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zebra2  ·  4316 days ago  ·  link  ·    ·  parent  ·  post: Commenting threads: good, bad, or not at all.

    The nasty comment thread polarized the opinion of readers, leading them to misunderstand the original article.

This is pretty important stuff when it comes to scientific journals. You often see people talk about how these journals ought to be open-access and free to the public. That's good and I agree... but scientific papers aren't written for the general public, and people need to understand that.

Publications are made with particular expectations about their audience: their training, experience, knowledge, and that they'll approach the topic with the appropriate amount of skepticism. Throwing just plain-anybody into the mix would not be constructive. Are the threads in r/science very constructive at all? More often than not, no.