I love reading academic papers. I probably enjoy them more than reading longer non-fiction books, because I can get the interesting part just by reading the abstract and then skimming the results section. I read random articles from the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology (JPSP) a few times a week, and I always find something interesting. If not there, then I browse Legislative Studies Quarterly, or the American Political Science Review, or a few other select journals.
Emily Oster is an economist at Brown who writes great summaries of research regarding kids health/development. Her Substack is super popular, as are her books
Hi Sam! Daily Philosophy tries to do just that. We publish guest articles from academics who want to reach a general audience. It's perhaps easier in some areas than others. Ethics problems are easier to explain and discuss with a general audience than some more arcane points of ancient Greek philosophy, and I have the impression that much of social science has become very mathematical, rather than emphasising everyday relevance or deep causal understanding of social processes. In the end, it also seems to be a sad fact that many academics are not in their positions seeking wisdom and enlightenment, but they see science as a convenient and well-paying job, or a means to exert influence and exercise power through committees, the academic hierarchy etc. If someone is career-oriented like that, then why would they put effort into reaching a wide audience if they can score more career points with a publication that nobody understands in a prestigious journal?
I've seen lots more interesting academics on Substack in the past year than I ever met at conferences or in the pages of scholarly journals.
I can imagine that a good fraction of social science research can be compressed into a paragraph digestible for a lay audience, which will find the results neat. Hopefully, an author can write such a compelling digestible paragraph in just an hour.
However, what is the point? Clearly it doesn't advance the academic's goals, unless they can get a sizeable following. Does reading it help the lives of the lay-readers? It seems like it will just be read as another neat fact that doesn't meaningfully contributed to anybody's knowledge (e.g., like anything you can find on https://www.reddit.com/r/todayilearned/).
Nonetheless, maybe the costs are low enough that people should still do it. Maybe the upside of the neat facts will be high enough if there was some website to deposit these summaries, which got meaningful readership (let's say at 100 people fully reading a paragraph summary, at the median). The biggest advantage I see is just getting people more interested in science, in general. Maybe it will also make social science more respected. Maybe these outcomes are good enough for this to be worthwhile (if 100+ readers can be achieved).
Another thing, about "Unless you’re someone who has the time and reputation to get an op-ed published" I don't think you really need to have that much clout to enter the press. If your finding is interesting, you can just contact media people (not the NYT or somewhere massive, but some minor organization), talk to them about your results, and they can run with it.
Emily Oster is an economist at Brown who writes great summaries of research regarding kids health/development. Her Substack is super popular, as are her books
Hi Sam! Daily Philosophy tries to do just that. We publish guest articles from academics who want to reach a general audience. It's perhaps easier in some areas than others. Ethics problems are easier to explain and discuss with a general audience than some more arcane points of ancient Greek philosophy, and I have the impression that much of social science has become very mathematical, rather than emphasising everyday relevance or deep causal understanding of social processes. In the end, it also seems to be a sad fact that many academics are not in their positions seeking wisdom and enlightenment, but they see science as a convenient and well-paying job, or a means to exert influence and exercise power through committees, the academic hierarchy etc. If someone is career-oriented like that, then why would they put effort into reaching a wide audience if they can score more career points with a publication that nobody understands in a prestigious journal?
I've seen lots more interesting academics on Substack in the past year than I ever met at conferences or in the pages of scholarly journals.
I can imagine that a good fraction of social science research can be compressed into a paragraph digestible for a lay audience, which will find the results neat. Hopefully, an author can write such a compelling digestible paragraph in just an hour.
However, what is the point? Clearly it doesn't advance the academic's goals, unless they can get a sizeable following. Does reading it help the lives of the lay-readers? It seems like it will just be read as another neat fact that doesn't meaningfully contributed to anybody's knowledge (e.g., like anything you can find on https://www.reddit.com/r/todayilearned/).
Nonetheless, maybe the costs are low enough that people should still do it. Maybe the upside of the neat facts will be high enough if there was some website to deposit these summaries, which got meaningful readership (let's say at 100 people fully reading a paragraph summary, at the median). The biggest advantage I see is just getting people more interested in science, in general. Maybe it will also make social science more respected. Maybe these outcomes are good enough for this to be worthwhile (if 100+ readers can be achieved).
Another thing, about "Unless you’re someone who has the time and reputation to get an op-ed published" I don't think you really need to have that much clout to enter the press. If your finding is interesting, you can just contact media people (not the NYT or somewhere massive, but some minor organization), talk to them about your results, and they can run with it.