Department of Epidemiology and Biostatistics, University of California San Francisco, San Francisco, California, USA.
Departments of Medicine, of Epidemiology and Population Health, of Biomedical Data Science, and of Statistics, and Μeta-Research Innovation Center at Stanford (METRICS), Stanford University, San Francisco, California, USA.
Eur J Clin Invest. 2022 Nov;52(11):e13839. doi: 10.1111/eci.13839. Epub 2022 Aug 1.
Social media and new tools for engagement offer democratic platforms for enhancing constructive scientific criticism which had previously been limited. Constructive criticism can now be massive, timely and open. However, new options have also enhanced obsessive criticism. Obsessive criticism tends to focus on one or a handful of individuals and their work, often includes ad hominem aspects, and the critics often lack field-specific skills and technical expertise. Typical behaviours include: repetitive and persistent comments (including sealioning), lengthy commentaries/tweetorials/responses often longer than the original work, strong degree of moralizing, distortion of the underlying work, argumentum ad populum, calls to suspend/censor/retract the work or the author, guilt-by-association, reputational tarnishing, large gains in followers specifically through attacks, finding and positing sensitive personal information, anonymity or pseudonymity, social media campaigning, and unusual ratio of criticism to pursuit of one's research agenda. These behaviours may last months or years. Prevention and treatment options may include awareness, identifying and working around aggravating factors, placing limits on the volume by editors, constructive pairing of commissioned editorials, incorporation of some hot debates from unregulated locations such as social media or PubPeer to the pages of scientific journals, preserving decency and focusing on evidence and arguments and avoiding personal statements, or (in some cases) ignoring. We need more research on the role of social media and obsessive criticism on an evolving cancel culture, the social media credibility, the use/misuse of anonymity and pseudonymity, and whether potential interventions from universities may improve or further weaponize scientific criticism.
社交媒体和新的参与工具为增强建设性科学批评提供了民主平台，而这种批评以前受到限制。现在，建设性的批评可以是大规模的、及时的和开放的。然而，新的选择也增强了痴迷批评。痴迷批评往往集中在一个或少数几个人及其工作上，通常包括人身攻击的方面，批评者往往缺乏特定领域的技能和技术专长。典型行为包括：重复和持续的评论（包括海豹式评论）、冗长的评论/推文/回复，通常比原始作品更长、强烈的道德化程度、对基础工作的扭曲、诉诸大众、呼吁暂停/审查/撤回作品或作者、牵连式指责、名誉受损、通过攻击获得大量追随者、发现和提出敏感的个人信息、匿名或化名、社交媒体运动，以及批评与追求研究议程的比例异常。这些行为可能持续数月或数年。预防和治疗选择可能包括提高认识、识别和处理加重因素、编辑限制评论量、编辑委托撰写的社论时进行建设性配对、将一些不受监管的地方（如社交媒体或 PubPeer）的热门辩论纳入科学期刊页面、保持体面、专注于证据和论点，避免个人陈述，或者（在某些情况下）忽略。我们需要更多关于社交媒体和痴迷批评在不断发展的取消文化中的作用、社交媒体可信度、匿名和化名的使用/滥用、以及大学可能采取的潜在干预措施是否会改善或进一步武器化科学批评的研究。
