R/science

r/science is an Internet forum on Reddit where the community of participants discuss science topics.^[2] A popular feature of the forum is "Ask Me Anything" (AMA) public discussions.^[2] As of 2014, r/science attracted 30,000–100,000 visitors per day, making it the largest community-managed science forum and an attractive place to host discussions.^[2] It has over 33 million members as of 2024.^[1]

r/science

Type of site	Subreddit
Available in	English
Founder(s)	u/spez[1]
URL	www.reddit.com/r/science
Users	33 million members[1]
Launched	October 18, 2006; 18 years ago (2006-10-18)[1]

History

Nathan Allen speaks about r/science to the American Chemical Society.

Nathan Allen

Nathan Allen is an American chemist. While working as a chemist at Dow Chemical Company, Allen began to imagine that scientists could use Reddit's "ask me anything" (AMA) interview format to create discussions between scientists and the public.^[2] Allen became a forum moderator there and has since been prominent in guiding the culture of the community there and as a spokesperson for the forum.^[2] Allen has advocated that chemists should be more active in communicating with the public in online forums such as reddit.^[3]

AMA series

As of 2014, r/science attracted 30,000–100,000 visitors per day, making it the largest community-managed science forum and an attractive place to host discussions.^[2] In January 2014 Allen began the r/science AMA series with the goal of raising the visibility of scientists who are producing groundbreaking work in their fields but who are not well known outside of their fields.^[2][4] Outgoing links posted in the forum must go to peer-reviewed science articles published within the last six months.^[5]

The discussion series was instantly a success, and established the world's largest two-way discussion between scientists and the public.^[2] Allen does most of the organization for the talks, including soliciting scientists to participate and training them to communicate in reddit's discussion format.^[2]

In May 2018, the series ended due to a change in Reddit's ranking algorithm making AMA talks less visible and less engaging.^[6][7]

Featured content

r/science has an ongoing content partnership with PLOS.^[8] As an academic journal, PLOS invites authors who are publishing scientific papers to publicly present their work in r/science and to participate in community "ask me anything" discussions in the forum at scheduled times.^[8]

Editorial decisions

Editorial decisions in r/science are made by the moderators who themselves follow rules that they present for the forum.^[5] If new rules are introduced then those are discussed with the community of readers.^[5] Rules for r/science include guidance that contributors keep discussion on-topic and thoughtful.^[5]

Allen led the decision to ban discussion in r/science which gives credibility to climate change denial.^[9][10]