Can Twitter Help Disseminate Scientific Information? (science.org) 92
Science magazine explores how actual scientists feel about Twitter:
"I like that there's a low bar to entry [on Twitter] — I can put something out and see how other scientists are thinking of a problem, people who have a different skill set than mine," says biostatistician Natalie Dean of Emory University, whose Twitter account has some 138,000 followers. But the pandemic has also helped demonstrate the limitations of social media. It can be difficult, for example, for scientists to be heard over the cacophony of messages on Twitter — some 500 million each day. And although some scientists have used the platform to elevate their online presence, that has rarely translated into concrete professional rewards....
[A]s the pandemic exploded and researchers sought to pump out information to each other and an eager public, many saw advantages to Twitter. Its vast reach became a draw: more than 200 million active daily users, including an estimated one-quarter of U.S. adults, according to the Pew Research Center. This allows scientists to use a single platform to share research findings with both peers and the public and to foster open discussions... One result is that the platform has carried posts about a majority of the total COVID-19 literature — about 51% of journal articles on pandemic research had been mentioned in at least one tweet through May 2021, according to a report by the Research on Research Institute (RoRI). That exceeds the number cited in scholarly articles or mentioned in several other communications venues, including news stories, Facebook, YouTube, Wikipedia, blogs, and policy documents. And it's well above the level before the pandemic, when studies found that just 10% to 30% of papers on any scientific topic got a mention on Twitter....
But an emerging body of research about tweeting suggests that, overall, scientists often struggle to be heard on social media. One study, for example, found tweets containing links to scholarly papers typically get little engagement. Of 1.1 million such tweets about papers published before the pandemic, half drew no clicks, and an additional 22% attracted just one or two, according to a 2021 paper in the Journal of the Association for Information Science and Technology.
An information scientist at the University of Ottawa tells the magazine that "We are really not at the point where we want to get, which is, ideally, seeing the impact of research on the greater good of society."
Thanks to Slashdot reader sciencehabit for sharing the story...
[A]s the pandemic exploded and researchers sought to pump out information to each other and an eager public, many saw advantages to Twitter. Its vast reach became a draw: more than 200 million active daily users, including an estimated one-quarter of U.S. adults, according to the Pew Research Center. This allows scientists to use a single platform to share research findings with both peers and the public and to foster open discussions... One result is that the platform has carried posts about a majority of the total COVID-19 literature — about 51% of journal articles on pandemic research had been mentioned in at least one tweet through May 2021, according to a report by the Research on Research Institute (RoRI). That exceeds the number cited in scholarly articles or mentioned in several other communications venues, including news stories, Facebook, YouTube, Wikipedia, blogs, and policy documents. And it's well above the level before the pandemic, when studies found that just 10% to 30% of papers on any scientific topic got a mention on Twitter....
But an emerging body of research about tweeting suggests that, overall, scientists often struggle to be heard on social media. One study, for example, found tweets containing links to scholarly papers typically get little engagement. Of 1.1 million such tweets about papers published before the pandemic, half drew no clicks, and an additional 22% attracted just one or two, according to a 2021 paper in the Journal of the Association for Information Science and Technology.
An information scientist at the University of Ottawa tells the magazine that "We are really not at the point where we want to get, which is, ideally, seeing the impact of research on the greater good of society."
Thanks to Slashdot reader sciencehabit for sharing the story...
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Wow, there's a lot of lying in that.
Robert Malone - minor author on one small paper decades ago, not "inventor" of COVID vaccines. Your miscitation to "western journal", a white-supremacist bullshit propaganda site, is telling there.
Martin Kulldorff - has absolutely zero credentialing related to vaccines and immunology. His "claim to fame" is a set of statistical algorithms, and the reason he was banned from Twitter and largely excised from the medical community is that his "Barrington Declaration" is C [washingtonpost.com]
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VAERS? Sorry, but we know that the data in VAERS is tainted by fucking inbred shitwits like you filing false reports. [science.org]
But the moment you started in with "You're fucked up. You talk like a fag" you revealed that your parents were related... before they failed to get married and conceived you in the back of a tarpool in some backwards klan-ridden trailer park.
