A Conversation with Nathan Allen

I t all started when Nathan Allen was stuck in the lab, babysitting his experiments for hours at a time. The 10or 15-minute blocks between checking on his reactions weren’t long enough to dig into anything substantial. Instead, he recalls, “I posted snarky comments on the internet, which you can do in 5 minutes.” Soon, Allen was answering science questions on the Web site Reddit, where he saw people being led astray by bad science. Now Allen, 42, is one of the most powerful science communicators in the U.S. as head moderator of Reddit’s science community, called the science subreddit. The science subreddit has almost 18 million subscribers and is growing by the equivalent of the Chicago Tribune’s print circulation about 500,000every month. By day, Allen is a synthetic organic chemist at MilliporeSigma in Milwaukee, where he lives with his wife and two daughters, two and five years old. Leading the science subreddit is a volunteer position he does on the side. And Allen keeps doing it because he feels passionately that more scientistsespecially chemistsshould be making sure science is fairly represented on the Internet and in the larger world. “If scientists are not representing themselves, nobody will represent us for us”, he says. “We need to show people how great the work we’re doing in chemistry is. It’s not all men in lab coats pouring things from one beaker to anothereven though that’s absolutely me.” Exposure is especially important in places like Reddit, a self-governed online community where people share and comment on news stories, press releases, and other content. Stories that are a hit on Reddit can be seen by tens of millions of people. The site is popular with people in the 15to 30-year-old demographic, which is why it should be important to scientists, Allen says. “This is one of the places where young people get their view of the world. If there isn’t a responsible presentation of it, what happens? Maybe bad things.” While many parts of Reddit have a surly reputation, the science subreddit is a more civil place, and that’s by design. When Allen started as head moderator in 2012, the subreddit was a mess. “All of the comments were just jokes and memes and people having flame wars and people pushing their wing-nut agendas”, he remembers. That’s when Allen enlisted his fellow moderators to make the conversation more welcoming. “Censorship is not just Big Brother saying you can’t say something. Censorship is also the extremes yelling at each other and civil people not wanting to get into the emotional fistfight”, Allen says. “We want the 80% in the middle to be able to have a civil conversation about an issue.” The moderators started their crackdown with discussions about climate change. The main rule: You can disagree without being disagreeable.