ScienceBlogs.com Deals With Community Backlash Over PepsiCo Column

History's Coming To writes "Several writers for the ScienceBlogs.com collective have publicly resigned from the site, and many more have voiced concerns over parent company Seed's decision to include a paid blog under the nutrition category from PepsiCo. The blog was to be written by PepsiCo food scientists, detailing their work. The UK's Guardian newspaper has picked up on the story, and includes a letter from Seed editor Adam Bly which covers the company's rationale." The ScienceBlogs Team later canceled the PepsiCo blog and apologized, instead leaving their users with a few tough questions: "How do we empower top scientists working in industry to lead science-minded positive change within their organizations? ... How do companies who seek genuine dialogue with this community engage?"

Comments

Translation

[David Gerard]

"How do we empower top scientists working in industry to lead science-minded positive change within their organizations? ... How do companies who seek genuine dialogue with this community engage?"

Translation: "Damn, how do we get away with this next time? Do you know how much money Pepsi was giving us for selling out your reputations? This 'wall between editorial and advertising' concept is so outmoded and pre-Web 2.0, you know."

Re:Translation

[Anonymous Coward]

Indeed. As to the question itself, assuming for a moment we take it at face value: this looks like an opportunity for legitimate use of the oodles of money that mega-corps such as this one pay for PR and marketing. And by legitimate, I mean credible. I mean doing it under your own colours with your own money and building up your own credibility instead of buying someone else's.

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[spirality]

Why aren't government scientists treated with as much skepticism as corporate scientists?

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[Anonymous Coward]

Because they don't have a long history of being paid to tell us that things like smoking and various chemicals are safe, only to be proved wrong?

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[Anonymous Coward]

While governments and their scientists may be financially wasteful at times, at least they aren't driven totally by greed, like corporate scientists are. There is typically at least some small part of that government which is interested in positively helping the citizenry of the nation.

There's little incentive for government scientists studying nutrition, for instance, to come up with findings that indicate that a certain product is "nutritious" when it may not be. However, when you're working as a scientist for a company selling said product, then it clearly becomes beneficial to you to avoid truths that might not lead to increased sales, or it might help encourage you to look at data in a way that doesn't reflect reality. That's why people don't trust corporate scientists.

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[houstonbofh]

All this over a blog that never got off the ground? How biased was it going to be? And exactly who is unbiased? Much better to have a knee jerk reaction and quit, then to stay and present an opposing viewpoint, if one is needed.

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[drinkypoo]

There's little incentive for government scientists studying nutrition, for instance, to come up with findings that indicate that a certain product is "nutritious" when it may not be.

Is that why the FDA produced a "food pyramid" which bases the diet on carbohydrates which we know and for centuries have known will cause heart disease and obesity in cases of overconsumption? And why the new revision of it is still overly carb-heavy, though they did reduce the percentage of carb content they recommend for their diet? Is it just simple coincidence that the original food pyramid came out about the same time as the plethora of processed foods hit the shelves? Is it a simple coincidence that Monsanto is one of the biggest government lobbyists, and that the FDA requires any dairy product which states that it does not use rBGH to carry a notice that the FDA has detected no difference between milk from cows with and without rBGH, which is an outright lie?

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[betterunixthanunix]

In theory, the government does not have the same profit motive as big corporations, and therefore should have less incentive to produce specific results. In practice, though, "The business of the United States is business."

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[hedwards]

It never got off the ground because there was a bad reaction to it. It's not that the blog was necessarily going to be biased, it's that there was a very clear conflict of interest going on. It would've been very different had Pepsi not paid for the space and it was clearly disclosed who was writing it. That's how journalists have handled such things in the past, it would still have to be as unbiased as possible, but disclosure goes a long way.

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[Mikkeles]

Well, it would help if they didn't miscategorise PepsiCo products by putting them under Nutrition. Candy Engineering would (possibly) have been acceptable.

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[Jawnn]

Why aren't government scientists treated with as much skepticism as corporate scientists?

Man, it must be so nice to live in a world like yours, where the greed and corruption of corporate influence is completely invisible. You know, that world built on the bullshit meme about how "government scientists" have some agenda other than science. You know, all those snooty "intellectual elite" government scientists taking tax-payer money to come up with "theories" that debunk the "scientific" advances produced by hard-working American business scientists.

That said, if the Pepsico "scientists" have anything to add to the exchange of information and ideas at ScienceBlogs, they should be welcome there. But if their aim was to use that platform as another tool to advance their corporate agenda, as was quite clearly the case, then they and the idiots who allowed it deserve all the ridicule and rejection that can be heaped upon them.

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[Jawnn]

Your mistake is in assuming that the FDA represents science. That's just silly. It is a political body, ostensibly charged with regulating the food and drug industries so that those products are "safe and effective". Politics, not science, drives the actions of that body. If science, defined as that body of research which is beholden only to the pursuit of knowledge (believe it or not that still exists, largely in academia), were allowed to make the rules that the FDA supposedly enforces, those rules would look very different.

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[Anonymous Coward]

For centuries? Outright lie?

[citation please]

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[Luke has no name]

non-rBGH milk tastes more like milk.

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[ChromeAeonium]

Is that why the FDA produced a "food pyramid" which bases the diet on carbohydrates which we know and for centuries have known will cause heart disease and obesity in cases of overconsumption?

Which for centuries were also what built civilizations before our age of abundance. Societies around the globe were built on carbs, whether wheat, or rice, or maize, or sorghum, or potatoes, or cassava, or ensete, or amaranth, or quinoa, or sago, or breadfruit, or plantain, or teff, or millet, or whatever. High carb foods are what sustained humanity throughout most of its existence. This is because we've known for centuries that those foods provide the large amounts of energy that the body needs to keep going, and in the case of the food pyramid, it is assumed that you're using that energy. You can't retcon a conspiracy because lifestyles changed.

that the FDA requires any dairy product which states that it does not use rBGH to carry a notice that the FDA has detected no difference between milk from cows with and without rBGH

There's an xkcd for everything.

which is an outright lie?

Got a strong source for that? And no, sites like this are not valid citations.

Re:Translation

[Parafilmus]

Is that why the FDA produced a "food pyramid" which bases the diet on carbohydrates...?

The "Food Pyramid" is not published by the FDA. It's published by the USDA, whose mission is to promote American agriculture. Their pyramid is basically an ad campaign masquerading as a public service.

Re:Translation

[spirality]

They (the FDA) represent themselves as being scientific.

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[OeLeWaPpErKe]

Stick it to the man bro ! Down with capitalist pig science and invention ! Let the state do it !

Say, who turned out the lights ? Hmmm, the phone's not working ... where's my cell phone ?.

Frankly even the more "abstract" science largely 0comes from 1 of 2 sources : "scientists" who were really businessmen first and scientist second (or third, or fourth, in most cases), and the church. Massive government sponsorship for science is mostly less than a century old (and already they have a monopoly).

That's why it'd be a good idea for both private individuals and companies to be involved in science. Of course, you'd have to check something before you start believing it. Somehow we think that no checks are necessare when the state ("university"/"national center for X"/...) comes with science ? That's my second point. Yes individuals lie, and they lie a lot. Companies lie, and they lie a lot. But why does the state get a free pass from everyone here ? Government scientists lie too.

In actuality the best option, imho, would be to continue as science used to work : that everyone believes whatever they like to believe, and no-one gets shielded from the real world. Of course given our "tolerant" attitudes on things ranging from Darwinism to (A)GW, half of slashdot would break out the pitchforks before they let this happen. And of course, getting it spoon-fed from the government (only the "approved" discoveries, of course) is much easier. No-one really needs to know what history tells us about just how many gene lines survive in a natural selection environment, and how many die out (for every species alive today, there's at least a million species that died out, and probably more than that)

Scientists used to worship dissent, even stupid dissent.
Now it just worships government money.

"It's even worse than we thought", "jewish flesh is toxic to look at" (whoops, wrong state sponsoring)

Re:Translation

[spirality]

Who said I was not skeptical of the corporate scientists? Clearly they can not be always be trusted.

I was just pointing out how corporate scientists always get a bad rap and how government scientists tend to get a free pass.

But in fact government scientists have an interest in promoting ideas that free up more funds for their research. Also, as government employees/contractors, they have an interest in pleasing the source of their monies.

Basically it comes down to this. When a government scientist reaches conclusions that call for more government you should view such conclusions with some skepticism because of the inherent conflict of interest that exists.

Just like when Phillip Morris's research department says smoking is actually good for you.

Just like when businesses promote legislation that benefits them.

You must always ask "cui bono"?

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[Vintermann]

If you look at other countries, you will see that they got their food pyramids at around the same time. Were they influence by Monsanto, too? All of them?

