crackpots, but that should not mean ignoring absolutely everybody that approaches them with reason and civility; as so often happens.

I think it is a really hard problem. Figuring it if someone is arguing in good faith is hard. And engaging with someone arguing from bad faith is really draining. Besides the difficulty, people worry that engaging with some people will draw even more responses, many of them being in bad faith. Certainly only responding partially often leads to "yeah you are responding to them, but what about X".

I think in the end, wading through all the abuse is just so painful that many people decide to ignore input. And doing anything that might cause more abuse to flood in is reflexively avoided, since that abuse actually hurts.

Solving this is going to require specialization. Because being able to wade through the abuse is not something everyone can do. It will also require proper incentives to actually do this, because the people who can handle the abuse aren't going to do so out of charity.

Isn't the simple solution to just not engage with comments on social media? Honestly, that's where the problem is aka trolls and partisan bots. Have face to face conversations between scientists and skilled interviewers, the scientist supplies the answers and the interviewer generates the questions and keeps the conversation moving along and interesting for the viewer. Publish the content on social media since that is really the only thing it is good for but don't read the comments. We have specialists in this area already, they're called journalists. All they need to do is make a phone call, set up the interview and record it.

Couldn't agree more, man.

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