Biography
Nathan Allen is a synthetic organic chemist who became the head moderator of Reddit's r/science, one of the platform's largest communities. He is documented chiefly for leading the subreddit's high-profile decision to bar climate-change denial from its comment sections, an early and widely discussed example of a major Reddit community enforcing a strict factual standard.
In 2013, Allen and the r/science moderation team began removing comments that misrepresented or denied peer-reviewed climate science. Allen publicly defended the policy in an op-ed for the environmental publication Grist, arguing that allowing a small number of commenters to deliberately mislead millions of readers was unacceptable, and urging other outlets to adopt similar standards. He framed the move as enforcing the subreddit's existing requirement that discussion rest on peer-reviewed work.
The decision generated substantial coverage, both supportive and critical. Outlets including ThinkProgress, National Geographic, and others reported on the ban, while some commentators characterised it as censorship. The episode made Allen a named, on-record figure representing fact-based moderation against organised denial, in contrast to the anonymity of most large-subreddit moderators.
He was later profiled by Chemical & Engineering News, the American Chemical Society's publication, as the head moderator of Reddit's science community and as a prominent science communicator, and he was interviewed about how he keeps the subreddit functioning. Allen is frequently cited in discussions of how volunteer moderators set and enforce information standards in very large communities.