INSIGHTS

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on social media means dealing with nay-
LET TERS sayers, but it also provides the opportunity
to engage such people in thoughtful and
NEXTGEN VOICES productive science discussion.
Ashley Barbara Heim

Social media: Good or evil? Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology,

Cornell University, Ithaca, NY 14853, USA.
Email: abh229@cornell.edu
We asked young scientists to answer this question in the form of
a tweet: Is social media good or evil when it comes to science As with any new channel of communica-
tion, the signal-to-noise ratio can be very
communication? Read a selection of their thoughts below. Follow
low—if we learn how to listen.
NextGen Voices on Twitter with hashtag #NextGenSci. —Jennifer Sills E. Loren Buhle, Jr.
DNAnexus, Mountain View, CA 94040, USA.
Email: lorenbuhle@gmail.com

and effectively; and it’s free to everyone

Good
Early in the pandemic, I had a nightmare:
I went to my field’s major annual confer-
ence but forgot to go to all the parties.
Two years into the pandemic, I can defini-
tively say that Twitter is the next best
thing. If I can’t go to conferences, I can at
least have internet friends.
Caitlin M. Aamodt
(the writer and the readers).
Prosanta Chakrabarty
Museum of Natural Science, Department of
Biological Sciences, Louisiana State University,
Baton Rouge, LA 70803, USA.
Twitter: @PREAUX_FISH
My classmates, friends, family, and neighbors
don’t read Science or subscribe to experts’
Social media has enabled delivery of
information in an economically solvent
manner to scientists and the general
populace in all parts of the world, making
science more accessible and equitable.
Veerasathpurush Allareddy
Department of Orthodontics, University of Illinois
at Chicago College of Dentistry, Chicago, IL
60612, USA. Email: sath@uic.edu
ILLUSTRATION: ROBERT NEUBECKER

Department of Neurosciences, University of blogs, but they might listen to me.

California, San Diego, La Jolla, CA 92037, USA.
Twitter: @CaitlinAamodt
Social media is a force for good. It levels
the playing field (you don’t need to be a
senior scientist to spread the message);
you can reach a broad audience quickly
Ádám Kun
Department of Plant Systematics, Ecology, and
Theoretical Biology, Eötvös University, Budapest,
1117, Hungary. Email: kunadam@elte.hu
Social media is becoming the go-to venue
for science communication. Sharing science
On social media, scientists have to be clear
and succinct, an incentive to eliminate
jargon and streamline the message.
Theresa Oehmke
Department of Mechanical Engineering,
University of New Hampshire, Durham, NH
03824, USA. Twitter: @t_oehmke

