It’s a strange reality when more people recognize you from your videos on social media than from your peer-reviewed papers or “professional” work.
During grad school, I could never have predicted that a casual one-minute video about immunology would rack up orders of magnitude more views in an hour than my published research papers would accumulate in ten lifetimes. But this is the reality of science communication in 2025: Dry data analysis is out, storytelling is in, and the implications for public health and the public perception of science are existential.
Over the past five years, my channels have grown to more than 3.5 million followers who know me as “dr.noc.” Online, I combine education with entertainment to debunk common scientific misinformation, especially when it is being spread by people in positions of influence. That content reaches approximately 30-50 million viewers every month organically.
The catch is that, if I want to reach people at scale, I must meet them where they are spending their time: Instagram, TikTok, and YouTube.
This inevitably sets me up to compete for attention against the universe of content on those platforms — celebrity gossip, dance challenges, and sensationalized news — creating a tension in modern science communication that feels like a balancing act between academic rigor and theatrical pizzazz.
In scientific circles, we are trained to trust that rigorous data alone will win the day. If the study design is sound and the benefit/risk data are clear, the decisions basically make themselves, right? In the real world, of course, the way that we communicate data matters at least as much as the data itself.
Unlike academic seminars where audience members who decide to leave early must face an embarrassing walk out of the room, viewers on Instagram or YouTube are never more than a fraction of a second away from swiping to the next bit of content. What I’ve learned is that the logical importance of a scientific message will not resonate unless viewers have a clear reason to care about the issue and, more importantly, to trust the messenger.
In other words, data without human connection is easily ignored. People are finely tuned to recognize when someone is “reading from a script” or engaging in “corporate speak.” Today, what people seek, more than anything else, is blatant, unapologetic authenticity. This is even true among those who otherwise hold a great distrust for the institution of science. It’s the paradox I’ve come to understand over the past few years: Building trust is not really so much about the data that I present, but the glimpses of humanity I reveal.
The most memorable message I have ever received on social media came in 2021, just after I had finished a livestream on Instagram. At the time, Covid-19 vaccines were just being rolled out, and many people had questions, so I spent the bulk of the stream talking about the data, clinical trial design, etc. At the very end, I said that I had to log off to go make dinner for my wife, who was on her way home from the hospital where she was finishing her training in pediatrics. A few hours later, I checked my inbox to find a message from a viewer who said that they had been watching my livestream with skepticism, uncertain whether they should trust anything that I had to say. But then, when I said that I had to leave to cook dinner for my wife, they said that they saw me for the first time as being “a regular person” and that it helped them trust I was providing my honest interpretations about the vaccines and everything that was happening at the time.
To this day, that interaction with one person (out of millions, at this point), has stuck with me as one of the clearest examples of the central role for authenticity and human connection in communicating science and health information.
What does it say about the state of science communication when your credibility depends as much on the relatability of your personal life as on your academic credentials?
Initially, I had fears about whether making content online amounted to “dumbing down” complex scientific concepts. Over time, however, I’ve come to realize that clarity and simplification are not the same as dilution. There is value in being able to distill a message to its core impact within just a few minutes.
Still, colleagues initially greeted my public outreach with a mixture of curiosity and thinly veiled skepticism. There was a sense that “serious” scientists published papers and gave formal talks, while social media was reserved for lighter fare — at best, educational entertainment, and at worst, a distraction from more worthy goals. As my follower counts extended into the millions, that skepticism gradually gave way to support.
That shift highlights a dangerous cultural tension within academia itself. In my experience, it’s easy to fall into the trap of confusing complexity of data with sophistication of thought — almost as though obscurity is a proxy for intelligence. This mentality fosters an unspoken stigma around efforts to make research broadly accessible. But today, more than ever before, we need more scientists and professionals to share their humanity and share their knowledge on social media without fear of judgment from within the scientific community.
If the work of science and public health matters — and I believe it does — then communicating it effectively to the people matters, too, and such endeavors should be enthusiastically supported at all levels of scientific training and clinical practice, both inside and outside of academia.
By embracing relatability, even at the expense of traditional professional norms, we can help build bridges between data-driven expertise and public trust — a trust that has never been so sorely wounded.
Social media is not the enemy of serious science; it’s the battleground where trust and credibility will be won or lost, and it’s where future generations’ perspectives on health, medicine, and science will be carved in stone.
Morgan McSweeney spends his free time debunking scientific misinformation on social media, exploring the forest with his family, and reading with his daughter.
