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Argonne National Laboratory Shuts Down Online Ask a Scientist Program
itamblyn writes In a surprising decision, Argonne National Laboratory has decided to pull the plug on its long-standing NEWTON Ask A Scientist Program. NEWTON is (soon to be was) an on online repository of science questions submitted by school children from around the world. A volunteer group of scientists contributed grade-level appropriate answers to these questions. For the past 25 years, a wide range of topics ranging have been covered, including the classic "why is the sky blue" to "is there way to break down the components of plastics completely into their original form". Over the years, over 20,000 questions have been answered. According to ANL, the website will be shut down permanently on 1 March. There is no plan to make the content available in an alternate form or to hand over stewardship to another organization. When contacted about transferring the repository to another institution or moving to a donation model, the response from ANL was simply: "Thank you again for all your support for Newton. Unfortunately, moving Newton to another organization is not a possibility at this time. Thank you again for your energy and support."
In my experience, events like this point to some petty internal political battle.
Another possibility is that this is the Washington Monument Syndrome. This happens when an agency's budget is reduced, and rather than cutting the least important program, they cut the most visible program, in an attempt to get their funding restored.
I've seen other more minor outreach efforts go down the tube in part because of that issue. Several colleagues of mine used to answer questions online in various places, including redit. But they would frequently get see the same questions over and over, and questions about topics that have been heavily written about. It gets a bit frustrating linking to a very well written answer or discussion of a question, and have people not only ignore linked content, but get indignant that you didn't rewrite and paraphrase a common answer for the nth time in your reply to their question.
Or worse, have people argue with you, ignoring really basic concepts that should come up with almost any effort to learn about a topic. It is one thing if people just disagree or don't believe something, but to make statements complete ignorant of the existence of things that have been around long enough to be in textbooks and common online summaries is a different deal. And online people with a point to push have way more free time than those that are just curious, leading to a monopolizing of time by those that have no interest in learning anything new, and stopped long doing so long before forming their opinion on some science topic.
As a result, I see more and more scientist burn out from answer questions or any form of outreach online. They are still quite interested in talking to people, and put effort into offline outreach. Offline, people are less likely to be dicks about things, even when it is obvious they disagree with what the scientist is saying.
That said, a lot of things like this is more likely just some budgetary/bureaucracy circus mess than lack of motivation by enough researchers.
The time spent selecting questions, then answer them in a simple and understandable way is not free. Especially in a climate where even keeping a blog in your spare time is sometimes seen as a suspect frivolity that takes time from your research.
Trust the Computer. The Computer is your friend.