608 11 FEBRUARY 2022 • VOL 375 ISSUE 6581 science.org SCIENCE


People on social media serve as the best
reviewers of our work! #RealTimeReviewer2
Khor Waiho
Institute of Tropical Aquaculture and Fisheries,
Universiti Malaysia Terengganu, Kuala Nerus,
Terengganu 21030, Malaysia.
Email: waiho@umt.edu.my
Many current social issues stem from
humanity’s struggle with nuance. Social
media is not known for respecting or
encouraging nuance, but science is. And
if scientific discussion can add a drop of
nuance to the internet, who knows how far
the ripples could go.
Michael Raitor
Stanford, CA 94305, USA.
Email: mraitor@stanford.edu
Social media allows me to crowdsource
solutions to problems. Troubleshooting
programming bugs has never been easier.
Ming-Ju Amy Lyu
Center for Excellence in Molecular Plant Sciences,
Chinese Academy of Sciences, Shanghai, 200031,
China. Email: lvmj@cemps.ac.cn
Social media platforms can serve as
effective science communication if
research summaries, outcome measures,
and expert advice are sourced from and
linked to peer-reviewed journals, scientific
SCIENCE science.org
magazines, and websites of reputable
research organizations.
Sarita Kumari
School of Social Sciences, Devi Ahilya
Vishwavidyalaya, Indore, Madhya Pradesh 452001,
India. Email: yogsarita1993@gmail.com
Science relies on the public as much as
the public relies on science. Social media
empowers scientists with the tools to pro-
vide objective scientific discoveries directly
to the public, without intermediaries (such
as the media) that may be prone to modify
the information.
Isabel Marín Beltrán
Centro de Ciências do Mar do Algarve, Universidade
do Algarve, 8005-139 Faro, Portugal.
Email: imbeltran@ualg.pt
On social media, researchers connect with
young viewers directly and share crucial,
real-time updates. The scientific com-
munity should seize this opportunity to
democratize research, give voice to diverse
scientists, and encourage the next genera-
tion to pursue science.
Jiajia Fu
Whittle School and Studios, Washington, DC
20008, USA. Email: jjnaturalist@gmail.com
Attractive infographics and videos can
stimulate the interest of users. Moreover,
science communication through social
media in different regional languages can
quickly reach otherwise overlooked people.
Charu Lata
Traditional Knowledge Studies Division, Council
of Scientific and Industrial Research–National
Institute of Science Communication & Policy
Research, New Delhi, Delhi 110067, India.
Email: charulata@niscair.res.in
Science communication using social
media is convenient. In China, scientists
from different institutes establish WeChat
discussion groups, allowing them to share
novel ideas and discuss research progress
whenever and wherever possible.
Yongsheng Ji
Division of Life Sciences and Medicine,
University of Science and Technology
of China, Hefei, Anhui 230026, China.
Email: jiys2020@ustc.edu.cn
Evil
A growing number of self-appointed
experts peddling misinformation drown
out the voices of true scientists, who argue
with facts, not opinions.
Mpho Diphago Stanley Lekgoathi
Pretoria, Gauteng, South Africa.
Email: mpho.lekgoathi2@gmail.com
The mental health costs of misunder-
standings, attacks, and endless scrolling
SCIENCE AND SOCIAL MEDIA
are real. Let’s hope that new platforms
with better incentives emerge.
J. Steen Hoyer
Department of Ecology, Evolution, and Natural
Resources, Rutgers University, New Brunswick, NJ
08901, USA. Twitter: @jshoyer
Why are we conditioning ourselves to
think by digesting large volumes of short,
simple snippets? The short-term benefit
of a reaction isn’t worth the long-term
risk: losing the ability, and desire, to think
deeply and nonlinearly.
Stuart Parker
Montana Bureau of Mines and Geology, Montana
Technological University, Butte, MT 59701, USA.
Email: parkstua@isu.edu
Child: A good scientist is smart and hard-
working. Grad student: A good scientist
is competitive, persistent, lucky. Social
media: A good scientist is witty, popular,
and attention-seeking. Sometimes I
wonder if intelligence and hard work
still matter.
Anna Uzonyi
Department of Molecular Genetics, Weizmann
Institute of Science, Rehovot, Central Israel
7610001, Israel. Email: anna.uzonyi@weizmann.ac.il
A post is not a publication, a retweet is
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not a citation, and going viral is not verifi-
cation. #ScrollingIsNotPeerReview
Morgan Daly Dedyo
University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, PA 19104,
USA. Email: ddedyo@sas.upenn.edu
Social media platforms build algorithms
to display contents that maximize engage-
ment, rewarding sensationalism and
soundbites and penalizing more nuanced
discourse on complex issues.
Edward Lau
University of Colorado School of Medicine, Aurora,
CO 80010, USA. Twitter: @LauLabColorado
With scientific research, the devil is in the
details. With social media, there’s a lot of
devil with little space for details.
Samuel Nathan Kirshner
School of Information Systems and Technology
Management, University of New South Wales,
Sydney, NSW 2052, Australia.
Email: s.kirshner@unsw.edu.au
On social media, experts and non-experts
share the same microphone. Because pre-
cise scientific language is usually not very
appealing, the non-experts’ posts are more
likely to go viral than the experts’ posts,
and most readers can’t tell the difference.
Wagner Eduardo Richter
Department of Chemistry, Federal University of
Technology–Paraná, Ponta Grossa, Paraná, Brazil.
Twitter: @richterwe
10.1126/science.abo2409
11 FEBRUARY 2022 • VOL 375 ISSUE 6581 609
 Social media: Good or evil?

Science, 375 (6581), • DOI: 10.1126/science.abo2409

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