... carbohydrates which we know and for centuries have known will cause heart disease and obesity in cases of overconsumption?

Which is different from fat how, exactly? The claim that excessive consumption of fat does not cause heart disease and obesity is a rather modern one. And it's a wrong one. And it's a product of the immensely profitable health fad industry.

Regarding labeling, that's a case of regulatory capture. Blaming that on the evil of government scientists is a bit far fetched.

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[Derosian]

In the US both those scientists are one and the same.

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[bkeahl]

So, any scientist working on anything which produces something the rest of us are willing to pay money for is to be silenced? Whatever the researchers posted would be open to review by other participants and could be commented upon. An actual dialog would do both sides some good, as they could both gain a better understanding of an alternative view and possibly incorporate that into future product development (or dispel myths and other false information). But heck yeah, lets jump up and down and force anyone we might not agree with into the closet so nobody could ever hear what they have to say. It's becoming the American way.

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[reboot246]

Amen!

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[David Gerard]

You fail comprehension. This blog was purchased advertising designed to fraudulently look like a blog. The only reason Pepsico did that was the good reputation produced by the other sciencebloggers. The managementspeak is trying to work out how to get away with such lucrative deception again.

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[bkeahl]

Perhaps we both fail comprehension. It said "Paid Blog", not commercial advertisement. No doubt Pepsi was doing it for PR reasons. I did miss the point that no scientists would be posting ... a shame. However, it's still a method of having dialog with the company, even if not directly with their researchers.

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[Rich0]

Uh, everybody is beholden to something. Most academic research is government-funding, which means that at the very least it is subject to selection bias.

That isn't to say that academic research shouldn't be trusted - only that there is no such thing as "pure" science except in a philosophy text.

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[Anonymous Coward]

and just what is the %of protein in millet, it is 55%, that makes it a protein food not a carb food, look at quinoa as well that is almost as protein rich.

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[Anonymous Coward]

High carb foods are what sustained humanity throughout most of its existence.

Rubbish, humanity has been hunter-gatherers for most of its ~100k-year existence, and complex-carbohydrates make up very little of a hunter-gatherer's diet. Only when civilisations formed after farming crops in the last ~10k-years did these substances start to make up more of our diets - possibly to the detriment of our health.

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[ukyoCE]

This. Carbohydrates are not bad. The obesity epidemic of the past decade or two clearly has nothing to do with carbohydrates (alone).

Low-fiber foods that don't make you feel full? Sure.

Overly-refined foods packed with excessive sugar? Sure.

Beverages (including milk, but namely soda and "diet" soda) with as many calories as a meal? Sure.

Every time I see someone claim carboyhydrates are bad for you I put my face in my palm and shake my head slowly.

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[Anonymous Coward]

Um, the xkcd comic was referencing giving something a "x-free" label te differentiate itself from others could who be "x-free" to without carrying a label.

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[ChromeAeonium]

If by 55% you mean 11%. So does white wheat flour. Quinoa comes in at 15%, although it can be higher, so it's a good source of protein, and it has a lot more essential amino acids than most things, so it's a good crop for sure, but it is still akin to a carbohydrate staple food.

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[ChromeAeonium]

Yeah, I don't get the bad rap carb foods seem to be getting. I'm not a nutritionist, but it is my understanding that the deal with carbs is just that they are high in energy, and if you're burning a lot of energy, no problem. But today, we're not using all that energy, but we still want our carbs, and our fats, and our sugars, and in large quantities. We want our big greasy burger, and that pile of fries, and a nice cold soda to wash it down. And then the laws of physics rear their their ugly head. All those excess kcals have to go somewhere, and the body still thinks a lion could chase us away from our food supply at any second, so it won't poop them out, and they end up around our middles, and with that comes the problems associated with obesity. If you look at China, they've been eating large amounts of carb filled rice for so long, but only now, with the increased demand for the fats and oils and sugars to go with their rice do we see obesity really rising. The way I see it, there's nothing wrong with what carbs do, all they do is provide higher quantities of energy, just so long as you match your energy in with your energy out.

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[HiThere]

Ok. I'll say it then. Academic scientists shouldn't be trusted either. This is a part of the creed of science. *TRUST NOBODY*

Now, then, the question is how does one progress in such a context. The answer is evaluate multiple results testing the same thesis. By multiple people. In multiple organizations.

This is made difficult when researchers suppress results, but that's not a block, merely an impediment. What's a block is when researchers hide to whom they are beholden.

Therefore, if an article is clearly labeled as coming from scientists working at Pepsi-Cola which makes products x, y, and z that might be affected by these results, then I have no qualms about accepting the publication. But that warning is almost never present. (And do remember that academic scientists often have commercial grant givers.)

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[HiThere]

Ok. But do remember also:
Non-pasteurized milk tastes more like milk.
Non-homogenized milk tastes more like milk.
Non-refrigerated milk tastes more like milk.
And especially:
Milk that's still warm from the cow tastes more like milk.

P.S.: I, personally, guarantee that last one. There's an extreme difference, but I know of no way to preserve the flavor.

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[jshackney]

Is that why the FDA produced a "food pyramid" (snip)

You mean the Department of Agriculture, right? Here's a link to their advertising wing.

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[Anonymous Coward]

Every time I see someone claim carboyhydrates are bad for you I put my face in my palm and shake my head slowly

You're obviously suffering from Complex-Carbohydrate withdrawal symptoms.

Re:Translation

[Hatta]

Low-fiber foods that don't make you feel full? Sure.

Fat and protein make you feel full. What's left? Carbs.

Overly-refined foods packed with excessive sugar? Sure.

What do you think sugar is? It's a carbohydrate.

Beverages (including milk, but namely soda and "diet" soda) with as many calories as a meal? Sure.

Milk? If you're drinking half and half, sure.

Soda? It's sweetened with glucose and fructose. Carbohydrates.

Diet soda? How many calories are in a diet soda? Go ahead, look it up.

Anyay, carbohydrates aren't bad for you. But too many carbohydrates are. All these factors that you readily admit are contributing to the obesity epidemic are in fact directly related to the abundance of cheap carbs in the American diet.

Re:Translation

[Xipher]

When the company is paying you for research, they often want the results that work well for them, not the unbiased results. A government employed scientist shouldn't have that kind of biased pressure. How ever I don't think that means skepticism should go out the window, I think regardless of the source skepticism is necessary.

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[h4rr4r]

How does a diet soda have as many calories as a meal?
They either use totally calories free chemicals or sugar alcohols or the like. The calorie value for these drinks is extremely low.

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[Insightfill]

Is that why the FDA produced a "food pyramid" which bases the diet on carbohydrates which we know and for centuries have known will cause heart disease and obesity in cases of overconsumption?

Also: this was the second draft of the food pyramid. The first batch of scientists and nutritionists quit in disgust after the manipulation of their results began, and the second group was more pliable. Still looking for a link...

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[ukyoCE]

Fiber makes you feel full too, and it's a very easy measure of whether a given carbohydrate-heavy food is healthy or not. If it's got less than 2g of fiber, it's almost guaranteed to be junk food.

Saying sugar is a carbohydrate is like saying trans-fat is a fat, therefore we shouldn't eat any fat. Sugar is a simple carbohydrate. That doesn't mean the high fiber complex carbohydrates humans have been eating as long as they've been around are suddenly bad for us.

How do you measure calories in diet soda such that it's in 100% agreement with how the human body processes it? I have no clue, but honestly, it's irrelevant. No study has ever shown diet soda to cause a decrease in weight. Whether we understand why or not, diet soda is every bit as bad as regular soda. If anything it's worse. People think they can drink it while trying to lose weight, or drink it in excess.

Anyway, carbohydrates aren't bad for you. But too many carbohydrates are.

Totally agreed - that's what most "X food is bad for you" statements come down to: excess.

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[ukyoCE]

RIght, the listed calories on the label is low or zero. Yet I've never heard of a study showing diet sodas result in weight loss. Diet soda is a scam that's making fat people even fatter.

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[VendettaMF]

Given that the information supplied by PepsiCo was that it was to be a continuation of their FoodFrontiers blog (An insipid collection of fluff pieces, press releases and deliberately bad science), was to be heavily moderated with no badmouthing of Pepsi to be allowed in comments, and was to be primarily written/edited/maintained by a PR droid with no science qualifications and no interest in science...

There really was no point in holding back or permitting its existence to be marketed as anything other than paid advertising.

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[Anonymous Coward]

Who put the lights back on? Oh, and the phone's working again. So glad you could post that message.