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From your link:
And deliberate, false reporting to VAERS, which is a federal criminal offense, appears to be rare. "We don't have evidence that there is widespread fraud or gaming of the system," says Tom Shimabukuro, deputy director of CDC's Immunization Safety Office, which oversees VAERS.
That's not what you said when you linked it.
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That also doesn't say what you claim it says.
This is basic English, not rocket science. At this point, it looks like you are lying about whatever you link to.
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"Anyone can report events to VAERS (vaers.hhs.gov/reportevent.html) and a disclaimer on the CDC’s website says: “The reports may contain information that is incomplete, inaccurate, coincidental, or unverifiable” (here). When downloading the data, users are presented with a further disclaimer that the data do not include information from investigations into reported cases. The disclaimer also says, “the inclusion of events in VAERS data does not imply causality” (here)."
Go fuc
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"As we’ve explained before, anyone can submit a report of an event to VAERS, even if it’s not clear that a vaccine caused the problem. All reports are accepted into the database without determining whether the event was caused by a particular vaccine, and therefore, as a disclaimer warns, submissions “may include incomplete, inaccurate, coincidental and unverified information.” [factcheck.org]
“One of the main limitations of VAERS data is that it cannot determine if the vaccine caused the re
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I will remind you what you said before:
Sorry, but we know that the data in VAERS is tainted by fucking inbred shitwits like you filing false reports.
And:
False reports are crap [reuters.com]. And there are far too many infesting VAERS. The inbred antivax kooks have poisoned the well.
Yet you still have not linked to anything illustrating that except for a claim asserting the existence of "a recent report purportedly filed by Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro about an adverse event in a beach volleyball superstar". There is no explanation of why Brazil's president would spend his time filing a report in a database that is specific to the United States, much less any actual details of the purported filing. The claim stinks of misinformation, y
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"It is easy for an anti-vaccine activist—someone who is categorically opposed to vaccines and who sees themselves as a hero saving humanity from a costly mistake—to simply cherry-pick scary VAERS reports and present them as proof that a vaccine is known to cause serious harm and death, a tactic we could call “VAERS scare.”" [mcgill.ca]
In other words: don't trust the antivax inbreds who file false reports to poison the VAERS system, and don't trust the same inbreds who misrepresent VAERS data.
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I am still waiting for you to provide any information about actual false reports, much less evidence that they are a significant problem in VAERS. Instead, you still spam links that do not support your core contention. Your intemperate name-calling only serves to further demonstrate your mental immaturity.
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Wow, there's a lot of lying in that.
Robert Malone - minor author on one small paper decades ago, not "inventor" of COVID vaccines. Your miscitation to "western journal", a white-supremacist bullshit propaganda site, is telling there.
Your reply pretty much sums up the fucktard that you are.
The fact that you cannot read the OP comment correctly, he never ever said Dr. Malone invented any Covid vaccine, tells me you are a frigging idiot. Go away, your opinion is bullshit because it is based on your bullshit inability to read properly.
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Not true. I can post correct scientific information on Twitter all day long.
The problem is that nobody will read it, The vast majority prefer to read the juicy misinformation being posted by their favorite celebs and influencers.
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They should do that anyway, since it's still de rigeur to write so only five other people on the planet might understand you.
It's really not. Scientific papers are written trying to balance (a) being ACCESSIBLE to as many people as possible with (b) being as PRECISE as possible.
And it's not the fault of scientific researchers that, thanks to republicans, 80% of the population (especially in cousinhumper shitstates like Tennessee, Alabama, Missouri, etc) are functionally illiterate in both math and engl
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"No."
How about smoke signals, carrier pigeons, or teletype?
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Twitter is just fine for what it is
Nah. Twitter is like having a drainspout from the urinals in the bathroom that cycles right back to the kitchen tap. It ought to be destroyed.
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I don't use Twitter, so it doesn't get anywhere near my potable data supply.
The problem is, Twitter is like the cesspit that broke the Broad Street Pump [youtube.com] by dumping cholera-tainted effusal into the Thames. You may not even REALIZE that it's poisoning the dialogue around you but it is.
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That is a good analogy. I am reminded of a quote: "What do you get when you take 100 liters of pure drinking water, and 500mL of sewage? 100.5 liters of sewage." Social media is so tainted by misrepresentations, fact twisting, or outright lies that even with automated checks, it still isn't a place to trust.
