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shogi_x t1_jdvm31w wrote

I wonder how Reddit's propensity to comment without actually reading factors into this. I've seen quite a few negative comments that essentially boil down to knee jerk reactions to the headline without actually clicking the link.

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pax27 t1_jdw6x0w wrote

Or how about the very common reaction "Well, everybody know that, why do the scientists even bother" or the classic "So how's that cure for cancer coming". There sure is a lot of trash comments on every science post. But then again, people are often just trying to get a few smiles, and a lot of times it can sound worse than it actually is. Maybe there can't be too much conclusions to draw from that type of behavior.

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deaddonkey t1_jdx6vk1 wrote

I imagine this is mostly the result of being a front page sub

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pax27 t1_jdx81d5 wrote

Very much so. I guess it's a reasonable trade off for wide spread coverage of science, even if some of it is just trendy nonsense or a cry for funding.

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MINIMAN10001 t1_jdzjfe6 wrote

Given the quality I typically see coming from the default subs /r/science survives the plague of being a default sub a lot better than most do.

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NewDad907 t1_jdxbnv7 wrote

Some of us are down rabbit holes and already know about the underlying foundational research, so a new study reiterating what we already know dressed up as a “new discovery” is eye-roll worthy.

It’s not what some new study says, it’s how it’s treated by others that I personally find annoying.

It’s sort of like how every other month NASA releases some “big news”….that amounts to yet more evidence of water on Mars. Can’t we just all agree there’s water on Mars. There was water, and there’s still water in places on Mars. Can’t that just be an openly accepted fact at this point?

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JaiOW2 t1_jdyice1 wrote

If it's already been studied it's not going to present anything as a new discovery, unless it found something in the same study / interaction that previous studies didn't, that's often why we perform that same study again, to deduce the consistency of the results, manipulate other variables or control more confounds, use tools or observatory measures we previously didn't have and to create a large sample. Wouldn't get past peer review doing the same thing that's been done 30 years ago and then claiming they made the novel discovery. It's never eye-roll worthy to see multiple studies performed on the same topic with roughly the same methodology, it's called replication and incredibly important for validity and consistency of the outcomes.

Sure, a journalist might pick up a new study and make some outlandish claim that it's discovered this new thing we've know for decades... but that's not the study doing it.

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NewDad907 t1_jdyjqra wrote

I know, I literally said:

”It’s not what some new study says, it’s how it’s treated by others that I personally find annoying.“

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JaiOW2 t1_jdylr27 wrote

> so a new study reiterating what we already know dressed up as a “new discovery” is eye-roll worthy.

You also said this.

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NewDad907 t1_jdyn98u wrote

Yes, “dressed up as a new discovery” by how it’s treated by other people.

What is up with Reddit the last week or so? It’s like half the user base’s reading comprehension has gone on vacation or something.

It’s either that, or people are just extra argumentative or something.

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JaiOW2 t1_jdyqjkg wrote

If you say a new study reiterating what we already know dressed up as a "new discovery" that sentence can be interpreted as you saying the new study is dressing up the discovery as something novel. I don't see why you needed to take a jab at my reading comprehension / character here, you could have just said, "I meant ... by this sentence not ..." and we'd be in agreement.

I read your comment as; first critiquing new studies trying to propose old discoveries as novel, and then going on to say you get annoyed at how the media or other people handle these studies and insert a lot of hyperbole.

I don't think this is an unfair interpretation, although if my reading comprehension has gone wrong somewhere, then explain where and how, because I evidently can't see where I've gone wrong (or I wouldn't have interpreted like so).

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midnightking t1_jdxbyz0 wrote

Yep, a good example is anything to do with racial bias.

''OK but did this study control for [insert variable].''

And then you open the study and it has already been controlled for.

Another thing I saw with a lot of studies on police violence and hiring discrimination where people in comments will say it's class and then when you show them a study that did try to control for class and still found an effect, they move the goalpost.

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Darwins_Dog t1_jdxta49 wrote

My favorite was the article about a recent uptick of strokes in young people. So many comments blaming the COVID vaccines but the data in the study was from 2018.

