An Academics Guide: Setting Examples in Discourse
We’re on the clock as academics, 24/7, whether we like it or not. And we need to be, or else we hurt society.
Many academics choose to use Twitter to make banter. And that’s fine. But when an academic makes a claim about a scholarly topic, such as climate change, immunology, education, or some other area of interest, then there is significant pressure to justify such claims, even if they are made as offhand remarks. Overall, academics must be held to a higher standard, when making knowledge claims, than the average person, whether it be in an academic setting or a social environment. And the more people who could see and share any claims made by that person, the more responsibility that person has to justify them. On a platform like Twitter, information — and misinformation — could easily go viral. And so it is a platform on which an academic could have tremendous exposure.
We see this kind of situation happen all the time on Twitter. A random M.D. will come out in support of some pseudoscientific cure or bogus claim. A recent thread on Twitter centers around a teacher who claimed that people who keep their hands still are likely to be lying, even though there’s no such science that justifies this claim. People see these experts and other trusted figures and…
