Community guides · Science
The unspoken bar for replies in r/askscience
Reply in r/askscience and you're talking to people who can read a paper's abstract and spot the spin. Take the time to read past the title.
What's hot in r/askscience now
What people are actually discussing
Top threads from the last month — what's getting engagement right now.
- Why can't patients with Fatal familial insomnia be treated with anesthetics?
- What specifically is it about processed meat that is carcinogenic?
- When your brain releases hormones like adrenaline, endorphin, dopamine etc that have an almost instant effect, are they just conjured on the spot or created in advance and stored somewhere to just wait for the signal?
What this sub rewards
How replies earn upvotes here
- Stay within peer-reviewed science; clearly mark anything speculative. If it's not in a peer-reviewed paper or major preprint, mark it as preliminary. Don't blur established vs emerging.
- Back specific claims with evidence — research, data, or named sources. Link the abstract or DOI. r/science readers will check.
- Acknowledge limitations, trade-offs, or uncertainty when relevant. Mention sample size, confounders, replication status. 'One study showed' is a setup, not a conclusion.
What good looks like
Real comments that landed in r/askscience
Two recent highly-upvoted replies. Notice what they have in common — concrete, no preamble, no self-promotion.
"Sleep cleans and restores the brain and body and anesthesia just shuts them down. So you can give the body a force shut down with anesthesia and the person will be knocked out but they won't receive any actual rest because the part of the brain that activates that process is entirely broken."
"It’s worth noting that “type 1” is a measure of statistical significance, not substantive impact. That is: putting it as type 1 is scientists saying the effect of these meats on rates of cancer is not zero. It doesn’t mean that eating these products has the same type of impact on the odds of cancer as smoking. To put some…"
The one rule that gets posts removed
Only credentialed subject-matter experts should answer — identify credentials appropriately.
Your pre-reply checklist
Before you hit Reply — four quick checks
Does my comment add something specific, not just an opinion?
A useful reply names a number, a method, a personal experience, or a concrete example. If you could replace your draft with "I agree" and lose nothing, rewrite.
Have I read the top 3 comments already on this thread?
If the highest-upvoted reply already says what you were about to say, your comment will sink. Add what's missing — counterexamples, edge cases, the next step — not what's there.
Would my reply still work if my username was removed?
If it only makes sense because it promotes you, your product, or your platform, this sub will spot it. Frame the value as "this solved it for me," not "check out my…"
Did I skim the sidebar rules one more time?
Every sub has at least one rule that surprises outsiders — peer-review only, no images, no specific tags, no off-topic. Five seconds in the sidebar can save you a removal.
Want to draft this reply with the rules already baked in?
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