Mixing science with community

In days gone by, the only way for a scientist to come to national attention was through an amazing scientific breakthrough, a career of outstanding work (that normally culminated in an award of national prominence) or through a major mistake (e.g., ethics breaches, data fabrication, plagiarism, scientific misconduct). Today scientists can work to make connections with a wider audience than the handful of post-docs and graduate students that comb through esoteric journals through social media. While many scientists have excitedly taken up Twitter,  I recently stumbled on this paper

The Kardashian index: a measure of discrepant social media profile for scientists 

Neil Hall

The author states that while social media plays an important role in outreach, there is a danger in it gaining too high a value, surpassing traditional measures of scientific value like citation indicies. To me Twitter is more about bringing in information than putting information out. It serves as a great aggregator of up-to-the second news and information as well as longer forms of formal and informal scientific inquiry both within and outside your specific field. Twitter has also proved invaluable at conferences for social networking and socializing.

This infographic from katiephd.com does a great job giving insight into the role of twitter in science today

Though on a more serious note, direct communication between scientists and the public is useful, especially when research/topics are controversial or not well understood. However, a recent study from Pew Research Center has indicated in a survey that people with dissenting views (or less popular views) actually participate less in discussions on-line. Interestingly, the study also revealed that people with less education were more likely to speak up. Moving forward, Twitter and other social media are not just for the distillation of science into manageable/understandable bits, so while some researchers may have more followers than they "should", sometimes its nice to just tell jokes.