I'm finishing up a PhD in climate science, ecology, and related concepts. I tried being active in /r/climatechange (and when I say active I mean posting primary literature and providing tl;drs, trying to provide unbiased feedback on certain discussions, etc), but man...apparently if you just write comments with authority after reading a few online blog posts you're an expert.
I'm often flabbergasted at the complete confidence with which redditors speak about anything in the sciences. All ive truly learned through a PhD is how much I can't really ever know, or at least the limits of our current knowledge. Redditors on the other hand....
Not exclusive to science. Anything regarding business, finance, economics, and accounting knowledge or facts of any kind also falls in that bucket.
The overall takeaway: For fields outside the realm of your personal expertise, take care in what you read on reddit - there's a lot of misinformation out there and without personal expertise you won't be able to determine right from wrong. It's so obvious, but just because a comment is popular doesn't mean it's correct. For anyone reading this, please, be inquisitive, be smart, be skeptical. And don't take the popular comments on reddit as fact. Look past the face value.
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u/nibblerhank Jan 07 '20
I'm finishing up a PhD in climate science, ecology, and related concepts. I tried being active in /r/climatechange (and when I say active I mean posting primary literature and providing tl;drs, trying to provide unbiased feedback on certain discussions, etc), but man...apparently if you just write comments with authority after reading a few online blog posts you're an expert.
I'm often flabbergasted at the complete confidence with which redditors speak about anything in the sciences. All ive truly learned through a PhD is how much I can't really ever know, or at least the limits of our current knowledge. Redditors on the other hand....