The fact that we have so many different sites and sources makes this even harder, and with how people are so isolated, they rather move to a different social media network, rather than realize a cert
OriginOfCovid is an exception (Score:2)
It is patently obvious that a Lab Leak was at least plausible if not likely, yet it was almost impossible to publish anything about it in 2020. Facebook banned all mention of a lab leak.
This then changed in 2021, with Biden saying that it was plausible.
So the question is, who purifies the water?
Many virologists had a huge conflict of interest, most notably Peter Daszak who wrote an early Lancet letter condemning "conspiracy theories".
http://www.originofcovid.org/ [originofcovid.org] for details.
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Where does all this anger and abuse come from?
The bat coronavirus happened to appear in the city that has the world's leading laboratory on bat coronaviruses that proudly published their impressive results genetically engineering bat coronaviruses. Lab leaks are not uncommon throughout the world. And no natural source has been found after all this time, unlike SARS (civits), MERS (camels), Hendra (horses) etc. whose animal host were found within a few months.
So of course it is plausible. And I would woul
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Anger, anger, anger. Follow the link and you will find lots of evidence, for and against.
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You do know WHY the leading research facilities into things like animal-borne viruses are there? Because they built them there to study all the fucking animal-borne viruses that swamp that area of China. SARS was a thing, and they built the facilities in places where zoonic coronaviruses could be found.
So Yes, the facilities are there...but that's because that's where the coronaviruses are.
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Where "There" means China. China is a big place. The viruses are 1500km away.
Lots of anger. No useful knowledge.
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Yes, there are multiple research facilities into diseases of zoonic origin in China...it *is* a big place. The ones in Wuhan are there because that's where the diseases they are studying are.
I can't explain it any simpler than that. If you are hell-bent on seeing conspiracy theories, you will see conspiracy theories, no matter what the actual scientists say.
https://www.science.org/conten... [science.org]
https://www.nature.com/article... [nature.com]
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I am not aware of any diseases that started in Wuhan or the surrounding area. I would be interested to know if you have any actual information.
The three studies are pre prints that say that it must have started in the markets because that was a super spreader event. Alina Chan tore them to pieces. What is interesting is that they have still not been published in a credible journal, which surprises me. One of the senior authors, Andersen, attached Chan for "Scientific Misconduct" for daring to criticize
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Actually, from that science article, it surprisingly mentions Goa
"In the new preprint, Gao and colleagues analyzed 1380 samples from 188 animals in the market and the environment, including sewer wells, the ground, feather removing machines, and “containers.” They found SARS-CoV-2 in 73 samples. But because all were from the environment, not the animals themselves, they assert that humans introduced the virus to the market. The authors call the market an “amplifier,” not the source,
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Look up "Recombinant DNA" - the First World has had the ability to engineer viruses to target a particular ethnic or racial group (not just the general population) since the 1980's at least.
Understandably, the development of such a weapon would "complicate" international relations considerably.
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I have read many technical papers on this. Have you?
I am interested to hear arguments on facts. I am not much interested in arguments based on authority.
There is nothing that I am aware of in www.originofcovid.org that anyone has seriously disputed.
The head of WHO, Telos, has said that the WHO report was "inadequate". It was a travesty.
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I should add that www.originofcovid.org is full of specific citations. Read, follow up, and you will learn.
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Anger, anger, anger.
There is no doubt that the Wuhan Institute of Virology did genetic engineering on bat coronaviruses because they proudly published their excellent results.
There is doubt as to whether one of those experiments went wrong and there was a lab escape. But not what the WIV was doing in general.
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Play the man, not the ball (Score:2)
If you read the site it is all pretty reasonable. Neither you nor I have found any assertions that it makes that are obviously false. The citations seem reasonable.
If you are only interested in authority, then you will believe in weapons of mass destruction. But if you look a little bit under the covers you will see much more.
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I've got a better idea (Score:2)
Let's just throw a few equations into some random comic books.
I bet we get the same result.
Twitter is a doomsday machine (Score:2)
The deaf can't hear the hurricane siren (Score:1)
NO (Score:1)
Twitter, as its name implies, is a place for the "twits" to titter at each other, not for the disemination of useful information.