Funny that GP never mentioned state sponsored science though, just that megacorps have oodles of money to spend on marketing and this was probably one of the better ways. I'd also prefer Pepsi sinking its marketing money into scientific blogs over spending it on more frivilous advertising.

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[Anonymous Coward]

You're right! Without the USDA's intercession, Americans would stop eating and the demand for foods of all kinds would plummet.
It makes sense to advertise a single food as an alternative to others, but I think you err in assuming that the agriculture as a whole benefits from the food pyramid. People, especially Americans, don't need to be told to eat.

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[Reziac]

Good article on the subject:

http://www.nytimes.com/2002/07/07/magazine/what-if-it-s-all-been-a-big-fat-lie.html?pagewanted=print

Probably the single best-balanced (says my biochem background) article I've seen on the subject.

Obesity from too much carb-seeking tends to come in the wake of protein and fat starvation, which are natural results of all this "healthy eating" of the past couple decades. Combine that with the new paranoia about letting kids be kids (gods forbid they have an unsupervised moment) and too much sitting in front of the computer, and it's no wonder we've got a generation as wide as they are tall.

(BTW at 55, devourer of dead cows and slave in the sunshine, I still wear the same clothes I did in college.)

Re:Translation

[ultranova]

Why aren't government scientists treated with as much skepticism as corporate scientists?

Because a government has a vested interest in keeping you healthy, while a corporation has vested interest to say that whatever they produce is healthy, whether or not it is.

Both government and corporations are made of psychopaths, but a psychotic governor might still pay some attention to your wellbeing since he considers you his property, while a corporate psycho has no such reason. That's one of the reasons to oppose libertarian plutocracy.

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[Reziac]

Vegetarians often have peculiar delusions about protein content. I see this kind of crap about soy all the time.

Tho I should have ended that paragraph after "delusions". ;)

Speaking of soy:
http://www.soyonlineservice.co.nz/

Note: Newly-popular flaxseed meal has 3 times the phytoestrogens of soy, at far greater digestibility. (Sufficient to cause infertility [50% vs the natural 15%] and birth defects in dogs, whereas soy, which absorbs poorly due to mucus generation, does not.)

[I can't find the list offhand, but the content was something like 300,000 units for flaxseed, 100,000 units for soybean meal, and the next highest was 25,000 units, I think per kg of edible product. Average for most typical human-consumed foods was about 2,000. Well, if it prevents vegetarians from reproducing, I'm all for it. ;) ]

Re:Translation

[Hatta]

Fiber makes you feel full too, and it's a very easy measure of whether a given carbohydrate-heavy food is healthy or not. If it's got less than 2g of fiber, it's almost guaranteed to be junk food.

True. Something like fried catfish isn't exactly health food. But it's mostly oil and protein which fill you up more quickly than carbs and keep you full longer.

Saying sugar is a carbohydrate is like saying trans-fat is a fat, therefore we shouldn't eat any fat. Sugar is a simple carbohydrate. That doesn't mean the high fiber complex carbohydrates humans have been eating as long as they've been around are suddenly bad for us.

Yes, as long as there's fiber in them. Starches are so readily converted to sugars that complex vs simple sugars almost doesn't matter. Nutritionally, when you're eating pasta or white bread you might as well be eating candy.

How do you measure calories in diet soda such that it's in 100% agreement with how the human body processes it?

Throw it in a bomb calorimeter and we have an absolute thermodynamic maximum for the number of calories the body can extract from it. It's negligible. The problem with diet soda is that people think they can supersize their fries because they got the diet coke.

Re:Translation

[ultranova]

Is that why the FDA produced a "food pyramid" which bases the diet on carbohydrates which we know and for centuries have known will cause heart disease and obesity in cases of overconsumption?

Everything kills you with overconsumption, even water.

Re:Translation

[Jawnn]

There it is, the same bullshit meme that gets trotted out by every special interest whose agenda might be derailed by the truth. The fact of the matter is that there is no bias in research whose funding does not depend on a particular result or conclusion, e.g. the vast majority of academic research. As soon as you let special interests into the picture, however, all bets are off. Oil companies, big pharma, etc., anyone with enough cash to buy control of the funding process, and the truth gets thrown under the bus.

So..., what well-funded group is paying for the "global warming is mad-made" school of thought?
[crickets]

Re:Translation

[Rich0]

There it is, the same bullshit meme that gets trotted out by every special interest whose agenda might be derailed by the truth.

Ok, we disagree, so I must be a "special interest." As if anybody on the planet is motivated solely by the benefit of all of humanity with no regard to personal well-being.

The fact of the matter is that there is no bias in research whose funding does not depend on a particular result or conclusion, e.g. the vast majority of academic research.

Uh, explain academic misconduct then? I'm sure that for every case that is uncovered a million get missed. Even Gregor Mendel is suspected of cooking his results. That basically results in confirmation bias. When it comes to public funding, results that suggest that a problem exists are more likely to lead to funding than results that suggest that a problem does not exist. If you conclude that asteroid 123X definitely won't hit earth, chances are you won't get funded to continue observing 123X, but if you're the foremost expert on 123X or own the best telescope for observing it, then it certainly wouldn't hurt your budget if the results suggested that 123X might be at risk of impacting Washington DC.

Oil companies, big pharma, etc., anyone with enough cash to buy control of the funding process, and the truth gets thrown under the bus.

Well, for the most part I suspect that most studies with biased funding probably tend to be honest with regard to the results they actually publish - that is they don't just make up results. The problem is with negative results. If a special interest funds 50 studies, and half confirm a result, and half contradict it, you'll end up with 25 studies with the desired outcome in the literature. However, academic research can be vulnerable to the same kinds of influences.

So..., what well-funded group is paying for the "global warming is mad-made" school of thought?

Who said anything about global warming? Certainly I didn't. In any case, the biases I listed above apply here as well as anywhere else. Predict that global warming is real and man-made, you get funds from those who want to prevent it. Predict that it is fake, and you get funds from those who want to ignore it. As long as it remains a big issue it will get big funding.

Re:Translation

[shutdown -p now]

Got a strong source for that

I'm not the original poster, and I don't have a source, but given that Canada, EU, Australia and New Zealand have all banned it, I think that strong suspicion is quite warranted here.

Re:Translation

[mikechant]

The problem with diet soda is that people think they can supersize their fries because they got the diet coke.

I also read a claim (can't remember source/credibility rating) that some of the artificial sweetners in diet soda can act as appetite stimulants.

how to do it

[Anonymous Coward]

PepsiCo food scientists are more than welcome to conduct research, and they're more than welcome to detail their findings in papers. However, to be taken seriously, those papers should be submitted to peer-reviewed journals and published via standard procedures. Under no circumstances should they pay blogs to include those postings/papers if they want to be appear impartial.

Re:how to do it

[Anonymous Coward]

Maybe the Pepsi scientists wanted to. But they would have had zero choice in the matter. If you tried to explain this peer-review process to an executive, you would be met with disbelief. Money is the solution to everything, after all.

Re:how to do it

[Anonymous Coward]

PepsiCo food scientists are more than welcome to conduct research, and they're more than welcome to detail their findings in papers. However, to be taken seriously, those papers should be submitted to peer-reviewed journals and published via standard procedures. Under no circumstances should they pay blogs to include those postings/papers if they want to be appear impartial.

Who said Pepsi gives a rat's ass about appearing impartial? ScienceBlogs appears to be the one worried about the appearance of impartiality.

Re:how to do it

[gbjbaanb]

I'd say there's nothing wrong with paid-for blog instead of the usual publishing route... because the peer review should still take place.

I can say whatever bo**ocks I want on /. and someone will tell me I'm wrong - fine. I can put up my own blog and say the same bull with comments disabled, that's fine. But I could pay /. to post my comments, and all's good - if people can still say I'm wrong.

(cue the 'wits' replying with the obvious now :)

So the paid-for aspect only becomes a problem if there's some coercion that cntrary arguments are withheld in some way, and I suppose there's always the case that the publication will censor in order to keep the money flowing in, but the peer community will quickly recognise that and will boycott it making the whole point of the initial exercise futile.

Or the pepsico scientists could contribute exactly what they were going to, but without the financial backing of Pepsico. I'm sure Pepsico just wants the advertising and marketing of saying these clever scientists work for them.

Re:how to do it

[cyp43r]

Equating paying for an entry and being able to comment on it is just not on. A lot of people don't read the comments and the comments are not given nearly the same weight. The Pepsi scientists are given equal weighting with all the other things they're reporting despite clear motivations for fraud.

