Memes

I was being reactive too and that made me crass. Did that commenter deserve it? Not really.

My point wasn't directly to prove someone wrong (their content wasn't wrong, just poorly explained), it was my gut reaction to what I perceived as a type of scientist of any level who sees themselves as better and smarter than everyone else. The most effective way I've found to shut this down is to bully them about their own weaknesses because the majority of this "STEM is the only viable education and makes you smarter than everyone else" attitude only ever comes from people who've never done anything else with their lives.

Most of these types have never held a full-time job besides working in a lab and the totality of their professional and academic experience is in science. Communication, art, history, the "soft" sciences, are things to be made fun of and contain nothing useful in the minds of these types and that leaves them wildly unqualified to communicate science in any format. Their presentations suck, their explanations suck, and their writing and figures suck even if their science is very well done. This means their science is effectively useless because a huge part of the scientific process is communicating what you've done. Almost all of these people become PhDs and then continue this behavior long into their careers! It's not every PhD, but it's a significant portion.

The comment I replied to sounded to me like this type of person (the poor science communication, not the ego part), so my gut reaction was to reply as if to one of those people. I left my other reply because it seemed like a waste of time to shit on the only useful reply while contributing nothing to the conversation myself, so I get why it also looks like an ego trip. I'd peg my actions as more self-righteous than conceited, which is also a problem of ego. :)

Everything you've said is true and you'll just have to take me at my word when I say that the approach you described is how I approach others in my offline and professional life. I work hard to make sure my own science communication is always accessible to my target audience and gives what I see as the necessary context surrounding the topic as well. My intention is never to talk down to people with less experience in an area than me, but no one is perfect and I'm sure it can come off that way occasionally.

That said, my first comment was made in short temper against an assumption/projection of a person and it's something I'll probably do again despite knowing it's not the most useful approach because I'm a fallible human and this type of forum tends to have a culture that encourages this behavior. What I mean by this culture comment is very evident on Reddit, but less so on the spaces I frequent on Lemmy. Commenters frequently leave very confident replies that are factually incorrect or unclear. There is no other way to combat this directly than to call it out and doing so in a way that shuts them down. Not shutting them down leads to drawn out arguments where the person who is wrong dogs in their heels. Yes, you are right that putting someone on the defensive just leads to more of stubborn replies.

I believe poor or inaccurate communications of technical topics can be more harmful than keeping the comment to yourself. It creates an uphill battle for those with expert knowledge and for those who don't have it, but are trying to learn. At that point, correcting the mistake becomes more about educating the commenter. Yes, corrections can theoretically help others, but I find it largely just propagates the false information. That's why I prefer to shut that part of the discussion down.

Additionally, I work in a space where credentials are weighted heavier than factual accuracy, direct critiques of those with power or credentials are dismissed as uncivil, while those from positions of power are not. The only ways to combat that force is to put your nose to the grindstone with those hopes that you one day gain the power that will lend you authority or you stop caring about credentials, offer a direct critique and deal with coming off as an asshole sometimes.

I guess I'm done justifying myself now, but I hope you understand the point of my justifications was to help explain the reasoning behind my approaches rather than to counter your critiques and absolve myself from my approach. I do justify my actions for myself, but sharing your reasoning always helps with empathy regardless of whether your actions are right.

I care less about replying or sharing my knowledge on social media these days, but your critiques are welcome and I have thought about my replies the last few days as well. Ultimately I decided to brush it off and move on after my last one despite disagreeing with your first reply, but I respect good faith discussions and think your last comment deserved a thoughtful reply. Thanks for putting up with me sharing most of my thoughts at length. I usually try to keep my comments short and unserious because I know that my serious replies tend to become very long otherwise.

You're right and I'll try to be less reactive and aggressive the next time I see a scientific comment that disappoints me. I replied more to a projection than to the actual commenter and they didn't deserve such a harsh response. Thank you for calling it out (and fuck Sheldon Cooper).