How to Avoid Feeding the Troll and Save Your Time. III International ... 2. Social media tools for science. 1. Anatomy of a troll credits: JD Hancock/Flickr ...
SCIENCE AND SOCIAL MEDIA How to Avoid Feeding the Troll and Save Your Time III International Symposium on Postharvest Pathology Lorenzo Mannella | Bari - June 7, 2015
Credits: David Reid/Flickr
About me Lorenzo Mannella Science Writer
MSc in Plant Biotechnology MA in Science Communication
Project Manager at UNIMORE
@Loremann
credits: JD Hancock/Flickr
Summary 1. Anatomy of a troll 2. Social media tools for science 3. Anatomy of a “social” scientist
credits: JD Hancock/Flickr
Anatomy of a troll credits: Gregory F. Maxwell/Wikimedia
About internet trolls “Prototypical everyday sadists who just want to have fun… and the internet is their playground.”
-Erin Buckels, University of Manitoba
“Trolls aspire to violence, to the level of trouble they can cause in an environment. They want it to kick off. They want to promote antipathetic emotions of disgust and outrage, which morbidly gives them a sense of pleasure.” -Tom Postmes, University of Exeter
“A normal person who does insane things on the internet.”
-Jason Fortuny describing himself credits: Colleen Simon/Flickr
Comments can be bad for science
Distrust of science
Scientists vs Fear mongers
Communities
A cultural issue Trolls are agents of cultural digestion; they scavenge the landscape for scraps of usable content, make a meal of the most pungent bits, then hurl their waste onto an unsuspecting populace – after which they disappear... -Whitney Phillips
Social tools for science credits: 10ch/Flickr
Why are you on the internet? Once upon a time, submitting sequences via email used to be the only way to search GenBank, which typically took hours or even days to receive the results. How often do you wander around library stacks to find interesting books and papers? -Seogchan Kang
credits: Steve Jurvetson/Flickr
Your social toolbox at a glance
source: Nature News
Your social toolbox at a glance
source: Nature News
Ichthyologists hooked on Facebook The problem:
- Cuyuni River of Guyana - identify 5000 specimens - less than a week’s time
The solution: - they turned to Facebook - 90% of fishes identified - less than 24h credits: Donnie Nunley/Flickr
Sharing resources
Is it all about citations?
-Roy Amara
credits: Nick Harris/Flickr
We tend to overestimate the shortterm impact of a technology and underestimate its long-term impacts.
Anatomy of a “social” scientist
credits: Philip/Flickr
Misunderstandings
credits: Zach Weiner/SMBC
A lot of what is published is incorrect.
-Anonymous
credits: Roberto Rizzato/Flickr
This symposium on the reproducibility and reliability of biomedical research touched on one of the most sensitive issues in science today: the idea that something has gone fundamentally wrong with one of our greatest human creations. - Richard Horton
credits: Robert Couse-Baker/Flickr
15.000.000 people authoring more than 25.000.000 papers in 1996 - 2011 alone
85% of
research resources wasted
Solutions: large-scale collaborative research; replication culture; sharing; reproducibility practices; better statistical methods; standardization of definitions and analyses; more appropriate statistical thresholds; improvement in study design standards.
Sexism in science
“We hear daily claims about what is good for our health, bad for the environment, how to improve education, cut crime, treat disease or improve agriculture. Some are based on reliable evidence and scientific rigour. Many are not.”
-Max Delbrück
credits: A2K Design/Flickr
“The scientist has in common with the artist only this: that he can find no better retreat from the world than his work and also no stronger link with the world than his work.”
Conclusions
Don't underestimate trolls' impact on the public Learn to use social media better than trolls do Not everybody who screams at you is a troll credits: Olivier Hoffschir/Flickr
Thank You For Being Here credits: JD Hancock/Flickr