Re:how to do it

[sarkeizen]

This is a good point. Although people like Orac (a regular scienceblogger) talk about their research they aren't actively promoting it. Similarly I can be assured that while a sciencebloggers employer either ignores, supports or simply tolerates having someone on their staff blog about science - we can be reasonably assured that they aren't being paid to do so. In both of those cases I can't say I'd have the same level of confidence for Professor Pepsi...or whomever ended up there. Also I can't stand it when people like Adam Bly post what is clearly a thin and minor reason for having a huge company sponsor a blog and avoid the obvious and real reason: Money. Adam - sure perhaps industry is the 'interface to science' for most people (whatever the hell that means) however that's not the reason you are talking to Pepsi, L'Oreal, etc.. instead of the chief scientist of Nobody Inc. it's money and exposure and I wish you had said that up front and clearly laid out the monetary - down to the dollar - benefit you were getting.

Re:how to do it

[bkeahl]

Absolutely not! Let's not have a private company provide a way for a web site to pay for, expand, or improve its services because the ignorant masses might not understand that the postings made by employees of a corporation on a blog sure to be covered with the corporate logo will possibly be biased.

Scientific bias would be a completely new experience wouldn't it? I mean, there were never scientists who believed we were the center of the universe, the center of the solar system, living on a big flat planet, or who systematically covered up inconvenient weather data. Heck no, we gotta keep it pure baby!

Re:how to do it

[Anonymous Coward]

And what about the work done by Bell Labs or Xerox PARC?

I'm interested that the vehemence of the reaction to corporate science seems to be so much greater for Pepsi than for AT&T, or Intel, or Xerox. Do people imagine Pepsi is more likely to fake blood tests than Cisco is to fake bandwidth tests? Are health outcomes more open to interpretation than photolithographic outcomes? Why is everyone so ready to believe that the science reported by Pepsi would be written by the advertising department, where the science reported by Northrop Grumman is written by engineers?

Basic science funded by Pepsi does get published in peer reviewed journals, same as basic science funded by NIH or the American Cancer Society.

Re:how to do it

[LurkerXXX]

You are missing part of the point of peer review. When you get a paper published in a peer-reviewed journal, it means you got a stamp of approval from a group of fellow scientists who looked over the science, the methods and conclusions, and have considered it good science, and important enough to be published in the journal submitted to. Journals have a reputation they want to maintain, and don't publish 'junk' just so folks can all later talk about it and say 'bah, it's junk'. There is a world of difference between a peer reviewed journal and your posting on /.

what's the problem?

[Anonymous Coward]

Everything was fully disclosed and on the up and up. Are Pepsi scientists to be shunned just because they work for Pepsi? What am I missing here?

Re:what's the problem?

[AnonymousClown]

What am I missing here?

It's a blog posting and not a paper in a peer reviewed journal. And considering how the internet works, many folks would pick up on that blog post and cite it as fact.

It would be equivalent to a cigarette company scientist posting things on a blog about the health effects of smoking.

Re:what's the problem?

[sentientbeing]

Pepsi scientists? WTF

Re:what's the problem?

[Anonymous Coward]

So why does science blogs even exist then? Shouldn't *all* scientists be barred from posting blogs then? Shouldn't they only publish in peer reviewed journals? Why are you only targeting corporate scientists?

Re:what's the problem?

[MacDork]

What am I missing here?

It's a blog posting and not a paper in a peer reviewed journal. And considering how the internet works, many folks would pick up on that blog post and cite it as fact.

It would be equivalent to a cigarette company scientist posting things on a blog about the health effects of smoking.

So it's like Wikipedia. I don't see the problem. You talk as if you are trying to protect stupid people from themselves. I'd prefer if we let people read all sources, determine the veracity of those sources themselves, and make up their own damn mind about things. You know, freedom of speech, press, religion...

Re:what's the problem?

[Anonymous Coward]

I think the big issue here is that PepsiCo was paying ScienceBlogs to run the column, instead of the editors of ScienceBlogs choosing to run the column on their own on the basis of its scientific merits.

Re:what's the problem?

[cyp43r]

Because they have a clear motivation for fraud and misleading reports.

Re:what's the problem?

[drinkypoo]

Pepsi scientists? WTF

Sir, I will have you know that I received my Ph.D in Pepsiology(tm) at PepsiCo(tm) University(R). My paper "Why the masses find Pepsi(tm) so Delicious(R)" is considered to be the seminal work on separating suckers from their money.

Re:what's the problem?

[Jawnn]

What am I missing here?

The fact that corporate propaganda has no place in a community dedicated to exchange of information and ideas, uncolored by the pursuit of profit?

Re:what's the problem?

[Anonymous Coward]

I'd prefer if we let people read all sources, determine the veracity of those sources themselves, and make up their own damn mind about things.

If you are not an expert at Everything, you deserve to be cheated, poisoned and defrauded. Am I right?

Re:what's the problem?

[ChromeAeonium]

ScienceBlogs is supposed to be a place for creative, and sometimes controversial, opinions. My favorite ones are Respectful Insolence and Tomorrow's Table, and all the time, you read things there that plenty of people would get all in a huff about. Does anyone think the Pepsi blog would do that? Do you think they would ever once mention the insanity of the anti-vax movement, or the senselessness of the 9/11 truthers, or call alternative medicine purveyors out on their incoherent conspiracies? Think they'd ever mention politics or evolution or anything else that might upset a customer? No, because this blog was not written by an individual, it was by a company, for a company. And besides, plenty of clueless conspiracy minded nutters would point to this as the link between a scienceblogger, and therefore believe them to be discredited, since no small amount of people already believe scientists to be in on the Big Pharma/Monsanto/Illuminati/New World Order genocide conspiracy, so this would kinda make ScienceBlogs as a whole look a little less independent and reputable if they're willing to put corporate interests there for money.

Re:what's the problem?

[gp305840]

Everything was fully disclosed and on the up and up. Are Pepsi scientists to be shunned just because they work for Pepsi? What am I missing here?

Pepsi wants to buy into the reputation that other scientists have created for scienceblogs.com. Understandably, other bloggers there oppose. None of that opposition is against any Pepsi scientist per se.

Re:what's the problem?

[Anonymous Coward]

It may have something to do with the inaugural post reading like an advertisement.

Re:what's the problem?

[Attila Dimedici]

So, it's ok when people who have unknown biases write a science blog, but not when people who explicitly declare their biases (or at least some of them) do. How is the explicitly labeled Pepsico scientists blog posts any worse than the blog posts from writers with unknown affiliations? In either case the blog post is just as likely to be picked up and cited as fact. To me it seems that it would be much easier to judge the validity of the science on a blog that is explicitly by scientists working for Pepsico than on a blog by somebody who all I know about them is what is posted on the blog. With this Pepsico section of this blog, I would have known that the people posting there worked for Pepsico, to find out the biases of those posting on the rest of the blog I have to go to some other part of the blog ("about so and so" or some other author's biography section of the blog) to discover potential conflicts of interest.

Asinine

[Spazntwich]

While these are important questions, it should be obvious from their past behavior that PepsiCo as an organization is not interested in any layman's definition of "nutrition."

High fructose corn syrup in EVERYTHING, food products that boil down to simple carbs, trans fats and salt, and beverages that are little more than sugar water with some caramel coloring. This is a company designed to maximize profit by exploiting the still-ingrained hunter-gatherer instincts in us all, and what of the externalities associated with a lifestyle of chugging soft drinks and pounding Cheetos and Fritos? Fuck it.

These guys deserve greater scrutiny than the tobacco companies, and to wail about their trials and tribulations attempting to engage a public that is becoming more health conscious after foisting products upon them that encourage obesity, high blood pressure, and compulsive consumption is the highest form of absurdity.

Re:Asinine

[TouchAndGo]

I'm very sorry that a can of Pepsi killed your mother and molested your dog, but don't you think that perhaps this much anger directed toward a company that produces junk food is a little unwarranted?

They provide something that people want, then you rage at THEM for that? If no one was buying their product then they wouldn't be in business, so how about directing a little bit of that ranting in the direction of the general public that supports them, because last time I checked no one is marching into people's homes and forcing cola down people's throats.

Foisting it upon them? Please

Re:Asinine

[PolygamousRanchKid]

High fructose corn syrup in EVERYTHING, food products that boil down to simple carbs, trans fats and salt, and beverages that are little more than sugar water with some caramel coloring. This is a company designed to maximize profit by exploiting the still-ingrained hunter-gatherer instincts in us all, and what of the externalities associated with a lifestyle of chugging soft drinks and pounding Cheetos and Fritos?

I was taught that there are four major food groups: salt, sugar, fat and starch . . .

If our hunter-gatherer ancestors went out looking for Pepsi . . . I don't think that much of civilization as we know it would be around.