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nerd4code t1_je05bcc wrote

Damn that Fauci, stuffin’ ’em vaccines fulla tachyons!

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Stalagmus t1_jdzy532 wrote

This right here is what I see as the biggest problem on this sub. The top comments are always questioning the fundamental accuracy and utility of statistical analysis; sample size, sample composition, controls, confounding factors, bias, etc, despite all of these things essentially being statistics 101 that any undergrad would know to do. These aren’t advanced concepts that entire teams of professional scientists using outside funding somehow forgot to address, and that the entire scientific community somehow didn’t catch these basic problems and allowed the research to be published anyway.

What is really happening is that Redditors find a study in which they don’t agree with the conclusion, and proceed to undermine the credibility of the study (or the field) until other people start agreeing with them.

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Vericeon t1_jdvz4e8 wrote

Yep. Every time.

“Science-related headline”

Reddit: “We’re fucked.”

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AlarmedClub1204 t1_je035qp wrote

Our brains are biased toward negative information as a survival mechanism. Positive information is always welcome but negative information conveys a threat.

That said, there is very little any of us can do at this point. Scientists are discovering microplastics in infants, extinction events, new diseases, etc. No one cares, least of all corporations.

Dooming on social media won't do anything but depress people for no reason.

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nuevalaredo t1_jdwg9kc wrote

Unless i sign up, all im seeing is the abstract. I suppose many others redditors are similarly situated.

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Darwins_Dog t1_jdxtfeo wrote

Solid title though:

>Just another clickbait title: A corpus-driven investigation of negative attitudes toward science on Reddit

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jang859 t1_jdxlt5l wrote

I haven't read this article, but I bet it's all wrong.

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someting-simple t1_jdxvfxj wrote

I guess smart people(unlike me) just don't pay that much attention to internet comments. Even when tempted to participate they probably like:

" I'll just stay quiet" - just like irl

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rustybeaumont t1_jdyhlci wrote

Most journalism is painful to read, often making me tread through four paragraphs of “when mrs johnson wakes up every morning in her modest home, located in the country, rich with the smell of pinetrees and a gentle breeze from the neighboring lake, she finds herself, like millions of Americans, needing to take an array of pharmaceuticals…” just to find the handful of data points that the entire headline hinges upon.

Its like looking up recipes or something.

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[deleted] t1_jdya7fk wrote

I've seen people on Reddit straightup admit to only reading the headline before they comment. It's unbelievable how common this is.

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Canashito t1_jdydytu wrote

Some papers and experiments are also very low quality and lazy. Many redditors break them down in disappointment.

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sunburn95 t1_jdxvla6 wrote

And if they get called out theres a snarky remark about how the how the headline should've summarised the entire article

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Vlasic69 t1_jdy41em wrote

Lots of people compared to few can take in less information and come up with a less intelligent summary of information. I'm one of the few that enjoys reading everything.

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Specialist_Carrot_48 t1_jdz4mcr wrote

I sent some well meaning paragraphs about my recent spiritual development, and discussing finding out about a Buddhist monastery nearby, and he just said I don't like reading paragraphs ill read it later. Like some people really can't be bothered, and I don't necessarily blame people for not being avid readers like me, but it does show kindness and caring to read what someone writes. But I'm mostly ignored because my ADHD makes me overwhelming. Such is life, I'll find my tribe

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Vlasic69 t1_je3g6hl wrote

I recommend dieti g for adhd and exercise. Dr.Berg has wonferful ips. i don't eat sugar or carbs for my internal issues to heal.

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dezolis84 t1_jdyraly wrote

Can you blame them? Click bait title + pay wall + detached social media. Expecting more when the rules don't enforce it is pretty goofy.

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WheredMyPiggyGo t1_jdzk4ew wrote

I wonder if the concept that if you're wise enough to know there are things out there that you don't know you will more than likely view the sciences as a positive, of you however believe you know everything already, why would science be valuable to you.

