Internet Trolls Are Destroying Scientific Debate

"Scientific Debate" by Nathaniel Gold

Today Popular Science announced they were shutting off the comments to their articles.  The decision was made because of internet trolls and spambots that were filling the comments sections of Popular Science articles with often angry, hateful, and sometimes downright false comments.  If you are a regular commenter or even reader of comments anywhere on the internet, I am sure you know that this is a problem that is prevalent everywhere, not just on Popular Science.  It is an issue that is hard to alleviate, though it can be mitigated through good moderating and login credentials.  Still, PopSci found it necessary to remove the ability for readers to comment.

Internet Trolls are Bad for Science Shows Research

So then why did they make this very serious decision regarding their website?  Interestingly, part of their decision was based on recent research that found the comment sections of articles, particularly those that are very forceful and hate-filled, can affect people's opinions of the scientific topic being discussed and polarize an audience.  As an op-ed in the New York Times discusses,

"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."

This is pretty fascinating research, and really paints internet comments in a bad light.   It does seem to have some merit, however, as people tend to default to the position of someone else when they struggle to develop a strong opinion of their own.  It is a social reflex that has its advantages, but does cause issues on the internet, where so many opinions (and spam) are so readily available to be consumed by unassuming readers.

I am disappointed, because part of why I started this blog was to spread scientific knowledge and hold good, intelligent, scientific debate.  This is something that is sorely lacking on the internet, primarily due to internet trolls hijacking comment sections.  My hope was I could create a little corner of the internet that was mostly free from trolls and spawned debate and critical thinking.  This recent revelation tells me this may not be as easy to do as I had originally thought.

None-the-less, I have no intentions on removing the ability for people to comment on this blog.  At least for the time being, I have more than enough ability to moderate the comments section on my own, though I hope I have to do as little comment removing as possible.  I appreciate all the intelligent, well thought-out comments that I have received so far, and I encourage my readers to continue to do so.  Thank you to all my current readers and commenters, and I hope this streak of great comments and conversations continues well into the future.