来源：《Science》
原文见刊日期：2022年3月25日
In January 2020, some 2 months before the World Health Organization declared the coronavirus pandemic a global emergency, a tweet appeared on virologist Benhur Lee’s smartphone. It linked to a website, virological.org, where scientists had just posted the genetic sequence of SARS-CoV-2. Lee, at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai, quickly shared the tweet with his followers, along with the words “Here we go” and an animation of planes taking off. Within days, the pharmaceutical firm Moderna and the U.S. National Institutes of Health had announced plans to develop what just 10 months later proved to be an effective vaccine, based on the sequence that codes for the virus’ spike protein.
2020年1月，大约在世界卫生组织宣布新冠肺炎大流行为全球紧急情况的2个月前，病毒学家Lee的智能手机上出现了一条推特。它链接到网站virological.org，科学家刚刚在那里发布了新冠病毒的基因序列。西奈山伊坎医学院的李很快与他的粉丝分享了这条推特，并附上了“出发吧”的文字和飞机起飞的动画。几天之后，制药公司Moderna和美国国立卫生研究院就宣布计划，根据病毒刺突蛋白的编码序列开发疫苗，仅10个月后，这款疫苗就被证明有效。
In an earlier age, it might have taken days or longer for such useful DNA data to reach interested scientists via a Table of Contents alert from a journal. But the rise of Twitter and other social media platforms enabled users like Lee to spread the word about the SARS-CoV-2 sequence within hours, sparking global conversations and accelerating efforts to develop vaccines and treatments.
在早期，这样有用的DNA数据可能需要数天或更长时间才能通过期刊的目录提醒到达感兴趣的科学家手中。但推特和其他社交媒体平台的兴起，使得像Lee这样的用户能够在数小时内传播新冠病毒基因序列，引发全球对话，并加快疫苗和治疗的开发。
It was an early sign of how the pandemic prompted many scientists—and the public—to turn to social media to share and learn about hot new findings. COVID-19 “changed the game” because the threat “immediately connects with the public, so there’s a much bigger natural audience” for information about pandemic science than for most areas of research, says Michael Thelwall, a data scientist at the University of Wolverhampton, who studies social media. In particular, Twitter has become a go-to resource for anyone trying to make sense of the torrent of pandemic studies—and for those intent on quickly pushing back against misinformation.
这是一个早期迹象，表明疫情如何促使许多科学家和公众转向社交媒体，分享和了解热门的新发现。沃尔夫汉普顿大学研究社交媒体的数据科学家迈克尔·西尔沃尔说，疫情“改变了游戏”，因为威胁“立即与公众联系在一起”，所以与大多数研究领域相比，大流行科学信息有更多的天然受众。特别是，Twitter已经成为任何试图理解大流行研究洪流的人的首选资源，也成为那些意图迅速反击错误信息的人的首选资源。
“I like that there’s a low bar to entry on Twitter—I can put something out and see how other scientists are thinking of a problem, people who have a different skill set than mine,” says biostatistician Natalie Dean of Emory University, whose Twitter account has some 138,000 followers.
埃默里大学的生物统计学家娜塔莉·迪安说：“我喜欢在Twitter上的低门槛——我可以发布一些东西，看看其他科学家是如何思考问题的，他们的技能与我不同。”她的Twitter账户有大约13.8万名粉丝。
But the pandemic has also helped demonstrate the limitations of social media. It can be difficult, for example, for scientists to be heard over the cacophony of messages on Twitter—some 500 million each day. And although some scientists have used the platform to elevate their online presence, that has rarely translated into concrete professional rewards. Eventually the sizable Twitter followings some have built during the pandemic may fade. And in the meantime, some have suffered from their digital fame, attracting harsh personal attacks and threats of violence. Despite such challenges, many researchers believe that—like it or not—the pandemic has forever altered how certain scientists communicate with each other and the public.
但疫情也帮助证明了社交媒体的局限性。例如，在推特上每天大约5亿条嘈杂的信息中，科学家的声音很难被听到。尽管一些科学家利用推特提高了他们的网络声量，但这很少转化为实在的专业奖励。最终，一些人在疫情期间积累的大量推特粉丝可能会消失。与此同时，一些人因为他们的网络名气而遭受了人身攻击和暴力威胁。尽管存在这些挑战，但许多研究人员认为，不管你喜欢与否，这场大流行永远改变了某些科学家彼此之间和公众之间的沟通方式。