Hmm . . . what a question for them? "Do you want a Mammoth for dinner, or should I just pick up some packs of Cheetos and Fritos?"

Cue to alien archeologists in the future scratching their heads, and saying "This species seemed to die out, because of diabetes and heart disease . . . how the hell did that happen?"

Re:Asinine

[Zironic]

I don't think the HFCS issue you americans suffer from is Pepsi's fault, in other continents they use different sources of sugar, it's just that your government has decided to make corn so cheap that using other sources of sweetness becomes financially unsound, if consumers were actually willing to pay more for non HFCS soft drinks I'm sure you'd see them on the market as the soft drink companies have no inherent interest in serving you bad sugar, they just want to sell soft drinks.

Re:Asinine

[Anonymous Coward]

It should be obvious to anyone who finds the concept of a corporation offensive, which you clearly do. For the rest of us, until Pepsi makes positive claims about drinking 10 sodas a day and eating nothing but snacks without exercising, there's nothing inherently unscientific about Pepsico.

You'll notice that there was no similar controversy when Shell started a corporate scienceblog, because climate researchers are actual scientists, not judgmental foodies and sociologists.

Re:Asinine

[Spazntwich]

Ah, you're one of those "free will" types who believes people are rational actors. Quaint.

While each person certainly bears personal responsibility for his actions, psychology hasn't given us the notion of the enabler for kicks. Social responsibility starts at the top.

I also take issue with your claims that people "want" corn so processed it retains zero nutritional value, fats so perverted the body can barely process them, and sugar that is heavily biased towards being stored as fat rather than burned that then creates a depressed insulin response and the near-instant desire for more. Their "food" is the equivalent to crack, heavily engineered to maximize appeal and shelf-life at the expense of its resemblance to genuine nutrition. Nobody benefited from the switch away from sucrose and unprocessed oils except their executives.

Also, while my wording is strong, your speculation on my emotional state says more about yours. What's got you defending the purveyors of food that have had a heavy hand in the worldwide increase in obesity, diabetes, and all sorts of other fun chronic conditions that we all pay for in the end?

I am not angry that they sell what they do. I am irritated that they sell what they do and pretend there's any nutritional value to it, and I am bitterly amused by you folks with no appreciation for the malleability of the average consumer's mind.

Re:Asinine

[Anonymous Coward]

"I'm very sorry that a can of Pepsi killed your mother"

My mother does not have type 2 diabetes, but I know many others with it.

And for some that may suggest diet soda, sorry but that also leads to weight gain and diabetes.

http://care.diabetesjournals.org/content/32/4/688
http://www.webmd.com/diet/news/20050613/drink-more-diet-soda-gain-more-weight

"last time I checked no one is marching into people's homes and forcing cola down people's throats."

You underestimate the power that marketing has over people.

Tobacco TV advertisement has been banned for some time because of the power of marketing, but currently soda advertisement has little regulation, so they are free to "march into peoples homes [television]".

http://www.alternet.org/story/45498/

Re:Asinine

[Spazntwich]

I believe you misunderstand.

My problem is not specifically with the products they sell. My problem is with them presenting the products they sell as nutritious, an intellectually dishonest position at best and outright fraud at worst. Their track record shows a long-term trend of their products becoming significantly less nutritious yet more economical to produce.

Surely as a pathological free-marketeer you agree that a functional free market depends on consumers having access to good information? Perhaps consumers would be willing to pay the extra few cents per bag of delicious corn chips if they knew doing so would go far to prevent further weight gain and chances of having a heart attack in the near-to-midterm. We'll never know.

Re:Asinine

[Anonymous Coward]

You're making lots of claims and not citing anything to back them up. Where's the science, and where's the claims by Pepsico that it contradicts?

Re:Asinine

[Anonymous Coward]

Ah, you're one of those "free will" types who believes people are rational actors. Quaint.

If you're not a rational actor, why should anyone bother reading your argument?

Re:Asinine

[roman_mir]

It's actually the government's fault, Nixon's fault to be precise.

You should watch this presentation on fructose if you are interested to find out why exactly the fructose is a poison equivalent to ethanol (alcohol) and how it kills you slowly in the same way and causes obesity and other diseases in humans.

What is interesting is how this came about, by the Nixon's government deciding that they want to eliminate food prices as an issue for reelection. Nixon - the same guy responsible for getting away from sound money (gold standard), they same guy setting up minimum wage laws, while opening the job market to China, the same guy who destroyed the working health insurance for people by getting government subsidies into it and causing the insurance prices to skyrocket, this guy is also responsible for the deteriorating health of the humans in this world through consumption of fructose.

By fixing food prices to make them 'stable', he caused the food producers to start searching for new and exciting ways of using the cheapest ingredients available, obviously that would be the most subsidized ingredients - corn, soy, wheat, rice (cotton as well, but that's not food.)

By getting government into health insurance (CHIP), he created a moral hazard for the medical establishment that allowed it to spike the prices up, which happens only when government guarantees to pay, same problem with government loans for higher education - prices shoot up.

By creating minimum wage laws the jobs below the minimum wage disappeared, this increases unemployment and kills entire segments of jobs (does anybody check your oil and tire pressure at a gas station anymore?) Doing this while opening trade with the cheapest provider of labor is asking for destruction of your own production capacity, which is the real reason behind the economy going south.

Nixon was an interesting fella, he allowed the special interests to dominate and to take over.

Re:Asinine

[Spazntwich]

They probably shouldn't.

There's increasing evidence that... well, there's just no point to arguing because people's internalized beliefs are fairly static.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2010/jul/03/confirmation-bias-scientific-evidence

"The classic paper on the last of those strategies is from Lord, Ross and Lepper in 1979: they took two groups of people, one in favour of the death penalty, the other against it, and then presented each with a piece of scientific evidence that supported their pre-existing view, and a piece that challenged it; murder rates went up or down, for example, after the abolition of capital punishment in a state.

The results were as you might imagine. Each group found extensive methodological holes in the evidence they disagreed with, but ignored the very same holes in the evidence that reinforced their views."

But that doesn't make the arguing less fun!

Re:Asinine

[Anonymous Coward]

$ summarize -c 32859968
Calmer than you are, dude.
$

Re:Asinine

[lostros]

I think you miss the point of his topic though, how is this different than the tobacco industry? I smoke, but follow the primal blueprint for my diet (marksdailyapple is a great resource and friend), and only smoke a few times a week. I would put my health, and my next 30 years of health barring injury/genetic disease against any non smoker you care to name that drinks pepsi and eats mcdonalds over the same time period. Does anyone out there honestly think i'd be a sucker for making that bet?

So tell me again how they should not be treated the same as the tobacco companies.

I might accept a rationale that tobacco companies shouldn't be treated like that either, but don't dare say second hand smoke, when HFCS is so pervasive it's listed in the top three ingrediants of damn near anything you buy, and fastfood/soda is so pervasive that there is heavy social pressure on individuals to imbibe them. Sure you could still hold out and not eat, but you can also step 3 feet farther away. So it's not like it's a major difference maker.

Re:Asinine

[Anonymous Coward]

And yet you still refuse to elucidate exactly what claims Pepsico is actually making. Are their nutrition facts labels wrong? If so, where's your evidence and why isn't this the FDA's problem?

Re:Asinine

[westlake]

It's actually the government's fault, Nixon's fault to be precise.

Corn syrup began replacing cane sugar in World War II - because of wartime rationing and losses of freighters to the U-Boats prowling the Atlantic and Gulf coasts.

Re:Asinine

[roman_mir]

Well, of-course corn syrup was used before, that is not what the argument is. The argument is that fixing of the food prices lead to the industry searching for the cheapest ingredients to replace normal ingredients in all processed foods, while at the same time getting rid of a very important food element (which you will not find in the government's 'food triangle' structure): Fiber. Fiber lets your body to process the sugars better leading to less harm, but it is difficult to keep on the shelves forever. Try watching the video I pointed to.

Re:Asinine

[roman_mir]

And by the way, there is nothing that is a flamebait in the parent post, it is in fact informative. Check out the link that is found there, the link to a presentation on the dangers of fructose by a scientist studying the effects of it.

I understand that any deviation from the 'norm' here is considered a flamebait, the norm being that government cannot do wrong by setting policies, as long as the policies are about spending. What the people miss about these policies are the reasons to why they are set (political reasons) and the actual consequences of such policies (be it to health of the people or be it the detrimental effects to the economy).

Re:Asinine

[GreyWolf3000]

I used to think that people's point of view was malleable, but the study you linked to convinced me otherwise. I have therefore changed my mind.

