Blog 8: Evaluation of Social Media Sources

https://www.flickr.com/photos/keiya/3255575238

The creator of this twitter page is undoubtedly a credible person in the field of genetic medicine. Alexey Bersenev himself is the director of a cell therapy research lab and has obtained his degrees in Moscow, but managed to work in the most prestigious hospitals such as Yale-New Haven Hospital and one in the University of Pennsylvania to name a few which was taken off his linkedin.

He is not usually in the place in which his tweets take place, but he does conduct gene therapy research, but does not seem to mention them in his tweets. As for whether or not he is involved in the research he mentions in his tweets, the answer is no.

Bersenev has about 3,215 followers that mostly consist of people related to the life sciences or health professions. Some of them are doctorates, researchers, entrepreneurs who are interested science, and the list continues. Mostly his followers who are researchers tend to have more institutional credibility as they conduct research in different universities such as Michigan and even one from Harvard.

He does use links to websites to back up his tweets. Some of the websites are regular websites such as periodicals while some come from actual research journals. Overall his information is accurate since his tweets are usually introductions or is a very brief snippet of the web page that is linked.

As for tweeting about gene therapy, he usually does this about once a day or every few days, but in a more specific context by stating what enzymes are involved in the process rather than just tweeting "gene therapy". The new tweets just convey discoveries in the order that they were noticed by Bersenev which roughly follows chronological order adding further information about discoveries in gene therapy research.

The account was made in March 2008 making it about seven years old.

Considering his position as director of gene therapy research, he seems quite credible and would be expected to know which articles are relevant as well as accurate.

https://www.flickr.com/photos/redondoself/3352831265

The poster of this social media message is Susan Young Rojahn who is a biomedical editor for the website MIT Technology Review. She does have an impressive resume in linkedin.com with her work in Stanford and Berkeley.

She is not in the place that she is posting about and was not involved in major events concerning gene therapy, but more so reported new findings. She may have done some research in genes when she was in Berkeley, but it is not emphasized as much as her writing career.

On her twitter, many of her followers seem to be either in the biological professions or in writing professions. Among these include doctors, researchers, CEOs, and editors of well-known magazines which show that she is a respectable person in the field of science.

Through the hyperlinks she includes in her articles, one could verify some of her claims. These hyperlinks usually lead to reputable science journals, but some lead to other articles in the MIT Technology Review and other social media websites,the latter being less common.

As one scrolls through her list of posts, one notices that she seems to have stopped posting since last year. She posts about topics concerning gene editing and gene therapy from time to time and like Bersenev, posts here articles in chronological order in which the experiments were posted. Her more updated posts just expand on the utility of gene therapy with other diseases.

Her account here was created roughly three years ago.

Since Rojahn has experience in the biomedical and writing fields, one could trust her to cite appropriate sources and provide fairly accurate information in her posts.