satt comments on Existential risks open thread - Less Wrong
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Systematically emailing researchers runs the risk of being pattern matched to crank spam. If I were a respected biologist, a better plan might be to
Some of these steps could of course be expanded or reordered (for example, it might be quicker to get a less famous journal to publish an editorial, and then use that as a stepping stone into Science/Nature/PNAS). I'm also ignoring the possibility that synthetic biologists have already considered risks of their work, and would react badly to being nagged (however professionally) about it.
Edit: Martin Rees got an editorial into Science about catastrophic risk just a few weeks ago, which is minor evidence that this kind of approach can work.