The state of the scientific community today is really not what it should be. Funding for many hard sciences is at historic lows (particularly those sciences which cannot produce lethal military weaponry, or cheaper Viagra,) as it is diverted to softer psuedosciences of dubious merit, and the average graduate of the US educational system today would not know a mole from a mole.
Luckily, at least someone(s) is trying to help, and that someone(s) is SteemStem.
SteemStem is composed of a team of curators who work tirelessly to pore over posts related to the STEM fields. That's science, technology, engineering, and mathematics... just in case we caught you reading Garfield.
Anyway, the dedicated team at SteemStem attempt to get said posts curated (and rewarded) in such a way that these valuable posts - which may not appeal to today's meme-y, buzzfeed generation - are actually seen by someone, and contributors of such content do not feel they are wasting their time. They use a careful, publicly-visible system for rating posts at different vote-percentage levels, requiring multiple-curator consensus for the better upvotes. Merit is encouraged and rewarded.
Believe me, it can be very frustrating to take the time and effort to write a deeply researched piece that merits legitimate peer review or discussion, only to see a Dmania cat or Nutella meme plagiarized from Reddit make 10x as much. This is an effort that Steemit desperately needs in the face of a general community unwillingness to modify game-theory incentives to be in line with publicly-stated, desired community behavior.
This is precisely what SteemStem is attempting to solve, and you should support their efforts if you are able.
SteemStem spends a lot of time and effort on their curation work; indeed, quite contrary to their own self-interest given that time is sacrificed from their own ability to post and they also are rendered ineligible for Curie and other certain curation votes. Consider, for example, how much time it must take simply to track and implement their second Golden Rule for curation:
How can you help? Well, you can delegate to the cause either directly or by joining their voting and curation trail, which will also see you get some curation rewards. However, perhaps the most valuable item anyone could contribute is the time of a truly engaged human. Join the Discord. Read some of the curated posts and offer suggestions or discussion points in the comments. Take on the community challenger to write response posts on any topic that would benefit from more discussion. Contribute your own articles for "peer review" and try to provide some content value to the blockchain.
See theses posts for more info:
https://steemit.com/steemstem/@steemstem/rebooting-steemstem-towards-an-engaged-community-on-the-steem-blockchain
https://steemit.com/steemstem/@steemstem/the-steemstem-honor-members
We also have a Radio Station! (click me)
...and a 10,000+ active user Discord Chat Server! (click me)
Sources: Google, @SteemStem, @Suesa, Wikipedia
Copyright: SmartSteem, PALNet, SPL, @SteemStem, Pinterest, Quickmeme, Garfield, Jim Davis