Re:Asinine

[Anonymous Coward]

I wish i had Mod points as anonymous. you sir, speak for the well being of the free willed types, and yet they will rebuke you at every opportunity.

if the free will people were given a chance, we'd have no social structure at ALL. why do we need governments, or regulations at all ? why dont people co-operate on their own ?

Re:Asinine

[Spazntwich]

Posts like yours make me sad we can't at least do some sort of non-mod upvoting on slashdot.

Re:Asinine

[Tarantura]

Pepsi 'listened' to the HFCS complaints, and created this product, just for a limited time . I love how they emphasis "REAL" sugar vs. the artificially-created 'fake' crap called HFCS they continue to use today.

I prefer non-HFCS sodas such as Mexican-made Coke or Jarritos. Using HFCS, while less expensive and sweeter-tasting in less amounts to the human tongue than 'real' sugar, just makes soft drinks have that 'syrupy' taste and texture not found in 'real' sugar drinks.

Re:Asinine

[wonkavader]

Years ago, I was amused and horrified when I went to a talk by Carl Schank. He was saying that people don't think when they converse. Instead, they just listen for key words and index those to stories they can reply with, such that a conversation is just one story after another, related only by key words, not key ideas.

One of the people listening to the talk said "Well, but right now, I'm asking you a question about your comment. How does that fit? it seems like I'm thinking about what you say, and reacting to the ideas, rather than simply repeating a story."

Schank waves his hands and says, approximately, "No, no, no. I'm not talking about us, here. I'm talking about Them. You know, normal people."

So much for that theory. Only not. Because the theory and the study actually still holds, to some extent. It holds with dumb people most of the time, and smart people some of the time. We can all be rational actors when we want to exert that effort. The problem is that it's an effort.

For some people it's really, really hard, and for other's it's not so hard. We need to teach people to do it more, and we need to understand that they don't do it a lot of the time and react/legislate accordingly. You cannot argue that people are 100% rational actors and thus we should get the hell out of their way, and you cannot argue that people are lemmings, and we need to make a safe cage for them. To do either is a rhetorical trick to prevent action.

Re:Asinine

[afabbro]

Nixon - the same guy responsible for getting away from sound money (gold standard), they same guy setting up minimum wage laws, while opening the job market to China, the same guy who destroyed the working health insurance for people by getting government subsidies into it and causing the insurance prices to skyrocket, this guy is also responsible for the deteriorating health of the humans in this world through consumption of fructose.

I think he was also the same guy who legalized run-on sentences.

Re:Asinine

[Anonymous Coward]

the most subsidized ingredients - corn, soy, wheat, rice (cotton as well, but that's not food.)

Cottonseed oil, anyone? Nothing cuts costs like disposing a waste product by selling it into the food supply.

Re:Asinine

[Anonymous Coward]

And this evidence all comes from irrational actors too, I imagine?
But that's right, your opinion is the only valid one, everyone else is just irrational.

Re:Asinine

[iwaybandit]

Some of us will pay more. Until I see a "Hecho en Mexico" sticker on a bottle of Coca-Cola, I won't buy it. The bottlers there use sugar, while US bottlers use HFCS. Interesting how one or another branch of CC threatened (or sued) merchants that sold the imported version. They cited something like wanting to "provide a consistent product experience".

Bring back Mountain Dew Throwback!!! There, now this is tied to PepsiCo.

Re:Asinine

[bkeahl]

People will produce products others will buy. Perhaps an actual dialog in an environment like that might produce alternative ideas for marketable products.

I happen to like Pepsi Max and drink it, knowing the sodium is not best. I don't buy the artificial sweetener argument, so I'm okay with that. I partake of other products that use "High fructose corn syrup", which is really just a step away from sugar - big deal.

I also run 10 miles three or four times a week, even in these 90 degree temperatures - which allows me to enjoy some of these high-calorie items without turning into a blimp.

HFCS and high calorie foods are less the problem than the fact we have a nation of couch potatoes who are NOT burning enough calories while consuming large quantities of these products. I blame the consumer for not thinking about what they are putting in their bodies, not the manufacturer who fulfills customer demand.

Re:Asinine

[Anonymous Coward]

Have you tried to buy any drinks without HFCS, Aspartame, or Sucralose lately?

Re:Asinine

[Spazntwich]

That's an impressive false dichotomy and related straw man.

None of us are rational actors all of the time. The alternative is not necessarily behaving irrationally, but on autopilot. We've still got much to figure out, but there is evidence of marketing's influence. Otherwise, people wouldn't spend money on it.

People are free to disagree with me, but if they do so based on a false premise, their opinion is just as invalid as mine is if based on similarly false facts, and all I can do is attempt to work off the best available information.

I apologize if something about that offends you.

Re:Asinine

[Reziac]

Well then, you better stop eating fruit, because that's what fructose is -- fruit sugar.

As to the notion that no big corporation can do honest research -- not necessarily so, or we wouldn't have the many things that came out of the late and lamented Bell Labs, HP's research division, etc. Naturally they hope to make a profit from it, but that doesn't *necessarily* make it crooked research.

In fact, I've seen a lot more deliberately skewed or even outright bogus 'research' from SMALL companies trying to get a leg up on the big boys.

Re:Asinine

[Jedi Alec]

the norm being that government cannot do wrong by setting policies, as long as the policies are about spending.

Are you reading the same Slashdot I am? Because on the one I've been on all these years governments can't do *anything* right, whether they're spending or cutting budgets. ;-)

Re:Asinine

[ildon]

So do you think it's better for PepsiCo to post their information on their own site where it most likely will not be questioned and they can control the message rather than on a science blog where it will absolutely be questioned and challenged?

Re:Asinine

[Abcd1234]

Some of us will pay more. Until I see a "Hecho en Mexico" sticker on a bottle of Coca-Cola, I won't buy it. The bottlers there use sugar, while US bottlers use HFCS.

'course, they also use a different recipe, which is probably why you prefer it.

I used to think Canada didn't use HFCS in it's Coke. "But I prefer the taste!" I would say, and that's certainly true. But it has fuck-all to do with the sugar, because they use HFCS here, too. What they *do* do is use a different recipe in Canada, though, hence the flavour difference.

Incidentally, I've also had Mexican Coke, and guess what? It tastes pretty similar to the Canadian version... which is just further evidence that what you prefer is the formula, not the sweetener.

Re:Asinine

[viperblades]

I think you'd see less upset people if companies like Pepsi didn't use business practices that discouraged good food habits. The fact is give a company a lot of money and they'll sway the public. EVERYONE who is exposed to the extreme amounts of marketing and advertising in most countries has had their viewpoint altered on something.

For example, who do you think lobbied the FDA so that if a food has less than .5 grams of trans fat per serving, it can be listed as zero? That did say per serving too, so just make your label have really small servings and no trans fat! Millions of dollars at work to make millions more.

Re:Asinine

[Wheat]

No, there is no reason to stop eating fruit. If you'd watched the linked video on sugar, you would know that it's only when the liver is overwhelmed with fructose that it freaks out and follows the pathway to convert the fructose into a harmful substance. In small, slowly absorbed doses, fructose is converted to glycogen in the liver where it's used for fuel. Eating 2 or 3 apples, not a worry. Drinking a few cans of pop, and that's an equivalent fructose dose of 20 or 30 apples, and all that fructose is going to hit the liver faster than it would take to digest even half of a whole apple.

Re:Asinine

[DriedClexler]

Years ago, I was amused and horrified when I went to a talk by Carl Schank. He was saying that people don't think when they converse. Instead, they just listen for key words and index those to stories they can reply with, such that a conversation is just one story after another, related only by key words, not key ideas.

Sow how come no one's been able to get ELIZA to work?

Actually, maybe that supporting evidence for this idea, because ELIZA did work when people weren't "testing" it for whether it's a computer...

Re:Asinine

[Anonymous Coward]

Given enough signal, a bit of noise isn't an issue. All we're hearing now is noise, because that's all we produce.

The concept of social responsibility is disjoint with concepts like the corporation or the government. Social responsibility is born from the actions of free-thinking people (at the top). Action is not relying on others to prey on us in reasonable fashion; it is rather the informed educating others to adapt to the natural law of our ecosystem.

A problem is that our once free-thinkers have become comfortable and apathetic, and now our society has no social responsibility.

Re:Asinine

[Anonymous Coward]

minimum wage law was created in 1938 by The Fair Labor Standards Act.
Nixon didn't get into politics until after WW-II

The CHIP program was from Bill Clinton in 1997

Re:Asinine

[ildon]

You can still buy the Pepsi Throwback in some stores in my area (but not the Mt. Dew). I definitely buy it instead of HFCS soda when I can find it.

Re:Asinine

[Quiet_Desperation]

I'm very sorry that a can of Pepsi killed your mother and molested your dog

NO! The can molested my mother and killed my dog, you insensitive clod!

