alex3619
Senior Member
- Messages
- 13,810
- Location
- Logan, Queensland, Australia
Angry emails almost never have a positive impact. I do note however that critical and cogent emails are not the same thing.
Anyone who is primarily angry is far better signing petitions, for a single coherent voice, rather than posting individual emails.
If I were a researcher in the NIH and I received a string of angry emails, I would most likely just junk them and set some flags to automatically junk more from the same individuals. So any important message that might be buried in the emails would be lost, and if that person became more focused and less angry later on they would still probably be automatically blocked. So anger and venting would lead to the message being lost.
However against this we have the issue that our institutions and researchers are still trying to adapt to the internet age. We all are. Traditional rules are out the window. We need to find better ways of dealing with things. That includes trolls, venting etc.
From a scientific perspective however I think many of the emails would have important points to consider regarding study design and implementation.
Choice of language is just as important as the choice of issues to address. Bombarding people is also not a good strategy. Getting together and sending one single carefully designed group letter, or petition, is a better choice.
My comments are not about the right of individuals to do what they do. Its about the effectiveness of what they do.
Anyone who is primarily angry is far better signing petitions, for a single coherent voice, rather than posting individual emails.
If I were a researcher in the NIH and I received a string of angry emails, I would most likely just junk them and set some flags to automatically junk more from the same individuals. So any important message that might be buried in the emails would be lost, and if that person became more focused and less angry later on they would still probably be automatically blocked. So anger and venting would lead to the message being lost.
However against this we have the issue that our institutions and researchers are still trying to adapt to the internet age. We all are. Traditional rules are out the window. We need to find better ways of dealing with things. That includes trolls, venting etc.
From a scientific perspective however I think many of the emails would have important points to consider regarding study design and implementation.
Choice of language is just as important as the choice of issues to address. Bombarding people is also not a good strategy. Getting together and sending one single carefully designed group letter, or petition, is a better choice.
My comments are not about the right of individuals to do what they do. Its about the effectiveness of what they do.