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ScreenTea0 t1_je0e4hd wrote

Than it's also a little bit a problem of users uploading things without further infos. I hate to click out of the app. If someone has the need to inform people, or post on here at least in my world its just decency to give an Abstract about what you post. Many people on here just click on +, insert a link, choose the sub, post... That sucks big time.

0

MpVpRb t1_jdvrlxj wrote

Reddit comments tend to be negative and pessimistic about everything. This may often be the case because they are responding to an article, based on an overly optimistic press release. Science and tech press releases tend to use the word "breakthrough" when the work being reported on is actually a small, incremental advance at best. The press releases are intended to raise funds or increase buzz. They get published, almost verbatim, buy the tech press. Skeptical redditors, like me, respond

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iamfondofpigs t1_jdxz08w wrote

> Skeptical redditors, like me, respond

Yep. Especially on a science subreddit, the majority of comments should be critical.

If you go in person to a conference, or a paper presentation, the majority of questions will be critical. Not attacking, but questions that probe for weaknesses in the experimental design. This is not "anti-science sentiment." This is science itself.

On Reddit, the average level of expertise is lower than at a conference. So, a higher proportion of the criticisms will be spurious. But we should still expect mostly critical comments.

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JaiOW2 t1_jdyl3xj wrote

Critical analysis, and criticality are not always the same thing. So I can probe at the logical validity of a claim as a way to critically challenge the material, or I offload a bunch of adversarial gish gallop.

Both are being critical, one is doing it in an analytical or constructive mode. The other is doing it in a rhetorical or biased mode. Just being "critical" is not sufficient, science is critical in of itself but via the hypothetico-deductive model, it's not just critical, it has a logical system by which it facilitates criticality, that is, the criticality is systematic.

Criticality can be as irrational and illogical as it can the opposite. That shines here, the amount of criticality that stems from A) not actually reading the study or cherry picking small sections, B) not reading the authors conclusion or analysis and C) just reacting to the title, it's not that some individuals are spurious, it's that criticality without the scientific or philosophical foundations of reasoning is spurious.

Which I think has potential for feedback loops. Commenters without the academic understanding of the topic and systems might make judgements, that means you get an overly skeptical (or positive too) presentation in the comments, people reading the comments might derive their conclusion from the theme of the comments, rather than the paper itself, and thus you have a process by which a skepticism develops that sits upon rickety, rotten foundations. But the real crux is that a lot of critical comments can completely stem from a preconception (I disagree with the study -> so I'm going to find things to be critical of), that means that criticism is literally antithetical to science.

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iamfondofpigs t1_jdynusw wrote

I agree with all this.

I guess when I think of science, I think of a machine that sucks up judgments from biased humans, and somehow spits out results that converge on the truth. Of course, this convergence happens faster when the humans do their best to be less biased in advance. And the convergence can be reversed if the biased humans are bad enough.

So I'm willing to tolerate a lot of trash criticism if it means that a little good criticism also gets through. Maybe in the face of the current political environment, I should be less tolerant of trash criticism; not sure.

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jordanManfrey t1_jdzw9er wrote

> a machine that sucks up judgments from biased humans, and somehow spits out results that converge on the truth

cough chatgpt cough reddit comment voting cough

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DibblerTB t1_je05t37 wrote

Shallow social media hype, for profit, seems to be seen as a sort of baseline. Sigh.

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Taxoro t1_jdw5662 wrote

>Results showed that these views are most often expressed by describing scientists as corruptible, poor communicators, and misleading. Commenters particularly negatively evaluated social sciences, especially psychology, calling it pseudoscientific

The irony...

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marilern1987 t1_jdw63kl wrote

These are the same people who thought they were pioneers against misinformation during Covid.

I’m no anti-masker, but it does amaze me how Redditors claimed they believe in science, and then they will go on to discredit any scientific article they don’t like, self diagnose themselves with slow metabolisms, starvation mode, and push this idea that we have insulin resistance via the internet and need to eat keto

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guiltysnark t1_je0l344 wrote

Are you describing a lack of internal self consistency in individual people, and not the cacophonous dissonance you inevitably get when you lump a large number of very, very different people together into one group?

