UPDATE: Luboš Motl finds some interesting tidbits about the state of science at Sb, see below the “Continue reading” line.
UPDATE2: PZ Myers ends his “strike” and flames me, see response in Update2 below.
Many WUWT readers are familiar with some blogs that reside at Sb. For example there’s Wikipedia edit master, William Connolley’s “Stoat-taking Science by the throat“, Tim Lambert’s “Deltoid“, and some others like the well known Pharyngula by the ever grouchy PZ. Myers. It’s all good fun to read.
But, now there’s quite an exodus occurring at the scienceblogs.com conglomerate. Just look at the front page for today and the list of bloggers leaving or expressing concerns:
What’s happened? Well it all started with the parent company, SEED, allowing the Pepsi Company to start a blog on nutrition. Some bloggers went ballistic, perceiving that SEED caved to the almighty dollar and let some evil corporation into the sacred science temple.
Newsflash: SEED is a business. The Guardian did a story on the Sb blogger anger, and Sb was faced with a mass revolt. The SEED management didn’t handle it well enough or fast enough for some bloggers tastes, even though they removed the Pepsi Food Frontiers blog. The result: 15 Sb bloggers upped and quit in protest. Here’s the content they are protesting.
As PZ Myers writes at Pharyngula, it is getting worse, more bloggers are leaving, and he’s on strike with a list of demands for the Sb management.
Meyers writes:
It’s come to this. We’ve been facing a steady erosion of talent here at Scienceblogs, with the loss of good people like Carl Zimmer and Ed Yong a while back, and with the very abrupt departure of 15 bloggers after the recent PepsiCo debacle — an event that damaged the reputation of this place. And now just yesterday we lost PalMD and Bora. Something is going rotten here. What could it be?
…
Just in the time it took me to write this up this morning, Superbug, Zuska, and Speakeasy Science have all announced their departures, and Casaubon’s Book is considering it. We really are having a serious crisis of confidence, and Seed has to wake up and take action.
Add Mike Dunford to the list of departures.
Sb is crumbling fast. It seems to be the season for things crumbling. I wonder though, how many of those indignant bloggers that couldn’t handle a PepsiCo sponsored nutrition blog actually consume many of PepsiCo’s brands and don’t know it? There’s a lot of brands, Doritos and Mountain Dew for example. What blogger can do without those?
And PepsiCo has a lot of green brands, like Ethos Water that helps children get clean water worldwide.
And who could argue with the greenness and innovation of PepsiCo stuff like this?
Point is that the bloggers who resigned in protest over a nutrition blog probably consume some of these things and don’t even know who makes it.
But what is really funny is how the new Food Frontiers blog was presented by SEED management in the first place:
As part of this partnership, we’ll hear from a wide range of experts on how the company is developing products rooted in rigorous, science-based nutrition standards to offer consumers more wholesome and enjoyable foods and beverages. The focus will be on innovations in science, nutrition and health policy. In addition to learning more about the transformation of PepsiCo’s product portfolio, we’ll be seeing some of the innovative ways it is planning to reduce its use of energy, water and packaging.
Oh the humanity! Lots of tolerance over there at Sb.
I’ll give this piece of advice we always used to give in the TV Newsroom to people calling in that demanded we remove/edit/censure certain news stories, TV shows, or advertisements:
I understand your concerns, thank you, there’s no need to yell. Respectfully, if you don’t like the content, change the channel, we don’t force you to watch.
I find the whole Sb revolt thing hilarious. It’s a tempest in a pop can. Of course, PepsiCo could have defused this whole thing simply by making an announcement to stop putting deadly earth killing CO2 in their sodas, and instead sequestering it out back, underground. Then they’d be heroes, right?
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UPDATE: Luboš Motl finds some interesting tidbits about the state of science at Sb:
To demonstrate that scienceblogs.com has almost nothing to do with science these days, let us look at the five most active articles on their server, according to the main page of scienceblogs.com:
1. Episode LXXXII: Is this the thread for the tea party?… P.Z. Myers just included a would-be funny video that attacks the tea party movement
2. Monckton vs The House of Lords… Tim Lambert wrote a short text discussing purely the form, not the content, of some exchanges of Lord Monckton with the deputies
3. What fresh torment can we perpetrate on young girls?… P.Z. Myers discusses breast ironing in Cameroon and argues it occurs because the inhabitants are Catholics
4. Boyd Haley finally does the right thing, but is it for the wrong reasons?… Orac celebrates that the ScienceBlogs surrendered to the commies like him in PepsiGate; it’s discussed that evil companies are adding drugs to food
5. GOP Talking Points Even GOP Doesn’t Believe… Ed Brayton about Bush tax cuts. Doesn’t even pretend to be science
As you can see, science is virtually non-existent over there and everything is biased left-wing politics. But they still have the breathtaking arrogance to attack PepsiCo’s scientific blog on nutrition as insufficiently scientific for them.
