Administered by:
Scientists in the 1990s: We split the atom! We landed people on the moon! We cloned a sheep! We discovered superconductivity! We're digitizing all of the world's knowledge for global, near-instantaneous access!
Scientists in the 2020s: No, vaccines don't include 5G chips and make you sterile. No, the Earth is not flat. No, jet contrails are not mind-control sprays. Yes, climate change is real.
@spaf
We are tired. So tired.
@spaf Asimov…approximately…in the US democracy means my@ignorance is equal to your expertise
@spaf Scientists ignored #STEMeducation and disrespected #ScienceOutreach at their peril!
@spaf
Scientists in the 2050s : *have been replaced by AIs*
@spaf
I just saw a reference to a Scientific American article noting ways “anti-science”is being well funded and organized by people who benefit from a gullible and easily lead population….like maybe Betsy Devos?
@spaf "Also, a vitamin K shot is literally not even a vaccine."
@matrixsasuke
Every journal I publish in allows me to have an independent copy of the published work available on my web site (at least), and in a prepub site like ArXiv.
The publishing biz is changing, but quality archival publishing still requires an income stream so it is unlikely that it will every become free for everyone everywhere at all times.
@spaf I think it all started when they began making infomercials with testimonials from "actual customers".
"Some people will believe in anything, except reality."
SearingTruth
@spaf it’s fun to make fun of these people, but there is reason behind the madness.
@spaf thanks, Republicans
@spaf Weirdly (and I don't think this story is told nearly widely enough) a lot of the UK's efforts to digitise documents important to the humanities, came from a clause put into the end of a public contract to lay fibre across the atlantic. As public money is generally "use it or lose it" the official involved decided on something they had a personal passion for and no one thought much of it as public projects always overspend. But it turns out in the 90s laying fibre got very cheap very quickly, and for a brief Siberian summer. incidental millions fell onto libraries to digitise all their stuff.
@spaf we gave the world knowledge without helping them learn how to use it, which is an unfortunate and dangerous combination
@spaf oof 
on point
@spaf
sad but true. I am afraid, what scientists communications tasks will be like in the next decades.
@Ruth_Mottram
"The dumbing down of American is most evident in the slow decay of substantive content in the enormously influential media, the 30 second sound bites (now down to 10 seconds or less), lowest common denominator programming, credulous presentations on pseudoscience and superstition, but especially a kind of celebration of ignorance." - Carl Sagan
@Oneworldnot3 @spaf , also applicable for the rest of the world.
@spaf Lets not forget
@spaf It was a mistake to allow people to post stuff that didn't involve cute cats onto the Internet. 
Scientists in the mid 2020s: malaria vaccines are on the way! We're out there engineering solutions to climate change! We may be fighting the war of dark patterns (in social media, etc.) on both sides, but we've equipped everyone else with the knowledge we've collected! Most of us really don't care that you use Sci-Hub to get those papers.
@spaf maybe because scientists in 90s were: Let's create internet to spread knowledge! Internet now: Let's drink bleach to go viral!
Main difference between the 90s and 2020s is social media.
@zleap @spaf and the use of the internet in general ,it used to be difficult and expensive to get online ,now its easy and cheap because even fairly cheap mobile phones can access the internet and a lot of places have free wifi etc.Plus the connections are faster,I am sooo olddd I can remember dial up modems and waiting for pages to load :)
@spaf And please do not consume bleach or dewormer!