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marilern1987 t1_je0nily wrote

I’m talking about people who spent a great deal pushing for the right science, only to follow pseudo science in other areas of their lives

If you look at the comment history of some of these people, they will argue basic physics

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Cheshire90 t1_jdygqyr wrote

I'm guessing the analysis is less reflecting on how to improve science communication and more about how it's the children who are wrong.

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DibblerTB t1_je05pqv wrote

So much social science posted here on reddit is just that, opiniated poltical overhyped garbage.

Having opinions is fine, being an intellectual drawing upon a catalogue of knowledge discussing something not explicitly studied is how society works. "Science says Im right" due to weak studies saying something remotely in your direction is concealed heavy handed politics.. It deserves no respect as science.

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dumnezero t1_jdvjc7d wrote

Very meta.

>A new study examined comments given on the Reddit forum “r/science” to discover how commenters express negative attitudes towards science. Results showed that these views are most often expressed by describing scientists as corruptible, poor communicators, and misleading. Commenters particularly negatively evaluated social sciences, especially psychology, calling it pseudoscientific. The study was published in the Public Understanding of Science.

...

Batchelor, Jordan. "Just another clickbait title: A corpus-driven investigation of negative attitudes toward science on Reddit." Public Underst. Sci., 12 Jan. 2023, p. 09636625221146453, doi:10.1177/09636625221146453.

>The public understanding of science has produced a large body of research about general attitudes toward science. However, most studies of science attitudes have been carried out via surveys or in experimental conditions, and few make use of the growing contexts of online science communication to investigate attitudes without researcher intervention. This study adopted corpus-based discourse analysis to investigate the negative attitudes held toward science by users of the social media website Reddit, specifically the forum r/science.

>A large corpus of comments made to r/science was collected and mined for keywords. Analysis of keywords identified several sources of negative attitudes, such as claims that scientists can be corruptible, poor communicators, and misleading. Research methodologies were negatively evaluated on the basis of small sample sizes. Other commenters negatively evaluated social science research, especially psychology, as being pseudoscientific, and several commenters described science journalism as untrustworthy or sensationalized.

And the mods should've removed all of those. Press that Nuke button, mods.

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marilern1987 t1_jdw7b2r wrote

The problem is that there isn’t anything wrong with most of the studies, but HOW they are interpreted

A lot of things I see in this subreddit are legit - but the average person doesn’t always interpret it correctly.

For example: this past weekend, the article about birth control and breast cancer. Look at the comments on that post - a lot of the comments on that post failed to read the article, or interpret the results correctly. Meanwhile, birth control has been a known carcinogen for people with certain genetic makeups since 2007, but a lot of the comments were like “guess we’re screwed either way…”

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hellomondays t1_je0j6h2 wrote

Yeah, a lot of critical comments boil down to reading the abstract (at best) then not understanding the methodology section of a paper or being even aware of what limitations are or what the research question is and just saying something reductive and irrelevant about sample sizes or correlation fallacies.

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NewDad907 t1_jdxbv3o wrote

To be fair, some of the best scientists are the worst communicators.

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Darwins_Dog t1_jdxufis wrote

They're not usually writing for a public audience either, which doesn't help.

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iamfondofpigs t1_jdy1b1p wrote

Author Jordan Batchelor:

> Analysis of keywords identified several sources of negative attitudes, such as claims that scientists can be corruptible, poor communicators, and misleading. Research methodologies were negatively evaluated on the basis of small sample sizes. Other commenters negatively evaluated social science research, especially psychology, as being pseudoscientific, and several commenters described science journalism as untrustworthy or sensationalized.

/u/dumbnezero:

> And the mods should've removed all of those. Press that Nuke button, mods.

I am not so certain.

  • "Corruptible": Conflict of interest is relevant and should be pointed out.
  • "Poor communicators": This accusation can be a jumping-off point for a commenter to clarify the authors' intent.
  • "Misleading": Always good to point out when an author makes a claim that is not supported by their own data.
  • "Small sample sizes": This is the one where I most agree with Batchelor. Commenters often slam down this criticism without thinking about its relevance. Still, scientists often make the opposite mistake of overvaluing statistical significance.
  • "Negatively evaluated social science": Many articles that get posted here under the social science tag are closer to political commentary than social science.
  • "Described science journalism as untrustworthy or sensationalized": This is straightforwardly true, though. The majority of the time I read science journalism, and then go on to read the actual research paper, the science journalism article makes stronger claims than the research paper itself.