Compare the above postings to the Food Frontiers blog now at PepsiCo’s website.
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UPDATE2: Predictably, the always angry PZ Myers goes zerkers over this post. He thinks I don’t understand the issue of “ethics of keeping advertising separate from content”. Um Newsflash there PZ. I spent 25 years in a TV and radio newsrooms, don’t lecture me about keeping infomercials off the news. I’ve fought that battle. But as I pointed out and PZ missed, if people don’t like infomericals, they can turn off the TV or switch the channel. The organized rant that forced SEED to remove the PepsiCo Food Frontiers blog denies readers their right to choose. That’s so uncool but typical for people like PZ that think people shouldn’t be allowed to choose for themselves. Just look at his religious hatreds he posts regularly. No science there, just hate.
Also, without citing a single sentence he claims I have particular take, that the reason for the exodus is that people don’t like PepsiCo products. Well noooooo, if you’d read it rather than engage your typical hateful knee jerk keyboard pounding reaction, you see it was a question.
I wonder though, how many of those indignant bloggers that couldn’t handle a PepsiCo sponsored nutrition blog actually consume many of PepsiCo’s brands and don’t know it?
It seems he’s ended his “strike” (he’s been posting the last couple of days), now he’s busy spiting me for noticing him at all. Next time I’ll just ignore him.
Some class act that PZ. He is the face of Sb today, so sad that science is co-marketed with anger and hate there.
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UPDATE3: see my detailed comment below
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One must seek hard at the Pharyngula site to find some science – it’s mostly a constant Myers’ attack against anything remotely religion-related with a religious zeal that would be more becoming in a Great Inquisitor or maybe exorcist 400 years ago.
How does using Pepsi poductd disqualify you from being horrified at allowing them to greenwash on a science site?
Anthony: so you’ve made your position clear on where you stand with respect to corporate sponsorship of blogs. I’ve always wondered: do you recieve corporate sponsorship for your blog? (And if not, why not?) Either way, the answer is interesting. Excuse the boldness of the question, but it does strike precisely to the center of the issue.
[reply] So far as I know, the blog relies on Google Ads revenue and donations from visitors. Any corporate money top up required is likely from Anthony’s own business. He may see this and clarify for you. RT-mod.
I have one corporate sponsorship – this free hosted blog provided by Automattic which is the parent company of wordpress.com Much like Sb bloggers under SEED.
But as I have pointed out, I don’t go ballistic if wp.com hosts corporate blogs. (They do and many I disagree with)
I think the whole Sb issue is a tempest in a pop can.
Apples and oranges Anthony.
Kim,
If you’re not in the dungeon, you are not banned. Do you have link to the thread in question ?
It’s narrow all right. And the narrowness is entirely political. For example, do you think the Sb bloggers would permit Roger Pielke Sr to blog there? Or Joe Bastardi?
Neither do I.
I think Anthony has a point, which is that Sb’s own bloggers think they should control who else gets to blog there.
Of course it’s hilarious that some scientists can’t figure out that they are paid out of taxes paid by corporates and their employees, and that they spend their lives 99.9% dependent on corporate goods and services.
It’s even more hilarious that people like PZ and the generally foul-mouthed acolytes he attracts to his blog think they have anything whatever to do with science.
One of them who was trying to argue her “climate science” religious beliefs with me turned out to be a sociologist about the time she abandoned debate for infantile abuse. I suspect the “hard science” educated faction over there is small.
And Anthony, PZ ended his strike before you ever made this post flaming him, so your second update is still misleading.
Doug McGee,
Anthony already admitted he made a mistake, and fixed it. Why are you being a pest? Try to be gracious.
The Revolt of the Sb Man? Or is it Sb Mann?
Re: McGee and “Apples and Oranges”.
