Iron Culture

Dr. Pak is back on Iron Culture for his third appearance! This time, he sat down with Omar and Dr. Helms for a meta-discussion on the challenges of science communication. How do you maintain credibility when you’re using social media as a science communication tool? This challenge has changed, but it isn’t new by any means. The “Sagan effect” describes the well-researched phenomenon by which the scientific community perceives other scientists who get more media exposure as less legitimate scientists - despite the fact that, on average, scientists more active in science communication typically publish slightly more often and with a higher impact than scientists less active in science communication. In modern times, however, the incentive structures are different, and many instances of expert creep, “selling out” and pseudoscience have been propagated on social media by some academics or members of the medical community. In this episode we discuss the challenges of attempting to communicate science without bein