Anyone who is not a tittering twit should just stay away from the platform designed for tittering twits!
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Maybe (Score:2)
It is difficult to give a good explanation for something in only 180 characters unless you have a stream of thought thirty postings long. Very few people will want to read that much in the current format.
In addition, you have the sound bite issue. People want something short and sweet they can digest. This plays into my first point where multiple postings are not sound bites.
Then of course you have all the arm chair experts who wil immediately come out of the wood work to give comlete bullshit explanation
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It is difficult to give a good explanation for something in only 180 characters unless you have a stream of thought thirty postings long.
Tweets are 280 characters, probable typo there though. Anyway I've seen lots of multi-post tweets, and twitter recognizes them and organizes them for convenient reading. And the benefit of the format is that people are encouraged by it to actually put a complete thought in each tweet, if not each sentence. A sentence is supposed to be a complete thought, but most writing has a whole bunch of them that aren't, and they're in there for filler. Tweet threads tend to have a whole lot less of that bullshit, and
Theoretically (Score:2)
Twitter is basically casual conversation which has never been a good way to disseminate truth. It works great for gossip and lies. But expecting casual conversation to be useful to disseminate truth requires the majority of people to already believe the truth.
Fermat's last theorem (Score:2)
sci-hub (Score:2)
Not without a government mandate/bribe (Score:2)
They're a corporation. This won't drive engagement and therefore revenue. So no, they can't and they won't. They can't because the shareholders and they won't because the shareholders.
If you want corporations to do something beneficial then it's either an accident, a bribe, or you pass a law forcing them to do it. Those are you options.
Iamgine ... (Score:2)
Finding the truth on an internet web site.
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I might say you're a dreamer.
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No, Twitter is a shitty idea, devoid of any redeeming value. The character limits prevent any hope of reasonable discourse, because anything of any nuance or clarity is impossible to say in the length of a bumper sticker. The fact that Twitter got taken over by mentally inferior conservative bigots is a function of this, because it's quite possible to just spew and retweet bigotry nonstop in the length of a bumper sticker.
Twitter's very design is why the inbred conservative sisterfuckers can all crowd up
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Twitter's algorithms, like all social media, are designed to maximize engagement. And they keep experimenting with new ways to show you things you don't want to see, in an attempt to rile you up and create more of it ala Faceboot. Luckily so far their community of users has complained loudly every time, keeping them relatively in line, but you know if they were the social media leaders they would do whatever they want to you too.
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Don't blame the engineers for what the MBA's turned Twitter into.
The MBAs didn't write the algorithms, engineers did. Of course they get to share the blame. We're still acting like free will is a thing, right?
some excellent science tweets (Score:2)
Can Twitter Help Disseminate Scientific Information?
Yes, Rolf Degen's tweets [twitter.com] are an excellent example of that. Twitter format is a great match to his purpose, providing succinct summaries of scientific journal articles in Psychology.
The notion that "If you can’t explain something in simple terms, you don’t understand it" is differently attributed to various famous smart people, Einstein and Feynman, among them.
Forcing an explanation into a Tweet-sized limit plausibly improves clarity. Strunk & White exorted "“Omit needless words!
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Forcing an explanation into a Tweet-sized limit plausibly improves clarity.
To the public, yes. But for communications between scientists, not so much. There, detailed and complete communications wins out over brevity.
Science isn't a popularity contest. And turning scientific discussion into a "trending topic" will just cheapen it's perceived value and make people doubt it's validity. We already have problems with statements to the effect that "9 out of 10" whatever believe something. With no way for the average reader or even the press to validate non peer reviewed material. Or k
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>Science isn't a popularity contest.
No, but a career in science is. Putting credible authentic science is only a means to an end - gaining enough academic reputation to win that popularity contest.
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gaining enough academic reputation
Twitter 'likes'?
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Not so much how many likes, but who is liking it.
Twitter suppresses science (Score:2)
Try posting the scientific fact "A woman is an adult human with two X-chromosomes" on twitter and see whether it gets disseminated or you get banned.
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Technically, yes (Score:2)
Canons can also shoot t-shirts and potatoes.
I have a feeling that the same level of novelty is involved.