Hannah Fry wins the internetz
Who else would have this as a chandelier?
(, Mon 9 Mar 2026, 21:51, Reply)
She seems to be one of a small incestuous cabal of people that make a good living out of presenting
summaries of new scientist and nature articles, many several years old. Did you know...
I'm not against pop science vids, but I sometimes worry that an important part of science is critical analysis by
the reader/viewer, rather than just consuming factoids.
Sorry to go off on a tangent, it's a nice light.
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cumquat may will not be commenting further on the allegations, Mon 9 Mar 2026, 23:32,
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It is her job, you know?
She is the Professor of the Public Understanding of Mathematics at the University of Cambridge, a fellow of Queens' College, Cambridge, and president of the Institute of Mathematics and its Applications. She was previously a professor at University College London.
/wikipedia.org
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Invisible Wizard - 12th Level Errorer, Tue 10 Mar 2026, 5:25,
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she's only published three papers
her phd, only cited 6 times in 15 years, and one as one of four authors on modelling of the london riots. I had a squiz out of curiousity, the maths isn't sophisticated, the modelling chock full of the kind of lick your finger and stick it in the air arbritrary metrics and assumptions any one of which could be challenged.
Since it is typically argued that individuals act rationally during a riot (i.e. that their decisions are based on some cost/benefit analysis) these observations can be used to inform a model of the actions of rioters
Anyway I'm sure she's fine at maths, and likely was a far better maths lecturer than many of the asberger types I encountered at uni. But her accolades are as a popular youtuber, she no savant, and not at all distinguished in her field for her research.
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cumquat may will not be commenting further on the allegations, Tue 10 Mar 2026, 7:56,
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one, my thesis
but I don't work in academia, my job as a geo was mostly making sure the dumptruck drivers put down their porn mags long enough to acknowledge that they were getting loaded with high grade which they were not, I repeat NOT to take to waste. over.
If you're an academic getting your name on three minor papers in 15 years is not much to write home about.
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cumquat may will not be commenting further on the allegations, Tue 10 Mar 2026, 12:08,
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god yeah, she's clearly stupid and shit
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Invisible Wizard - 12th Level Errorer, Tue 10 Mar 2026, 14:12,
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You seem quite the fanboy
I’m sure she’s bright, just as I’m sure Nigella Lawson is a good cook. And how both of them maintain that constant coquettish smile whether they’re talking about pork chops or black holes is quite impressive. My beef with these pop science YouTubers is that in their demand to put out constant content they mostly rip off the work of good science writers or research in these journals without attribution. The hard work was done by the science writers, these YouTubers aren’t pulling it from their own knowledge or research, Hannah exhausted all that several years ago. And like all journos, science writers are struggling as are the journals themselves
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cumquat may will not be commenting further on the allegations, Tue 10 Mar 2026, 21:04,
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But part of the job is to communicate complex ideas to the uneducated
It's not aimed at those who find edutainment it beneath them.
I think she presents this stuff very well. So, yes, I'm a fanboy too.
(, Tue 10 Mar 2026, 21:46, Reply)
i think you misunderstand my issue
which is with her and the others stealing content from journals (without attribution), rather than the quality of their presentation or their smarts. It's a bit unethical and might eventually kill the hand that feeds it. It's like how google, facebook and now AI show or summarise news article without the paper or writer benefiting as there's no eyeballs back to the original publisher. As I said in my first post, I'm not against pop science vids. That she's undistinguished in her field (maths, not science communication) is no slight on her, about half of professors at any uni would have a similar output.
As an observation I noticed that a bunch of them, that beardy bald bloke, the clean cut yank bloke, de grasse tyson, etc have gone from plying their individual content to now constantly appearing in each others videos like some tv crossover metaverse. Maybe they get more views if they pool their respective followers.
And as a general 'old man shakes fist at sky' point, science is more than just watching facts, it's using your brain to question and being critical. That's not elitist, if you watch these vids and understand the concepts they're explaining, you're more than capable of not just accepting things at face value, of digging deeper and thinking for yourself at the assumptions they make and where and how they got their data. Like that line in her research about rioters acting rationally. Do you think that's a defensible assumption? Why or why not? It's a really useful but underpromoted science skill in a world increasing full of bullshit and lies.
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cumquat may will not be commenting further on the allegations, Tue 10 Mar 2026, 22:41,
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that job was created in 2025, long after she started making videos
and its role seems to be teaching the rest of faculty, and maybe even some pesky students, how to communicate maths to the public, rather than sponsoring her video work. Likewise, her presidency was about her public profile than her proving the riemann hypothesis. She started making popular maths vids in her field, bringing a kind of Nigella Lawson sensiblity that probaby didn't hurt her viewship among blokes. But now she makes content on any science topic, along with about five or six similar youtubers that now all seem to appear in each other videos.
I'm not fussed what her and the rest do with her time or how they make money. But none of the research is hers like the rest of them, and being a scientist the algorithm always pushes them to me. (at least Brian cox is doing active research at CERN). And I have noticed even up to several years after any interesting article appearing in Nature or other journals my work pays for, these people make videos about it without ever citing them. I guess it's less impressive if you start a vid saying, "so, I read this article in the Lancet in the doctors waiting room and now I'm going to summarise it for you"
In response to having their publishing thievarised, I've seen some of the journals like New Scientist hire similar kind of easy on the eye presenters to make content themselves e.g. www.youtube.com/watch?v=mLrAJo6-SH4
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cumquat may will not be commenting further on the allegations, Tue 10 Mar 2026, 7:06,
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