5 ms·
Ask HN: HN, but for Scientists?
Are there platforms/communities such as HN but mostly with scientists instead of CS/engineering people?
- andy_ppp 4y agoWould be awesome especially if people’s expertise or qualifications could be vetted by the community somehow…
- michaericalribo 4y agoI understand what you mean, but this sounds like it could quickly degenerate into gatekeeping: "You're not a scientist [by my definition]! No posts for you"
- f1shy 4y agoTotally. I think more freedom is better. The good comments from experts will be upvoted.
- andy_ppp 4y agoBut if you have comments on quantum physics from a quantum physicist there’s no harm in boosting them or showing them to the community for longer at the top of a post.
- MonkeyMalarky 4y agoAuthors should be accredited (as GP requested) , posts must cite sources (we are a scientific community after all!), reposts are low-effort so new posts must contain new content, posts should checked for quality.. hmmm sounds familiar doesn't it?
- andy_ppp 4y agoActually not bad to disproportionately favour experts when making posts on particular subjects. I guess this could be explored by a startup, I always love it when the community here comments on science stuff and give extremely informed examples. Formalising that is a good thing IMO.
- hwbehrens 4y agoThere are a fair number of scientists on HN actually, obviously with a bias for more computationally-heavy fields. If you had a specific (sub-)field of science that you were looking for, you might have better luck with your search.
- wuschel 4y agoNot similar to HN, if you mean a replica like Lobste.rs. Then again, the following communities have reached some critical user count: - https://mathoverflow.net/ https://mathoverflow.net/ - https://biology.stackexchange.com/ https://biology.stackexchange.com/ - https://physics.stackexchange.com/ https://physics.stackexchange.com/ - https://chemistry.stackexchange.com/ https://chemistry.stackexchange.com/ There are lots of scientists on HN, though.
- epilys 4y agoI've written an AGPLv3 no-js link aggregator with tags in Django/sqlite3 which I self host at https://sic.pm https://sic.pm but without an active user base. You can self host it for your own community however: https://github.com/epilys/sic https://github.com/epilys/sic
- phonebucket 4y agoI'd also love an HN-like community for scientists. The closest I know of is SciRate [1], where arXiv papers are posted. Users can then upvote and discuss them. I don't feel it has reached critical mass, so it's still of limited appeal to me. Though I know some quantum computing researchers that use it, so maybe it's dependent on the field. [1] https://scirate.com/ https://scirate.com/
- balsam 4y agoAs a scientist on HN, I usually start scrolling from the bottom of threads to find those overlooked comments by domain experts. Then upvote them even if I’m not certain that they speak the truth. Maybe that is unethical but I want to encourage scientists to participate even if the general atmosphere is kind of oppressive. I wish there were a way for scientists to tag themselves, maybe by getting shadow banned?
- Vt71fcAqt7 4y ago>even if the general atmosphere is kind of oppressive. Can you explain further and give some examples?
- tux3 4y agoDark humor would be to downvote this post :)
- Vt71fcAqt7 4y agoPart of the reason HN works is, in my opinion, the fact that its demographic is already terminaly online. (Or at least terminaly at the terminal, lol.) It's also a larger demographic than scientists. But as others have said there are scientists on HN. I imagine a "science HN" would for the most part just be links to journals with comments? That could be interesting.
- yrgulation 4y agoDepending on the science, but i often see amas or replies from scientists or paper authors on reddit (space, biology, history, etc).
- mach1ne 4y agoThat's a different dynamic though. It's one where there is a central authority (even if a questioned one), whereas HN is more of a flat & direct democracy.
- speedylight 4y agoMy personal recommendation is finding subreddits that are science centric, there’s r/physics r/chemistry r/science etc and I’ll bet my left but that any science subject you can think of has a corresponding subreddit you could subscribe to or browse.
- sideshowb 4y agoSome more than others. A lot of academics are also active on Twitter. (Not me. One day maybe I'll follow all the right people to generate what op is looking for, but I haven't really succeeded at that yet).
