Popsci.com, web arm of the 141 year old Popular Science magazine, has removed the comments section from the majority of its articles. The website cites the rise of ‘trolls and spambots’ which they cannot effectively control. It will continue to have comments sections on selected articles which ‘lend themselves to vigorous and intelligent discussion’ although quite how these articles will be selected, and who is judged to have the right and capacity to do this, remains unclear.

The site offers Facebook and Twitter as alternatives for discussion but how differently these channels will be used remains to be seen. Admittedly science is unique in that there are rarely two balanced sides, but rather a ‘scientific consensus’ most experts agree on. Science can require incredibly specialist knowledge, and years of training. So perhaps giving individuals without any of this training an equal platform with experts isn’t sensible.

However this needn’t be achieved by abandoning comments altogether. Google recently announced a new approach to the YouTube commenting system to help reduce spam. Equally perhaps popsci.com could invest in human moderators, the website claims that this money would be better spent on hiring more science writers but in my opinion this is a classic case of quantity versus quality and here there is only one winner. Wouldn’t we rather have six articles each with an intelligent debate below, than eight each with that space empty?

Health science is an especially emotive case, comments claiming that individuals should simply take a vitamin supplement to treat AIDS are misleading and potentially harmful. However the damage from these comments can be minimised by informing people about the dangers of internet “health advice”.

One especially poignant statement in popsci.com’s defence of their decision was that in light of recent campaigns “Everything, from evolution to the origins of climate change, is mistakenly up for grabs again”. And rightly so. Since when did science, of all pursuits, become so dogmatic and adverse to informed debate?

Using a moderation system to facilitate productive discussions over simple block-capital comments denying climate change is one thing, but removing discussion altogether is simply not in the spirit of science. This is a disappointing decision from a publication with a rich history of fostering scientific debate. Comments welcome.