Why We're Shutting Off Our Comments Starting today, PopularScience.com will no longer accept comments on new articles. Here's why. By _Suzanne LaBarre_ (http://www.popsci.com/category/popsci-authors/suzanne-labarre) Posted 09.24.2013 Comments can be bad for science. That's why, here at PopularScience.com, we're shutting them off. It wasn't a decision we made lightly. As the news arm of a 141-year-old science and technology magazine, we are as committed to fostering lively, intellectual debate as we are to spreading the word of science far and wide. The problem is when trolls and spambots overwhelm the former, _diminishing_ (http://www.popsci.com/science/article/2013-06/president-obama-finally-does-so mething-about-climate-change#comments) _our ability_ (http://www.popsci.com/science/article/2013-06/first-its-kind-study-tracks-women-who-couldnt-get -abortions-when-they-wanted-them#comments) to do the latter. That is not to suggest that we are the only website in the world that attracts vexing commenters. _Far from it_ (http://www.motherjones.com/environment/2013/05/video-meet-climate-trolls) . Nor is it to suggest that all, or even close to all, of our commenters are shrill, boorish specimens of the lower internet phyla. We have many _delightful, thought-provoking commenters_ (http://www.popsci.com/science/article/2013-08/argument-against-algebra#comm ent-175743) . But even a fractious minority wields enough power to skew a reader's perception of a story, recent research suggests. In one study led by University of Wisconsin-Madison professor Dominique Brossard, 1,183 Americans read a fake blog post on nanotechnology and revealed in survey questions how they felt about the subject (are they wary of the benefits or supportive?). Then, through a randomly assigned condition, they read either epithet- and insult-laden comments ("If you don't see the benefits of using nanotechnology in these kinds of products, you're an idiot" ) or civil comments. The results, as Brossard and coauthor Dietram A. Scheufele _wrote_ (http://www.nytimes.com/2013/03/03/opinion/sunday/this-story-stinks.html?_r=0) in a New York Times op-ed: Uncivil comments not only polarized readers, but they often changed a participant's interpretation of the news story itself. In the civil group, those who initially did or did not support the technology — whom we identified with preliminary survey questions — continued to feel the same way after reading the comments. Those exposed to rude comments, however, ended up with a much more polarized understanding of the risks connected with the technology. Simply including an ad hominem attack in a reader comment was enough to make study participants think the downside of the reported technology was greater than they'd previously thought. Another, similarly designed study found that just firmly worded (but not uncivil) disagreements between commenters impacted readers' perception of science. If you carry out those results to their logical end--commenters shape public opinion; public opinion shapes public policy; public policy shapes how and whether and what research gets funded--you start to see why we feel compelled to hit the "off" switch. A politically motivated, decades-long war on expertise has _eroded the popular consensus_ (http://www.nytimes.com/2013/08/22/opinion/welcome-to-the-age-of-denial.html) on a wide variety of scientifically validated topics. Everything, from evolution to the origins of climate change, is mistakenly up for grabs again. Scientific certainty is just another thing for two people to "debate" on television. And because comments sections tend to be a grotesque reflection of the media culture surrounding them, the cynical work of undermining bedrock scientific doctrine is now being done beneath our own stories, within a website devoted to championing science. There are plenty of other ways to talk back to us, and to each other: through Twitter, Facebook, Google+, Pinterest, livechats, email, and more. We also plan to open the comments section on select articles that lend themselves to vigorous and intelligent discussion. We hope you'll chime in with your brightest thoughts. Don't do it for us. Do it for science. -- -- Centroids: The Center of the Radical Centrist Community <[email protected]> Google Group: http://groups.google.com/group/RadicalCentrism Radical Centrism website and blog: http://RadicalCentrism.org --- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Centroids: The Center of the Radical Centrist Community" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to [email protected]. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out.