No doubt, there are good and bad ways to comment on these problems. I'd like to see what words and phrases Batchelor actually looked for in the corpus, and I'd like some examples of what Batchelor considers to be unreasonable comments. I can't access the actual article, though. My normal search methods failed. And my, ahem, other methods failed as well.

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boooooooooo_cowboys t1_jdycwfd wrote

>"Misleading": Always good to point out when an author makes a claim that is not supported by their own data.

Be honest…how often do you see redditors actually engaging with the original article and giving valid critiques of the authors interpretations vs spitting out their knee jerk reaction to the headline? I’ve seen an awful lot of “poor communication” and “misleading” complaints that could have been cleared up by actually reading the article.

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Trill-I-Am t1_jdy1xv5 wrote

Accusations are net negative even if they instigate good discussion

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iamfondofpigs t1_jdy6hem wrote

Not sure what you mean. If I am to take you literally, what I'm hearing is, "/r/science would be a better subreddit if all critical comments were deleted."

I don't believe this is what you meant, but perhaps you could clarify?

When I use the word "accusation," I mean, "A claim that someone has done something wrong." This could be an accusation of malicious fraud; it could also be an accusation that someone has mistakenly used an inappropriate statistical test.

Is there a particular class of accusations that you think are harmful? Perhaps your definition of "accusation" is different from mine?

Would be interested to hear.

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YouAreGenuinelyDumb t1_je1cgf9 wrote

I disagree. It would go against the principles of the scientific method to remove all criticism just because it sometimes is unwarranted. I’m pretty sure every scientist has made many of these complaints at some point in their lives.

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TargetDroid t1_jdw4n79 wrote

So, you think banishing all critique will convince people that scientists aren’t corrupt or politicized, eh?

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dumnezero t1_jdw8wrb wrote

Yes, comments on reddit are unreliable. Here, a bit less so, but still mostly worthless.

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xxScienceLuvva69xx t1_jdx8gtq wrote

This comment is the problem exemplified, a snappy vast oversimplification that misses the point entirely. How did you read all of that abstract,think what you wrote was a suitable summary AND miss the irony in doing that??

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TargetDroid t1_jdx95b3 wrote

Are you talking about my comment? I have to presume you must be responding to the comment to which I was responding (and have therefore misplaced your comment as though it were a response to mine), but alas… perhaps not?

−5

xxScienceLuvva69xx t1_jdxd0fs wrote

>Are you talking about my comment?

Alas, I am responding to your comment.

Your presumption that I am responding to the comment to which you were responding is, alas in vein.

I am not responding to the comment to which you were responding, but to your comment (and have not therefore misplaced my comment as it is indeed a response to yours).

... Alas.

(Alas).

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slickhedstrong t1_jdvn6a2 wrote

the amount of cynicism here, where anything can be posted, is a healthy gate and a good inoculation for more casual audience.

science is an abstraction. r/science is a portal into a tiny fragment of that abstraction

and vigilance against accepting all posts to this sub as "truth" is not only healthy, but necessary for this sub's health.

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_OriamRiniDadelos_ t1_jdysnz6 wrote

Im so mad that no one mentioned the fact they only looked at r/science. It’s literally a subreddit to complain and comment about science headlines. And then sometimes for people to share some neat insight or expertise they got on a topic they love.

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RunGoldenRun717 t1_jdvu5i0 wrote

Negative toward science or just towards posts like "Scientists discover link between eating contaminated food and throwing up"?

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MineNo5611 t1_jdwqlyb wrote

There’s definitely a trend where Redditors vehemently disagree with or find the smallest ways to discredit studies that support conclusions they already disagreed with, while they agree without a second thought with conclusions that they already do agree with. There’s a lot of selective attention here. In fact, I’d argue that’s one of the main reoccurring issues I see whenever I find myself on a post on this sub.

