This week, I watched a group of professors and presumably principal investigators attack a graduate student on Twitter because she posted some critiques of science communications because she feels like small towns like her hometown are under-served.
The entire thing was extremely strange to watch. I understand why criticism is hard to take - especially when it applies to something you do for no pay - but criticism and critique is a key part of science. Why wouldn’t it be part of scicomm? Nevertheless, they attacked her for her age, her lack of expertise, her experience, presumed she was insulting community college, mocked her for not understanding land-grant universities (though she is at one), and more. Anyway, this made me think of a program at the U where we teach GED classes to immigrants and provide hands-on science demos. This program is less than 5 years old and is created and run entirely by graduate students. We’ve now expanded this to provide one-on-one tutoring (I’m gong tomorrow). It just shocks me that a simple criticism that I know is true (”We have under served some communities”) was attacked so harshly in a community that should be ready to consider such a critique. Like, yes, now I am part of a program that hits under served areas but that program didn’t exist 5 years ago. Surely, there are more communities we aren’t getting to.