"If your science is correct but your communication is poor, you harm your own cause." This is the crux of so many errors over the past 2 years, (at least). I'm most likely guilty of it myself, along with personal biases.
Alasdair, your Substacks really should be published to a broader audience in my opinion.
“Some people are stating xyz. I believe this is wrong, here is why…” - But in published scholarship, this would be completely unacceptable. I get that quote tweets can cause pile-ons, but if you have a specific argument with someone else's statement, don't you want readers to know exactly what that statement is? That will help readers judge for themselves, and is also good discipline for you against straw-manning.
Sure, twitter's less civil than controversy in journals, but no scientist is forced to be on twitter.
This is an excellent post and I appreciate it. Can you put this in 280 characters so we can rtweet lol? Seriously I think it is a very sound piece of advice. I admired the little discourse you and Dr. Jay Bhattacharya had over a paper recently, both of you were very respectful and I remember thinking to myself “this is how it’s done”. I am thankful for substack because this is a much better platform for scientific discussion. Twitter is really such a pedestrian avenue!
Thank you for sharing your wisdom and knowledge, hope more and more more people see, read and comprehend!
Your common sense arguments are easy for people to follow. But what you have to remember is there is a $60 billion Pharma corrupted medical establishment that you are fighting against. Common sense and civility does not work under those conditions. They have declared war on us.
"If your science is correct but your communication is poor, you harm your own cause." This is the crux of so many errors over the past 2 years, (at least). I'm most likely guilty of it myself, along with personal biases.
Alasdair, your Substacks really should be published to a broader audience in my opinion.
The people who need to read this won't sadly.
“Some people are stating xyz. I believe this is wrong, here is why…” - But in published scholarship, this would be completely unacceptable. I get that quote tweets can cause pile-ons, but if you have a specific argument with someone else's statement, don't you want readers to know exactly what that statement is? That will help readers judge for themselves, and is also good discipline for you against straw-manning.
Sure, twitter's less civil than controversy in journals, but no scientist is forced to be on twitter.
This is an excellent post and I appreciate it. Can you put this in 280 characters so we can rtweet lol? Seriously I think it is a very sound piece of advice. I admired the little discourse you and Dr. Jay Bhattacharya had over a paper recently, both of you were very respectful and I remember thinking to myself “this is how it’s done”. I am thankful for substack because this is a much better platform for scientific discussion. Twitter is really such a pedestrian avenue!
Thank you for sharing your wisdom and knowledge, hope more and more more people see, read and comprehend!
Excellent set of guidelines, thank you.
Thank you for reminding me.
Not directly related to Twitter, but I was stunned when the BMJ described our pandemic response in terms of ‘murder’. https://www.bmj.com/content/372/bmj.n314
Interesting to see historical precedent for this
Your common sense arguments are easy for people to follow. But what you have to remember is there is a $60 billion Pharma corrupted medical establishment that you are fighting against. Common sense and civility does not work under those conditions. They have declared war on us.
You are blaming Semmelweis for the stupidity of his colleagues?
The same is still going on.
Nobel Prize winning proof that most doctors lack fundamental medical knowledge and thus sicken us with devastating chronic diseases
https://zenodo.org/record/3475557