Reading through the dozens of science AMAs that have been conducted on Reddit, it seems evident that r/science is fulfilling a need that may have been previously unforeseen by the scientific community of researchers who spend years toiling in obscurity, testing and retesting their hypotheses so that one day their hard work may see the light of day in the form of a journal article. In a world where scholarly journals are often frustratingly difficult to access by the general public, there remains a demand in the market for a way to remove the friction between scientists and non scientists. With the rise of MOOCs and other discussion tools like Reddit, science communication is transcending its heretofore gatekeepers. “My personal belief, in the end, is that scientists really work for the people,” said Mason. “We’re allowed to follow our intellectual curiosity insomuch as we share it with other human beings.” With six months of AMAs and thousands of questions uploaded, Reddit’s Science AMA series seems to have brought us significantly closer to that goal.
"Allen, a PhD chemist who works for the Dow Chemical Company in Pennsylvania, began to think about ways he could leverage r/science's massive reach to connect scientists to the general public. R/science is a default subreddit, meaning it's visible to people visiting Reddit.com even if they aren't logged in. According to internal metrics Allen has access to, r/science gets between 30,000 and 100,000 unique visitors a day; it's arguably the largest community-run science forum on the internet. So what if r/science were to form an AMA series of its own, focused solely on working scientists who are producing interesting, groundbreaking research?"
