Does Tweeting Improve Citations? One-Year Results from a Randomized Trial • Hacker News Board

Re: Does Tweeting Improve Citations? One-Year Results from a Randomized Trial

#51

Post by rasta78 » Mon, Jun 15, 2020, 9:06 AM UTC

jessriedel wrote: post #16

mhandley wrote: post #7

The research community really should do a better job of engaging with the wider world, irrespective of whether it increases citations. For example, I had this paper in Hotnets 2019, and about 80 people saw my presentation. But I also spent some time, turned it into a little video and put it on YouTube. 360,000 people have seen it there. Now the subtleties were probably lost on many of those people, but if only a few…

Most research is not useful or suitable to the wider world.

If you present your research such as even a 5-year-old kid understands it then it will be suitable for the wider world.

Re: Does Tweeting Improve Citations? One-Year Results from a Randomized Trial

#52

Post by bcraven » Mon, Jun 15, 2020, 9:14 AM UTC

austhrow743 wrote: post #40

jessriedel wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Most research is not useful or suitable to the wider world.

Would you say the wider world is interested in watching a video on "Using ground relays for low-latency communication in Starlink"?

If Tom Scott or a similar personality did a video on it, yes.

Re: Does Tweeting Improve Citations? One-Year Results from a Randomized Trial

#53

Post by DrAwdeOccarim » Mon, Jun 15, 2020, 9:35 AM UTC

Traster wrote: post #46

I find this incredibly unsurprising, if you follow journalists on twitter you'll hear the same thing over and over again. They say twitter is a disaster, every time you say anything slightly controversial you'll get dozens of random strangers attack you, and some will even permanently follow you insulting you until you block them. They also say they can't leave because it's one of the primary drivers of traffic to th…

Ugh, this is so right. A lot of the trolls are also just new accounts the IRL troll makes to keep harassing. And don't forget the bots and the hordes of paid trolls employed by either companies or foreign governments to foment decisiveness. It reminds me of the Simpson's episode when the teachers go on strike and Bart runs through the angry mob yelling inflammatory and accusatory tripe.

Re: Does Tweeting Improve Citations? One-Year Results from a Randomized Trial

#54

Post by barbegal » Mon, Jun 15, 2020, 10:03 AM UTC

The statistical analysis in this paper is really poor. Without the raw data I would say it is impossible to tell anything from this study.

> change in citations at 1 year (Tweeted +3.1±2.4 vs. Non-Tweeted +0.7±1.3, pI don't know what that pThe graphs that are used to illustrate the paper have completely different confidence intervals than the numbers in the paper and look too good to be true.

Given the average tweet was engaged with less than 16 times I really doubt that the effect size would be this big. This looks to me to be the case that a couple of good papers happened to be tweeted and that nothing statistically significant can be gleaned from this paper.

Having said that I am not a professional statistician so I would appreciate the input of someone more knowledgeable than myself.

Re: Does Tweeting Improve Citations? One-Year Results from a Randomized Trial

#55

Post by barbegal » Mon, Jun 15, 2020, 10:11 AM UTC

founderling wrote: post #39

Well, tweeting where ? If it is tweeted on an account with 0 followers, then certainly not, right? And when tweeted to one millioin scientists in the same field, then certainly yes, right?

> 4 articles were prospectively tweeted per day by a designated TSSMN (Thoracic Surgery Social Media Network) delegate and retweeted by all other TSSMN delegates (n=11) with a combined followership of 52,893 individuals and @TSSMN for 14 days

Re: Does Tweeting Improve Citations? One-Year Results from a Randomized Trial

#56

Post by shahinrostami » Mon, Jun 15, 2020, 10:14 AM UTC

Perhaps a "relevant" paper "The Kardashian index: a measure of discrepant social media profile for scientists" (https://genomebiology.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/s13...)