Then it ate my cat!

I'll get you, can!

CAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAN!!!!!!!!!

Re:Asinine

[Anonymous Coward]

Perhaps GP has confused Pepsi with Coke:

http://www.google.com/search?rlz=1C1_____enUS384US384&sourceid=chrome&ie=UTF-8&q=coke+murder

Re:Asinine

[zippthorne]

Ironically, not too long ago Pepsi started selling "throwback," a sugar-sweetened version taking its flavoring cues from older incarnations of Pepsi, and you still didn't buy it.

Re:Asinine

[GraZZ]

THANK YOU for posting this on a weekend, where I actually had time to listen to the whole 90 minute argument. It's very convincing, and very informative. This professor really needs to do more to get his message out in public forums (write a book?). I'll be sharing this video with my friends.

Re:Asinine

[GraZZ]

Oh yes, and I would like to disassociate my thanks from anything beyond the posting of the video. The extension to the posters arguments against Nixon's policies DO NOT extend from the science on display in the video.

Re:Asinine

[Attila Dimedici]

No, social responsibility starts with the individual. If individuals behave irresponsibly, no amount of holding others accountable for their actions will make things better. Your approach is exactly why things have gotten progressively worse. By holding Pepsico responsible for the bad decisions that some people make when they buy and consume Pepsico products, you tell those people that they don't need to suffer the consequences of behaving irresponsibly.

Re:Asinine

[roman_mir]

I like run on sentences. I use them in all my languages.

Re:Asinine

[StopKoolaidPoliticsT]

Nixon - the same guy responsible for getting away from sound money (gold standard)

Nixon gave it the final death blow, but FDR killed the gold/silver certificate in 1933. Truman later agreed to the Bretton Woods Agreement, in which foreign currencies were fixed to US dollars, effectively making the dollar the world's standard. During Vietnam (which France had actually helped cause), France ended up draining the gold reserves backing the US dollars, ultimately leading to Nixon's decision to permanently cease the gold standard.

they same guy setting up minimum wage laws

Again, minimum wage laws, as well as wage and price controls, started under FDR as part of the New Deal. You can also thank union organizers, who wanted to use the government to encourage people to join the unions in order to get a job (mostly because the union bosses wanted more dues to put in their pockets). People were desperate to earn money and would willingly take pennies just to do some type of meaningful work to take care of their families. The unions didn't want to be undercut and have their workers put out of work, so they cozied up to FDR and used the government to harm non-union workers (the entire National Recovery Act was built largely on helping the unions while harming business owners and non-union workers).

the same guy who destroyed the working health insurance for people by getting government subsidies into it and causing the insurance prices to skyrocket

Health insurance didn't exist prior to the New Deal. It was a way to get around the imposed wage controls in order to keep good help. In 1965, Medicare and Medicaid were passed because "it wasn't fair" that working people had their health costs paid for but poor and elderly people didn't. Thus, it wasn't Nixon that started subsidizing health care, but LBJ as part of the Great Society as a reaction to an unintended consequence from the previous government interference under the New Deal. Ted Kennedy created the HMO system, which Nixon signed, as a result of Medicare/Medicaid destabilizing the existing insurance market. Another side effect of that, was Social Security reform in 1967 which allowed the government to use the Social Security surplus to cover up the exploding budget deficits caused by Medicare/Medicaid (which had greatly exceeded cost estimates) and the escalation of Vietnam. Oh, and, of course, today, we need a new government health care system to save us from the existing problems that government health care caused. As an added bonus, Social Security is running in the red already and we'll have to borrow money to pay it. Forget the $13 trillion debt, that's small potatoes; We owe $109.5 trillion in unfunded liabilities and they start adding to the debt NOW as boomers start to retire. Doubly so if the rumored legislation to get people to retire early to "create" jobs for younger people happens.

By fixing food prices to make them 'stable', he caused

Again, it goes back to FDR, the New Deal and the Great Depression. Did you know that FDR ordered tons of food destroyed, while people were starving, to prop up the price? Did you know that under him, it became illegal to grow wheat for your own consumption (see Wickard v. Filburn)?

By getting government into health insurance (CHIP), he created a moral hazard for the medical establishment that allowed it to spike the prices up, which happens only when government guarantees to pay,

Nixon signed Ted Kennedy's HMO system into law. Clinton signed CHIP into law and it was expanded under GWB and Obama. And, again, it was Medicaid/Medicare which drove up the costs, making existing insurance plans insufficient, resulting in more government interference in health care to shore up the private plans.

same problem with government loans for higher education - prices shoot up.

Again, thank FDR for that, passing th

Re:Asinine

[Anonymous Coward]

I wasn't aware that Nixon had dictatorial powers and could achieve all of this action without cooperation of the Congress and House of Representatives.

I also don't recall any public backlash.

I'm no fan of politicians in general, but I find it amusing how quickly people will distance themselves from governmental actions that are in hindsight embarassing: "If only that damn hadn't shoved his agenda through our system, we wouldn't be in this mess today"

Give me a break, and accept some responsibility. People WANTED Frito's and Pepsi, they weren't having it pushed down their throats.

Re:Asinine

[roman_mir]

I only care to answer one thing to it: people want Pepsi, fine, where did any person say he or she wanted Pepsi with fructose rather than with normal sugar (sucrose)?

Re:Asinine

[deuterium]

PepsiCo as an organization is not interested in any layman's definition of "nutrition."

So what? It's a democracy. People vote with their dollars. If people cared out nutrition, they'd educate themselves, as you have. Would the world be better without snacks?

This is a company designed to maximize profit by exploiting the still-ingrained hunter-gatherer instincts in us all

Yup. They wouldn't exist if they didn't. And what about using sex to sell? Damn our primitive urges!

Re:Asinine

[Anonymous Coward]

"And for some that may suggest diet soda, sorry but that also leads to weight gain and diabetes."

Sorry but the two studies you cite are unscientific garbage. A few keys that indicate the first paper is worthless(taken from the abstract):

1) All of the PhD authors are either epedemiologists or nutritionists(public health scientists are another one to watch out for).

2) "We determined associations..."

3) "assessed by food frequency questionnaire"

4) "type 2 diabetes was identified" by "self-reported type 2 diabetes or use of diabetes medication"

5) "metabolic syndrome, and metabolic syndrome components were estimated"

6) "Although these observational data cannot establish causality..."

7) This one is hilarious, "This article must...be hereby marked "advertisement""

Pathetic. People need to read scientific papers(*cough* and advertisements*cough*) more critically, and call out researchers who are publishing non-results or just media whoring to pad their CV or attract more research dollars.

Re:Asinine

[h4rr4r]

Diet soda is a sign of someone trying to lose weight so often of course these people fail.

I say this as a 5'7" 145lb skinny nerd who drinks liters of the stuff a day.

Re:Asinine

[h4rr4r]

Yeah, they sell this thing called water at damn near every store. You can even get it carbonated naturally! Heck, in this super secret place I go to called "the supermarket" they even have it flavored with only fruit juice.

Re:Asinine

[h4rr4r]

Actually you do. I see Mexican coke with cane sugar at every grocery store I go to. I live in NY state, not the city the big western part. So I am pretty sure it exists in the rest of the nation too. Pepsi just sold some old "throwback" stuff, that may have only been local as far as I know. So clearly some folks at least are willing to pay for real sugar and it gets sold. Of course consumers want to bitch at pepsi for using HFCS while they buy the cheapest soda on the shelf, which is of course the HFCS one.

Re:Asinine

[h4rr4r]

The Mexican and Canadian mixes should be the normal coke international one, the USA one these days is sweeter and less flavored. This is one of those little changes made to broaden the appeal of a product.

Re:Asinine

[CptNerd]

Just don't get carried away in your revenge: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6NxLtVG9_eg&feature=related

Re:Asinine

[CptNerd]

Don't forget the sugar lobby demanding high prices for their products through subsidies etc. making the corn syrup alternative relatively cheap.

Re:Asinine

[eugene ts wong]

Speaking of stories, I remember reading the story, "The Little Engine That Could". Just kidding. I did read it, though.

I'm glad that you shared that information. I've noticed that a lot lately. I'll try to present something to somebody, but the people won't even address my response. The whole issue might revovle around a certain point, but they'll be off in La La Land. It's not even a controversial issue. I probably do the same.

I thought that it might have happened, because of the way that I deal with people. Now that you said that, I feel like it isn't just me.