Well we don’t see eye to eye on the blogging platform issue. Not a worry for me. Fact is that nobody has gotten run out of wordpress.com by other bloggers.
The Sb episode, with the tight clique of bloggers reminds me of NIMBYism in small towns. My point is that the revolt started with a preconceived notion about what it “would” be, rather than wait to see what it was.
That’s the worst error anyone in science can make. Not gathering data on the object/issue/event, but assuming they know what will happen in the Food Frontiers case.
Sb bloggers didn’t wait to see what Food Frontiers was to be, they ran it out of town based on a preformed bias. From comments I’ve read they expected it to be pushing products, or product justifications as thinly vieled advertisments. The fiasco could have easily been avoided by observing, and then complaining if the blog and the worries about it met with preconceived notion. Then they’d have a case and data to back it up.
Yet when I read the Food Frontiers blog at http://foodfrontiers.pepsicoblogs.com/ I don’t see a hint of such things. Here’s some sample titles
– A Conversation on the Sodium in Our Diet
– Responses to Questions on Microbial Stability, Acidity, and Phosphorus Content in Carbonated Beverages
– European Association for the Study of Obesity/Karolinska Institute pre-International Congress on Obesity Meeting
– PepsiCo Leading Discussion of Food Industry’s Role in Promoting Heart Health at the World Congress of Cardiology
If you read these posts you won’t find a hint of advertising, just things like this:
Oh, the horror of it all. They even cited references in the first story I linked.
There seems to me to be far more science and rational debate at the Food Frontiers blog than there currently is at PZ’s site, and, as an added plus they don’t call people names or demean their personal religious views either.
I would think that the biggest error Sb bloggers have made (besides abandoning their own village in the uprising) is thinking that the people in charge of Sb/SEED didn’t have the integrity or management skills to define and keep the conversation at Food Frontiers on track. Instead they just brought out the pictchforks and torches to combat the imagined “monster” and then the most aggrieved ones abandoned their town, after the monster was killed.
The problem is they are confusing Pepsico with pepsi drink
Smokey,
The “strike” was over prior to Anthony even making this post. His update is wrong. He fixed nothing. He should write a correction, not an update, stating he was slow on hearing the news and the issue was resolved before he ever posted on it.
Anthony,
It’s already been explained to you by a ScBling blogger who left, that your interpretation (now repeated) of the problem is not accurate so there’s no sense in me trying to dissuade you from believing that which you would obviously prefer to believe, even as inaccurate as it is.
But let me repeat Alex’s words from above:
It’s about earning the right to have a blog on Science Blogs. There’s no self-nominating as there is with word press where anyone and their dog can blog.
REPLY: And that elitism thinking, or “exclusive club” if you like, is the root of the problem. To be a VIP member of WordPress, to get all the features and exposure (like CNN and BBC) there is still a buy in and not just everyone can do it. Even though WUWT has:
I applied for wp.com VIP, and was rejected. I didn’t go ballistic. it was a business decision
Like wordpress.com, SEED still runs a business, they have to make a profit. Sb is not altruistic, which is why there are all sorts of commercial ads all over Sb. The SEED management made a business decision some folks didn’t like, and the “exclusive club” took up a destructive policy in retaliation which will likely result in the whole enterprise falling prey to economic pressures.
You also failed to comment or even recognize the other points made in my last detailed comment. – Anthony
Doug @ur momisugly 2:41
PZ Myers told me I was banned and I took him at his word. He said it in a thread just a few after the Stan Peterson one. I’m not going to bother to search for it or link it because I don’t care whether or not you believe me. PZ said I was banned and I believe him.
I vaguely remember not being able to post afterwards but am not sure. I doubt that I tried because I don’t have to be invited twice by the host in order to leave. Other commenters trying to have me heaved out the door isn’t adequate, and there was plenty of that, too. The squeals to have ‘kim’ sent to the dungeon were hilarious.
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Also, Doug, if you are so privy to the meaning of the dungeon over at Pharyngula why don’t you pass on to the Chief Jailer the sentiments of EW at 10:15 AM. He has PZ in a nutshell.
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Anthony writes:
Then Seed shouldn’t have set it up as the “exclusive club” that it is and let it be a free-for-all like wordpress.