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JaiOW2 t1_jdynej5 wrote

It's a near perfect example of confirmation bias and that's actually one of the central kinds of reasoning science challenges and tries to overcome with the hypothetico-deductive mode or more simply, deductive reasoning. I also agree, you can have two studies side by side, with roughly the same degree of validity, but the reaction in the comments can be of different polarities really entirely dependent upon preconceptions.

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daddydoc5 t1_jdwet1c wrote

Which is a fruitful line of research for any number of reasons. Glib comments not withstanding

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NewDad907 t1_jdxc60d wrote

See, when I see a study like that I just assume someone got lazy with their doctoral thesis.

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Doctor_YOOOU t1_jdw37v7 wrote

>Samples were often described as too small or inadequately created.

This is really interesting to me, and is definitely a communication challenge. There are a lot of reasons why people might perceive a sample as too small - maybe it is! There are a lot of logistical, funding, or statistics reasons why a sample might be the size it is. However, I am not sure those reasons are often communicated for fear of sabotaging one's own conclusions. Without explaining why a sample is the way that it is, it remains open to interpretation and easy criticism.

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1purenoiz t1_jdwiw0c wrote

If somebody can't explain statistical power, you can ignore their critique that the sample size is too small. People also do not know the difference between statistically significant and clinically significant.

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Doctor_YOOOU t1_jdwjtjk wrote

Absolutely, statistical knowledge is definitely an issue. Maybe the challenge is partially educating about statistics so the public has more tools to understand and interpret science

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YouAreGenuinelyDumb t1_je1ddn7 wrote

Oh man, statistical significance is a hard one to explain to people. I almost feel it should be re-termed.

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1purenoiz t1_je1poee wrote

Lots of terms in statistics could and should be renamed, according to my linear regression analysis professor who has a statistical distance named after him. Likelihood of effect by chance is close, but wordy.

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McCourt t1_jdxylbe wrote

The propensity for people to post dogshit pop science on here might be relevant....

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liberterrorism t1_jdwtzsj wrote

Isn’t an important part of science to be skeptical of new findings? One of the metrics the article uses is attitudes that scientists are corruptible, as if we should deny that bias can have a huge affect on research. Research that is funded by billionaire think tanks and corporations should be closely scrutinized, they aren’t paying these scientists for results that hurt their bottom line.

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Darwins_Dog t1_jdxxmuh wrote

Most of the time I see accusations of corruption here, it's completely baseless. Affiliations and funding are public and have to be reported in the publication. Big Whoever is not buying out associate professors at state schools to publish in low impact journals.

Being skeptical means reading the article and evaluating it's merits. People seem to think it means rejecting everything by default, then looking for reasons to justify the assumption.

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Sparkysparkysparks t1_jdzc1eq wrote

Yeah - throwing out allegations of corruption should be done very cautiously. Yet you often see people on this sub accusing scientists of corruption, sadly without even reading and understanding the study.

And I strongly doubt many people who have accused the scientists of corruption have contacted the editors because deep down they know their accusations are spurious. I can only imagine how these authors feel when reading this sub....

1

hellomondays t1_je0jmni wrote

The problem is that most comments are skeptical of the wrong things, like critiquing assumed structural problems with how a research study is designed even though their assumptions aren't true or are already discussed in the article linked. A lot of criticism comes down to "I don't like what I believe is the conclusion of this study, so I will find some sort of technicality to discredit it". All said with no understanding of what the research question in the study is, the methodology used, or what limitations the researchers have already pointed out. That's not good critique and it's definitely not useful. It's freshmen intro to research methods level discourse

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jeeper46 t1_jdwbe2a wrote

Is it Science, or Political Science....?

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narceleb t1_jdwhi9v wrote

Yup. I posted a comment here with links to three peer-reviewed papers. The mods didn't like the findings of those papers, so they deleted the comment and gave me a three day ban from all of Reddit.

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laser50 t1_jdxdrb3 wrote

Let's be fair being a true genius is super rare, being very smart is rare, being 'just' intelligent is less rare...

