Comments on: Why Scientists won’t use Twitter…

By: Steve Sicherman

Steve Sicherman — Tue, 03 Nov 2009 21:01:32 +0000

I think the best thing to happen to twitter is the potential onslaught of scientists that will eventually be utilizing this social media resource. We are going to tweet about all of our Popular Products on Twitter, including our New Molecules, General API Products, Compounding Products & TEVA API Products!

By: David Bradley

David Bradley — Fri, 20 Mar 2009 08:12:21 +0000

It’s such a stereotype to think of scientists as lonely individualists hunched over their Bunsen burners into the wee small hours and never seeing another soul until the experiment is complete. Have you never been to a scientific conference?

By: Oliver de Peyer

Oliver de Peyer — Fri, 13 Mar 2009 16:20:14 +0000

Perhaps Blackberries and other smartphones spoil us. An email is as easy as a txt message – but can potentially be much longer and contain other media.

By: Nash

Nash — Fri, 13 Mar 2009 15:51:51 +0000

Regarding all the other social networks , I agree with you. One doesn’t want to be on too many of them. But Twitter is something different, it is not a social network. It doesn’t function so much for the purpose of connecting people , but rather as a sort of “hive mind”. Connections on Twitter are simply a means to an end.

By: Oliver de Peyer

Oliver de Peyer — Fri, 13 Mar 2009 15:39:46 +0000

But just how many social networking sites does a person need? I keep an eye on Facebook and LinkedIn occasionally, but I stopped using Myspace, and I can’t be bothered with Plaxo or Nature Networks. Academia.edu keeps freezing on me. I have Facebook for my Blackberry come to that and LinkedIn works on it pretty well too. So why have more? I’m not going to log into over a half a dozen sites a day just to check if perhaps someone somewhere has done something interesting. Ultimately you can have too much (or too many) of a good thing. Which is I why I, personally, don’t need Twitter as well.

By: Tom

Tom — Sun, 08 Mar 2009 23:38:12 +0000

Maybe friendfeed links are a gateway tool?
Having to sign up to use can discourage some – if twitter and FF can be shown to be uaeul they’ll percolate into society (eg in a not so great example – entertaieny sites/ papers using celebrity twitters. For an editor they’re short messages and could easily be incorporated into a more informal section of a website for more broad science areas.

By: Nash

Nash — Sun, 08 Mar 2009 23:18:44 +0000

I sincerely hope to be wrong, in this case. But just take a look at the comments, and it isn’t hard to see that most agree with the fact that Twitter penetration among scientists is very low. A scan of services that index Twitter such as Twitscoop and so on will also show the same. People disagree about the reasons why this might be, but not the observation.

As web technologies go, I will be very happy to note perhaps next year that indeed mainstream scientists have adopted Twitter and use its potential. I was already happy to note that simply posting this has increased the number of scientist follows on my Twitter account.

By: Bertil

Bertil — Sun, 08 Mar 2009 21:25:32 +0000

As a scientist, I just have to tell you that you are whole heartedly wrong: just to look at the top users, Nasa has a great communication thanks to Twitter; scientists studying the Internet have a unique insight in how Web services are being conceived thanks to the service. If you care for science, just follow scientific users: it’s more then a fulltime job to do so. Young scientists took opportunity of blogs like no other technology, and I can’t count how many great research questions I’ve seen so far around micro-blogging. If anything, active e-mailers are keen twitterers too.

By: Anne Marie Cunningham

Anne Marie Cunningham — Thu, 05 Mar 2009 11:38:49 +0000

Hello!
I don’t think it is just life scientists who are holding back from twitter. There are few academic researchers of any discipline on twitter. This may reflect ‘busyness’ but os more likely to reflect the culture around research and peer-review that you describe above.
140 characters is not enough to conduct a conversation on any topic. But it is a useful way of drawing attention to other places where more meaningful dialogue can occur, such as blogs.
But researchers are not going to start using social media to discuss their work whilst institutions, journals and funders are antithetical to the concept.

By: Steve Firth

Steve Firth — Thu, 05 Mar 2009 10:46:36 +0000

and this is why you dont get invited to parties