- type0 4y agoNot so sure, https://www.biostars.org https://www.biostars.org is like stackoverflow for bioinformatics. For Physics learning discussions - https://www.physicsforums.com https://www.physicsforums.com
- glitchc 4y agoResearchGate?
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- 3pt14159 4y agoEh—it wouldn't really work. Do you want to hear about a 1mm thick polymer when overlaid on a w-section of a certain size and brought up to a certain temperature has certain properties that make it better for loading patterns of structural members of a floating ship? Me neither. HN works partially because almost all of us code and almost all of that code, code at least some of the time with concern for the network. This unites the focus to certain types of companies and subjects. Scientists go down their own, squirrely rabbit holes.
- michaericalribo 4y agoYou wouldn't be the target audience. That sounds pretty interesting to me, and I'd be particularly interested in the science that underpins physical engineering — structured and systematic knowledge, rather than ad hoc engineering. Science HN would be for scientists, first and foremost, not hackers
- whatshisface 4y agoIf you're generally interested you would benefit a lot more from reading about the old stuff that everyone knows.
- 3pt14159 4y agoThis is kinda what I'm getting at with my original, downvoted post. It's a giant forest of tiny little details that scientists talk about. There is nothing close to the "we're all on the same(ish) page" that software developers have. The example I went with was one I had some partial familiarity with as a former structural engineer, but ever that I found boring, let alone what type of enzyme a specific frog in the amazon uses to evade the poisons of a given snake. The graph is too large for science to have any sort of meaningful discussion these days.
- ISL 4y agoYep. Sounds cool, especially if others in nearby fields have read the article and upvoted it. Which polymers do work well for that purpose? If HN had a tagging system for submissions, it'd probably be possible to have a quiet undercurrent of specialized fields working within HN itself. #HN_Science.
- darwinian 4y agoI have considered launching something similar https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25853298 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25853298 The problem is that bootstrapping takes significant effort without full time funding from a VC or institution. Most of the applied sciences are done right now on private/semi-private Slack groups.
- ducktective 4y agoHN is essentially for CS people. The number of non-CS engineering, even electrical/hardware engineering, discussions done here is abysmal. There is Hackaday but that is more like a blog...
- icapybara 4y agoI’m a scientist on HN. It’s mostly fine here, but sometimes the articles on science can get a little cringey (armchair scientists proposing theories of quantum gravity in the comments, etc). However, having seen the science community on Twitter, I don’t think a “HN for science” would be enjoyable.
- tkk23 4y ago>However, having seen the science community on Twitter, What's the problem with that community?
- guywithahat 4y agoI assume he means it's made up entirely of armchair scientists. From what I've seen it's a lot of 12 year olds reposing mother jones or Vox articles who think they've discovered the solution to climate change. Science communities tend to be a lot more political and tend to attract more kids in my experience
- icapybara 4y agoNo, the academic scientists on Twitter. It’s all PR and circle jerk, very little real scientific discussion.
- abcc8 4y agoIMO, the content can often be unrelated to science, as many tweets even by established scientists are about politics or other topics. There is also a large contingent of early career scientists trying to use twitter to get their name out there. Having a strong twitter presence can help assistant professors when to comes time for their tenure review, as peer name recognition does play a part in the decision (but there are other, better, non-Twitter ways to do this, too).
- icapybara 4y agoImagine a bunch of professors trying to be “influencers” instead of real scientists and you’ll not be far off.
- solardev 4y agoHave you tried r/science and r/askscience? It's still reddit, but more scienc-y than most of the web, at least. Also if there are specific subfields of science you're interested in, the smaller subs tend to be higher quality too.
- cozzyd 4y agoThere are orders of magnitude more CS/engineering people than practicing scientists. And as an experimental physicist who does a lot of technical things, I probably have more in common with the people on HN than with biologists, for example.