5 ms·

If clickbait gets people reading science why do we care?

louissan 5y ago
Yes the World needs more clickbait that takes to actual learning resources, not people-ish articles, property porn and other horrors. "Is this is the best XXX algorithm in the world?" "I have tried XXX low-level programming language and it's amazing!" "We went to the Science Museum and met XXX" "Top tips to enjoy working late at night on subject XXX and YYY" "Why STEM studies makes you look more sexy than XXX" "15 ways to look good while loving maths & physics" "You won't believe why the Riemann hypothesis was right!" "The 6 thing to do when banish Economics teacher fatigue" "Can't focus on XXX? Try this, it works!" etc, etc, etc.
dekhn 5y ago
I'll tell you why. I read clickbait about molecular biology when I was a teenager (quite some time ago) and ended up thinking that biology was far more advanced than it really is. it took me decades of training to understand that publicly, scientists are more optimistic and likely to overstate the quality and applicability to their results. It would have helped me a lot if the original articles about gene therapy had said "this is a very risky technology and it's likely it will never be approved because people are terrified of side effects"
- oneoff786 5y ago
  It took you decades of training to understand that?
  - dekhn 5y ago
    Yes. I'm a slow learner, and basically the entire training system makes it hard to recognize just how juiced biology scientific communications are. There are legitimate subfields, and journals that aren't as bad as Nature. I mean if you want to be a successful scientist you have to practice some level of reality distortion to make progress. I also didn't expect nearly all gene therapy would be stopped for over a decade due to a single patient dying in a trial in 1999: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jesse_Gelsinger https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jesse_Gelsinger That sort of educated me ot the fact that people take some medical risks really seriously (OH GOD EGGS HAVE CHOLESTEROL) and others they completely ignore/downweight (like Flu).
- richardfey 5y ago
  I am still waiting for de-extinction.

Yes the World needs more clickbait that takes to actual learning resources, not people-ish articles, property porn and other horrors. "Is this is the best XXX algorithm in the world?" "I have tried XXX low-level programming language and it's amazing!" "We went to the Science Museum and met XXX" "Top tips to enjoy working late at night on subject XXX and YYY" "Why STEM studies makes you look more sexy than XXX" "15 ways to look good while loving maths & physics" "You won't believe why the Riemann hypothesis was right!" "The 6 thing to do when banish Economics teacher fatigue" "Can't focus on XXX? Try this, it works!" etc, etc, etc.

dekhn 5y ago

I'll tell you why. I read clickbait about molecular biology when I was a teenager (quite some time ago) and ended up thinking that biology was far more advanced than it really is. it took me decades of training to understand that publicly, scientists are more optimistic and likely to overstate the quality and applicability to their results. It would have helped me a lot if the original articles about gene therapy had said "this is a very risky technology and it's likely it will never be approved because people are terrified of side effects"

oneoff786 5y ago
It took you decades of training to understand that?
- dekhn 5y ago
  Yes. I'm a slow learner, and basically the entire training system makes it hard to recognize just how juiced biology scientific communications are. There are legitimate subfields, and journals that aren't as bad as Nature. I mean if you want to be a successful scientist you have to practice some level of reality distortion to make progress. I also didn't expect nearly all gene therapy would be stopped for over a decade due to a single patient dying in a trial in 1999: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jesse_Gelsinger https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jesse_Gelsinger That sort of educated me ot the fact that people take some medical risks really seriously (OH GOD EGGS HAVE CHOLESTEROL) and others they completely ignore/downweight (like Flu).
richardfey 5y ago
I am still waiting for de-extinction.