Re: Does Tweeting Improve Citations? One-Year Results from a Randomized Trial

#57

Post by barbegal » Mon, Jun 15, 2020, 10:37 AM UTC

shahinrostami wrote: post #56

Perhaps a "relevant" paper "The Kardashian index: a measure of discrepant social media profile for scientists" ( https://genomebiology.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/s13... )

This is just a joke paper, there is no statistical analysis in it and the key findings are: some scientists the author knows have more followers than others.

Re: Does Tweeting Improve Citations? One-Year Results from a Randomized Trial

#58

Post by n4r9 » Mon, Jun 15, 2020, 10:51 AM UTC

raxxorrax wrote: post #49

n4r9 wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I wonder if there's an inverse relationship between the level of pressure on scientists to publish, tweet, blog and demonstrate the social relevance of their work, and groundbreaking advances in fundamental physics.

I don't think so. The culture of publish or perish is certainly detestable and I don't think 160 characters are enough for a synopsis. But I don't think it negatively affects research. At least I hope so. Fundamental research and humanities both have these funding issues. It may be worth a discussion if these fields could benefit from increased public funding, because some forms of research don't result in an immedia…

I'd be really surprised if it didn't have at least some negative impact, not so much because of the amount of funding but because of what you have to do these days to get the funding. The more time and energy you force academics to spend on journal/conference submissions, grant proposals, impact assessments, and public outreach, the less they have to spend on research. I'd expect it to be especially true for more abstract subjects as they're harder to distill into a concise form or to describe the social impact of, and often require protracted periods of intense study/thought which admin responsibilities distract from.

Add to that the number of distractions that everyone is subjected to in the modern world, and I start to feel like it's no wonder we're still struggling with quantum interpretations or going beyond the standard model.

Now, I'm not saying that we should reduce the number of conferences or papers, or amount of outreach. Just the amount of time academics need to spend on them. Of course there will always be a few of the elite who will find time to sit and think for hours per day outside of these, nevertheless the harder you make it the more knowledge will suffer.

Re: Does Tweeting Improve Citations? One-Year Results from a Randomized Trial

#59

Post by ad404b8a372f2b9 » Mon, Jun 15, 2020, 11:30 AM UTC

mhandley wrote: post #7

The research community really should do a better job of engaging with the wider world, irrespective of whether it increases citations. For example, I had this paper in Hotnets 2019, and about 80 people saw my presentation. But I also spent some time, turned it into a little video and put it on YouTube. 360,000 people have seen it there. Now the subtleties were probably lost on many of those people, but if only a few…

It's a matter of incentives, having made such a video you no doubt have a good understanding of the time required to produce this kind of content. Even publishing clean, reproducible code, which should be the absolute minimum, takes a lot of time and is absolutely not rewarded. So when researchers have a choice between publishing two papers with no supplementary material or publishing a single one that is well documented, cleanly coded, with a blog post, a video explanation, etc... it's no question. With the current incentive structures the choice is made for you.

Re: Does Tweeting Improve Citations? One-Year Results from a Randomized Trial

#60

Post by the_omegist » Mon, Jun 15, 2020, 11:37 AM UTC

conjectures wrote: post #45

the_omegist wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's a noble practice but I think everyone should stick at what he does best, for a better overall efficiency. As long as you make your paper easily available, as another commenter said, another person can make it more comprehensible for the general public. One of the causes of the slowdown (even if marginal) of science and research in general is the administrative and social media overlays that were added to them.

> As long as you make your paper easily available, as another commenter said, another person can make it more comprehensible for the general public. I'm not sure you appreciate how hard this might be for someone who is not closely connected to a project. The people who can do that reliably will have: a) the academic chops on a similar level of a peer reviewer b) social media skills. a) puts them back in the bracket o…

Well I agree but I see it like a pyramid. You don't have to worry about people at the bottom of the knowledge pyramid getting access to the last breakthrough in some field if they don't already know the basics about that field. They will naturally access it when they "climb" this pyramid of knowledge through more specialized sources or studies.

More over : the population of people who are good at doing something isn't necessarily the same as the one good at explaining it.

It's like saying Newton would have to spend 20% of his time explaining to 14yrs old kids what he's doing when someone less capable than him would do it as good but would leave Newton free for what he does best.