The Evidence Collective elects Dr. Raven Baxter as a member
Members of The Evidence Collective, a network of scientists, clinicians and communicators, elected Dr. Raven Baxter to the group on March 4, 2026.
Raven the Science Maven begins in Buffalo as Raven Baxter takes science to social media
Started in Buffalo in 2016, the platform now reaches more than 650,000 followers across nine networks through science videos, rap songs and writing
Baxter in a teaching lab in early 2018, in a still from her Raven the Science Maven web series. Photo: Raven the Science Maven
In 2016, Raven Baxter began sharing science on social media from Buffalo, N.Y. She was finishing a master's degree in biological sciences and working as a research scientist in drug discovery. The effort became Raven the Science Maven.
The lab had felt closed to her. "I ended up working in drug discovery in corporate America, and immediately realized that in my position as a research scientist, I wasn't able to share my work with anyone or invite them into my space," she told the AAAS Dialogue on Science, Ethics, and Religion in 2025. On the Raise the Line podcast in 2025, she said it did not sit right "to come into work on a daily basis and just feel like a hoarder of knowledge and opportunity."
Audiences were already moving online. In May 2016, the Pew Research Center reported that 62% of U.S. adults got news on social media. That October, a Pew survey on climate found that 70% of liberal Democrats trusted climate scientists "a lot" to give full and accurate information about the causes of climate change. Among conservative Republicans, the figure was 15%. "I watched the country falling out with science, and I wanted to do something about it," Baxter writes on her About page.
She came to science content from beauty. On YouTube she had built a following under the name "Really Raven," documenting her hair journey. "A lot of people don't realize that I didn't start growing my platform under science. I was growing it under hair and beauty," she told Alie Ward on Ologies in 2021.
She felt she had more to offer. The new name came from family. "My aunt calls me Raven Maven, and then I'm like, 'Well, what about Raven the Science Maven?' A maven's an expert in something," she said.
The hair community taught her to experiment in public. "Learning how to create content without being afraid of what people think, or being true to yourself without worrying about who cares or who doesn't want to see you have fun with X, Y, and Z has really been a good lesson for me as I've talked about science," she said.
By 2018 the platform ran on Facebook, Instagram and Twitter, now X, along with a weekly web series of "adventures in science, technology, engineering, and math." Its website carried the tagline "STEM Entertainment for the Culture." Baxter was also teaching college biology. "Raven the Science Maven is an extension of my classroom to everyone in the world," her 2018 bio page read.
Many people get their science from creators instead of the source, she told Ologies. So she speaks only where she is an expert, and her rule is to be "accurate first and then be engaging second."
Today the platform reaches more than 650,000 followers across nine networks. Baxter later earned a Ph.D. from the University at Buffalo, where her research examined how messengers, messages and cultural context shape public trust in science.
The platform's history is on thesciencemaven.com, and her account of the name is in the Ologies episode.