But the other portion of stupid still knows how to use reddit and the internet, and they do.

I do wonder which categories the comments mostly came from, where you post also says a lot about someone as well.

I some times feel like reddit has lost its ability to simply debate and discuss over argue, but I suppose that's happening everywhere

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Copious-GTea t1_jdxkw3r wrote

It should be noted that the researcher only looked at negative comments and did not evaluate any positive comments occurring in the same thread. The researcher should have used an NLP model that weights the balance of comments on an article into a sentiment score.

"Also, the analysis focused solely on negative comments and that is the reason why no positive themes were mentioned in the paper."

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Sparkysparkysparks t1_jdzc90h wrote

Dude, that's their research question. You can argue that they could have a different research question but they've used a good method for this one, and its a legitimate research question to have.

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Nova17Delta t1_jdxph0q wrote

Would that be science in general, or just the subreddit? Because one is a little more understandable than the other

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Toke_A_sarus_Rex t1_jdxqp2b wrote

Reddit and anon internet activity tends to lead to antithetical views, wonder how that was considered into the criteria for analysis

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[deleted] t1_jdxq4it wrote

Let’s do geopolitics now. Manufacturing consent is strong on Reddit.

1

Cheshire90 t1_jdyh72o wrote

>Commenters particularly negatively evaluated social sciences, especially psychology, calling it pseudoscientific.

One of the things people really love is conflating criticism of particular studies/articles with criticism of an entire field...

1

mdcbldr t1_jdz0426 wrote

Sounds about right. Other studies have shown a shift from analytical words to feel words over the last 30 years.

Science communication is not prime time stuff; especially in emerging fields. Scientist favor long, passive voiced missives that make it sound like the application of the observation is so esoteric that it has no practicable implementation.

The anti-science crowd wants the scientist to make categorical statements. Failure to do so calls the scientists into question. Scientist don't work that way. They are attempting to be precise in their statements.

Scientists are often asked to extrapolate the current, emerging data. We get it wrong on occasion. The anti-science crowd will take errors in extrapolaltion and claim that the scientist are evil, godless money his

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Marchesk t1_jdz6ow2 wrote

No mention of the replication crisis in the article, particularly in the social sciences, which might have something to do with a crisis of confidence, particularly when it's one study that seems to support a controversial political view, or a generalized principle of human behavior. The Marshmallow Test or the Stanford Prison Experiment being two such examples. Which may have something to do with sensational-sounding single studies being widely popularized, which need to be balanced against other similar studies.

Or how fat was touted as the primary dietary culprit instead of sugar because the sugar industry paid off scientists.

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koebelin t1_jdzgdnq wrote

There are lots of iffy social science in this sub. People tend to post with click bait titles.

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WallEx90 t1_jdzlm0p wrote

just from personal experience: yes. Its stunning how many redditors are going out of their way to fight for their indefencable opinions.

1

justingod99 t1_jdzpp84 wrote

Would love to see these studies released on Reddit attitudes towards bipartisanship, or, God forbid…opinions incongruent with their own.

1

gardenhack17 t1_jdzppw8 wrote

My favorite is when people offer that sexism and racism are prevalent in science because people are sexist and racist, and people, in spite of all of the evidence, think that that statement is the most unscientific and most improbable thing ever.

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revel911 t1_jdzyf3f wrote

Haven’t scientist always been seen as evil by religious nut jobs.

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OpenRole t1_jdzymov wrote

> The script collected around a million comments made to around 3,750 posts. Batchelor proceeded to clean the collection by removing posts that had less than 5 and more than 499 words. He also took care that there not be more than 5 comments from a single commenter in the collection for the study. The final collection of comments consisted of 177,296 comments made across 3 years, a total of around 7.75 million words in length.

5 comments over a 3 year period. In short, people who occasionally visit this sub, stumbled across it once or luckers. This isn't an analysis of the sub, but of the average person to interact with the sub.

That's like saying universities are dumb because most people entering the campus are undergrads and visitors.

