Ask HN: Why don’t “Western” scientists form scientific communities on Facebook? - abrax3141
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JohnFen
Pure speculation here -- I've worked with scientists for a long time, but it's
been a while and I no longer know how those circles work.

My guess -- Facebook doesn't bring any value to them. Scientists have had
strong and deep international communities and very effective methods of
communication within them for generations. Facebook would have to provide some
sort of serious advantage over what already exists to lure scientists over to
it. I don't see that FB offers any sort of advantage at all to that circle,
let alone a serious one.

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abrax3141
I agree with the first part of this, but not the second. We (I'm a scientist
more than a hacker, although both) do not have "very effective methods of
communication". We have extremely inefficient methods of communication. (The
traditional explanation for this is quality control, but it's been shown that
this is mostly an illusion, and anyway there are more efficient means of QC
than peer review.)

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billconan
how about [https://www.researchgate.net/](https://www.researchgate.net/)?

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abrax3141
Interestingly, everyone I know treats this as just a way to get free papers.
There's something about its design that says "free papers", as opposed to
"form community". Like, maybe it's logo: "Discover scientific knowledge, and
make your research visible."

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gomangogo
Because scientists are aware about privacy abuses of Facebook more than any
other community

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abrax3141
Yeah. No. They are aware as well, more than anyone else, that the privacy
abuses aren’t the sort that they care about in terms of their science. And
most of the major news about these came out only relatively recently. FB was a
Science desert well b4 that.

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aszantu
There are a few scientiats and doctors in the carnivore groups on facebook