You still don’t seem to understand there is a difference between wordpress and Science Blogs. [REPLY: No, I get it, as you said, Sb is an “exclusive club”, no place for unwashed commoners or businesspeople there. -A]
grrlscientist posted this before she left SB:
Pepsi ethics
Principles and integrity. Some folks believe they are important qualities. OMMV. [REPLY: You mean like PZ Myers hatefests against contitutionally protected religion? Like GrrlScientist titling the story of that link you provided “Sucking Corporate Dick“? If that’s “integrity” what a laugh on you. It is an illusion of your mind. -A]
They weren’t relevant.
REPLY: Not relevant, heh. Well then don’t bother commenting here again since you dismiss everything I say. Since you take that route, we’re done, and likely so is Sb as the inhabitants have started burning their own village over “the wrong people” who bought a house in town where everybody else had their house subsidized for free. Can’t have that. Meanwhile the town is nearly broke and there’s now less revenue for the city coffers since the former inhabitants are no longer productive (or present). Recipe for bankruptcy and closure.- Anthony
Kim,
If you are banned, you would be in the dungeon.
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Doug, you are in a dungeon of your own beliefs. PZ Myers told me I was banned.
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Anthony writes,
Religion isn’t constitutionally protected. The right to believe and practice it is. By your statement you would have us believe there’s a protection of religion against ridicule.
You can clutch your pearls at the language, if you want, but it has nothing to do with whether or not she’s making a stand on principle.
You still miss the point. The community wasn’t set up where some were subsidized and some bought in. If Seed’s going to change the covenant, it shouldn’t have been done unilaterally, which denied residents a voice in the process and as a surprise, which denied residents the ability to opt-out prior to the change. That’s the point and why your other statements had no relevance to the issue.
REPLY: Yeah right whatever. “Integrity” when you have religious hate speech ranters doing more rants than science and people that make headlines with “suck dick” don’t add any integrity, they make Sb look like a collection of fools and intolerants. If I did such things, I’d be vilified all over the blogosphere, since everybody wants to sidestep real integrity issues and play “gotcha”. Sb gets a free pass on this sort of juvenile ugliness.
No, you misunderstand, it’s a business (and now likely a faster failing one), not a democracy. If every business allowed their employees to vote on every decision there would be no direction or progress. At some point you have to let owners/management do their job even though you may disagree with the decision. While I respect the right of employees to leave a business they don’t agree with, torching the business publicly in the process has consequences.
And in business, there’s buy in all the time, on product/services joint agreements. Employees get to join for free, but they don’t necessarily get to make top level decisions.
We won’t convince each other, so may as well stop trying. You can cling to your religion haters and disgusting headlines, I’ll choose to call them like I see it. You don’t agree, that’s fine, I get that, but I disagree. We’ll have to agree to disagree. End of story. – Anthony
Doug’s beginning to resemble a really good parody.
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Actually, I think we agree on the bottom-line Anthony. A business has the right to alter its business plan anytime it wishes, but if such a business is going to ignore its employees and their expertise and leave it’s employees out of the loop, it’s a bad business model and it is doomed to fail – deservedly so.
(REPLY: Yes we agree on that but not this (snip – this paragraph). Your use of the P-word in that context insults millions of people for the despicable behavior of a few. This is the central problem with the ugly generalizations we see at places like PZ, broad ugly name calling and labeling of millions by someone who is in a minority) – Anthony
Kim
Still waiting on your proof you are banned but somehow escaped being named in the dungeon.
A link showing PZ said you are banned (not will be banned) is all it takes. “Kim banned” doesn’t show up in any searches. All I got was:
and
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So PZ caved in right quick, and now he’s like, not on strike??
That didn’t last very long.
One of his commentators [Aquaria] said:
“You’re going to be on strike for a while.”
Wrong. PZ threw a tantrum, disappeared for a few days, realized he was losing income, and came scurrying back. He’s every bit as much a Capitalist as Andrew Carnegie. The difference is, he pretends to be one of the proles.
PZ Myers caved in, and he caved fast. So no more “strike.” Hey, he’s got his Atheist Religious Cult to preside over, and his religiously atheist acolytes need their religious leader to broadcast atheist scripture and accept monetary indulgences from his befuddled true believers.☺
Pitiful engine you’ve got there, Doug. I was all over the Stan Peterson thread from around comment 800 to 1100 and several subsequent threads, in one of which PZ banned me. Keep looking. It’s pretty bizarre that you are so wound up about this.
Also, neither of your two quotes there are from me.
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