To be fair, they did mention that a lot of complaints on the subreddit are about how sample populations are selected so I guess this comment is meta

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uniquelyavailable t1_je01drt wrote

I mean have you seen some of the trash that gets posted in r/science

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ScreenTea0 t1_je0drui wrote

Oh you don't say... Debunking the third video in a row of people claiming Mars would be an Alien Mothership because "government said so" (referring to a hypothetical paper not understanding what a paper is), or something is sucking up the sun, just gets you 10-30 lunatic comments about how possible it could be that there are aliens, and if it's not aliens it's god... Science has no room here, as the maturity that uses this platform are naive idiots that only play parrot for Headlines but have the need to scream the loudest.

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DarthArtero t1_je1guxu wrote

That’s not at all surprising…. Considering the bulk of people (myself included unfortunately) won’t always read posted articles and will only react to the clickbait headlines.

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twisted_cistern t1_je8v2sx wrote

Having been proudly censored by r/scienceuncensored I agree that actual scientific thinking is not well received on Reddit.

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irishcedar t1_jdwnwm7 wrote

...as they post on a mobile phone

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TekJansen69 t1_jdxhlr7 wrote

Science is just a bunch of assholes trying to figure stuff out./s

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Frunnin t1_jdy254i wrote

When science doesn't care about your feelings.

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MantisGibbon t1_jdyvkxr wrote

Who are these people that don’t realize the internet is just a bunch of people posting stuff to upset each other? None of it should be taken seriously!

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SevroAuShitTalker t1_jdzyasl wrote

It doesn't help that many posts I see (not necessarily in r/science) are incorrectly described by the OP. Like recently saying "speed of light in air" showing a det cord being used. Makes someone who doesn't have a scientific or STEM background distrustful or even more ignorant

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Diphda_the_Frog t1_jdvm8z1 wrote

Since when Science, the act of acquiring knowledge trought a step by step process to be able to validated that knowledge became a problem....

Some peoples do not understand the concept...

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SoNonGrata t1_jdvpgvh wrote

And most don't understand your disaster of a sentence. Did you have a stroke?

"Since when Science, the act of acquiring knowledge trought a step by step process to be able to validated that knowledge became a problem..."

"Some peoples do not understand the concept..."

Not when you write it like that.

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henryptung t1_jdvs53v wrote

>Since when did science, the act of acquiring knowledge through a step by step process to be able to validate that knowledge, become a problem...

It's not really that hard to fix. Not everyone learned English as a first language, and guy has more of a point to make than you do.

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SoNonGrata t1_jdvu98j wrote

Science became a problem when it linked with politics and business. The only science that gets any meaningful funding currently leads to patents and profits. Science is a tool. Corruptible and imperfect (gain of function, giving black communities syphilis). So it wasn't even a good point to make.

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Uncynical_Diogenes t1_jdvxyyv wrote

>became

Science has always been political however, and is likely to forever remain so. There was never some apolitical yester-year from which it has descended into menial politics, it has always been that way.

Nature did a pretty good 3-part podcast on the subject re: the Journal’s history with and approach to where science and politics meet.

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SoNonGrata t1_jdw36o7 wrote

I guess you are right. Learning about what Galileo went through in like 3rd or 4th grade was my first introduction to this. It's always been there.

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Laura-ly t1_jdxo9e6 wrote

I find it amusing that people are negativly commenting about science on their computors, laptops and cell phones...devices created by scientists. Oh, the irony.

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OscarMike44 t1_jdyfmme wrote

Well that’s cool and all but science is still factual whether you believe it or not. Sooooooooo

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ACupOfDuck t1_jdx5uiu wrote

Pfft, this is bs.. Someone actually gave money for this research? Could have wasted youe mones cheaper!

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Ferengi_Earwax t1_jdvxqyk wrote

I'm glad they decided to study this, but yeah, far rightera hate education and science.

We all know that already.

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Fellowshipofthebowl t1_jdvmwy2 wrote

When politicians use religion as a weapon and marketing tool they are empowering ignorance. No one is surprised.

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[deleted] t1_jdvib6b wrote

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[deleted] t1_jdvu3id wrote

[removed]

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