That being said, I think that his usage of "normal" is a little arrogant. I think that it has more to do with when people let their guards down. Computer programmers, who are genuinely great at programming, will think and interact with computer programming discussions more than they would in other areas of non-interest. I'm willing to bet that the more complex the issue is, the more that they'll rely on stories. It's the same for "normal" people as well. They could do well at accounting and various topics, but their eyes will gloss over when they have to deal with computers. I'm obviously generalizing, but you probably know what I mean.

Also, regarding rational thinkers and lemmings, maybe the solution is to use buzz words to bring about a positive response from those who aren't rational, and be more informative to those who are.

Did you listen to him at a TED Talk?

Re:Asinine

[yuhong]

Not to say the artificial sweetener used has other worse problems.

Re:Asinine

[eugene ts wong]

Thanks for the link. Now I have a new channel to watch.

The video was interesting. I find it difficult to believe, but it seems to make sense to me. I think that that is what is so good about natural food: it all balances out. I like his 20 minute rule for second servings.

Re:Asinine

[IICV]

Instead, they just listen for key words and index those to stories they can reply with, such that a conversation is just one story after another, related only by key words, not key ideas.

Seriously, if you listen to most political speeches, this is exactly what goes on. Just look at Palin's "debate" with Biden - it couldn't actually be called a debate, because Palin wasn't really talking to Biden; she was just rattling off politically charged words strung together with other, interstitial words.

Re:Asinine

[Anonymous Coward]

The study in question compared those consuming regular soda vs diet soda. both were correlated with weight gain. But diet soda was correlated with more weight gain.

Also, there are other studies that say the same thing with mice. I don't think mice go on diets...

I just don't understand why people drink diet soda, when there is, AFAIK, no study which shows that diet soda is helpful with your "diet" or health.
(actually, I do understand. Marketing. )

Re:Asinine

[wonkavader]

"A little"?

I think he (or one of his grad students) found a fundamental behavior, and he excluded himself from it, because he didn't like the implication.

Yikes, I got his first name wrong -- it's Roger! My apologies, but in my defense, the talk he gave was something like 20 years ago.

Perhaps you're thinking about someone else -- I cannot find a TED talk online done by Roger Schank.

Re:Asinine

[wonkavader]

Bingo. That's the comic book version of this phenomenon. But then, Schank argued that people did this a a normal behavior, whereas the sort of debate you're describing is contrived to work exactly the way you describe.

When you give an interview, if you're good with the media you have points you want to make. You don't care what the questions are. You just repeat the same points/stories over and over, and the interviewer walks away with only the material you want him/her to print/show.

Debates work much the same. Unless you've been waiting for a particular line you expect, and for which you've prepared a zinger or a trap of some kind, who cares what the other guy says? Every time you get to talk is just that: A time YOU get to talk, so you give the stories and lines that will play well for you.

It's hardly a debate, therefore, and completely useless to the electorate. There's a great moment in a debate between Richie Daley, Jane Byrne and Harold Washington for the office of mayor. The moderator (I think) ask a question. Richie talks, Jane talks both repeating the same soundbites they keep repeating all campaign long, and then Harold, in exasperation, says [I paraphrase] "Now, [NAME], I'm going to talk now, and I'm going to answer your question. And once I've done that, I will be the ONLY person here who answered your question!" Then he did.

Harold won.

Re:Asinine

[eugene ts wong]

"A little"?

Perhaps you're thinking about someone else -- I cannot find a TED talk online done by Roger Schank.

What do you mean? You've never heard of "The Little Engine That Could"?

No, I've never heard of this guy. I was hoping to watch him on YouTube.

Re: That question at the end

[matt4077]

"How do companies who seek genuine dialogue with this community engage?"

Not by paying Seed/Scienceblogs, that's for sure. How about publishing papers if you have a scientific point to make? Or, if you want to avoid the formality of those, how about a blog at science.pepsi.com? Let the content speak for itself without paying anyone to get a ride on their reputation.

But the real question Seed is faced with is probably "How are we supposed to make money from ScienceBlogs if you won't let us sell out to a company that's probably killing more people than Philip Morris ever did?"

And we can only blame ourselves

[Anonymous Coward]

Well, it is. But well, we all know how well subscription based models tend to work out. And not a lot of people donate to their favorite sites, either. And increasingly large amount of people hate advertisements and use adblock. (You can go on about "Well, that's originally THEIR fault for all the flashy banners and whatnot" but it is irrelevant, really. Even sites with a decent advertisement policies get hurt.) Any ads that can be identified as such can be blocked... So our behaviour is forcing the site owners to either wrap things up or come up with ads that don't look so much like ads. PayPerPost product reviews and the like.

(Yeah, as someone who has worked in internet advertising and currently earns some decent revenue from my sites, I am about as biased as we come. But I personally had the options of either stop delivering content to my readers and find something else to do or start earning by more questionable advertising. I think that really, many of you would have done what I did and could still sleep your nights well.)

Re:And we can only blame ourselves

[oldhack]

Hey, if you're cool with your admittedly questionable practices, that's your issue, but don't rationalize it by accusing others that they would have done the same with no qualm.

Re:And we can only blame ourselves

[RobertLTux]

The biggest problem is sites that have articles spread across 15 different pages because 70% of each page is taken up by
1 Site banner
2 Section Banner
3 Ad banner
3 subsection banner
4 social networking/ list every fracking blog block
5 affiliates block
6 random ad blocks
7 multiple intra-site link blocks
8 brainless poll blocks
9 Rich media blocks
10 ect
11 audnauseum

Re:And we can only blame ourselves

[Anonymous Coward]

Internet advertising is a pyramid scheme. If a person likes your site but doesn't want to pay for it, they're not going to do more work (click through an ad) so they can go pay for something at another site.

If people aren't willing to pay for your content, it's not really valuable anyway.

Current list and other details

[JoshuaZ]

Carl Zimmer has a more detailed breakdown of what happened with a list of what bloggers are moving- http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/loom/2010/07/07/oh-pepsi-what-hath-thou-wrought/. Major bloggers leaving include Mark Chu-Carroll of Good Math/Bad Math, and Rebecca Skloot (who may be known to many more for her excellent book on HeLa cells and their namesake than for blogging). This wasn't a single isolated instance that is causing these people to leave, but for many the final straw in what they saw as very problematic and difficult to work with people at Seed Magazine (which runs Scienceblogs). Mike Dunford of The Questionable Authority discusses some of these issues here- http://scienceblogs.com/authority/2010/07/pepsico_scienceblogs_and_the_f.php (he's uncertain if he is leaving or not and so may be a moderate voice). Meanwhile Abbie Smith of ERV thinks that much of the reaction is hysterics and hypocrisy http://scienceblogs.com/erv/2010/07/sciblogs_caves_to_hysterics.php.

Re: That question at the end

[Anonymous Coward]

If the payments were fully disclosed, then what's the difference between publishing on scienceblogs and publishing at science.pepsi.com? You make it sound like this is some ridiculous turf war.

Easy Answer

[Ralish]

"How do we empower top scientists working in industry to lead science-minded positive change within their organizations? ... How do companies who seek genuine dialogue with this community engage?"

The answer is:
Said "top scientists working in industry" are welcome to do all of the above, and should be encouraged to do so in fact, but the determining factor of whether their work is published should be one purely of merit; not payment for publicity or any other form of bribe that results in direct gain to the publisher.

Legitimate Blogs?

[Tisha_AH]

It is funny how the article complains on how the PepsiCo blog detracts from "legitimate blogs". So now we are casting blogs as a legitimate source of information? Probably 98% of blogs are personal opinions with no factual, scientific basis.

It would be like holding Wikipedia up as the definitive source of accurate information on everything and ignoring the genuine work of researchers and scientists.

I do not put much credence in anything posted in a blog. Most are merely entertaining, scandalous or based upon urban legends, rumor or innuendo.

Re:Legitimate Blogs?

[drinkypoo]

It is funny how the article complains on how the PepsiCo blog detracts from "legitimate blogs". So now we are casting blogs as a legitimate source of information? Probably 98% of blogs are personal opinions with no factual, scientific basis.

You're making the logical fallacies of the appeal to authority and the argumentum ad populum. "Official", established news sources are filled with propaganda, while the fact that the majority of blogs are bullshit has no bearing whatsoever on the others. Nice try though.

It would be like holding Wikipedia up as the definitive source of accurate information on everything and ignoring the genuine work of researchers and scientists.

Wikipedia is more accurate than the EB. Holding up the bad Wikipedia articles and claiming that they invalidate Wikipedia is yet another logical fallacy, I believe inductive but I still need to practice identification of fallacies more. However, I can smell one a mile away.

I do not put much credence in anything posted in a blog. Most are merely entertaining, scandalous or based upon urban legends, rumor or innuendo.

I do not put much credence in anything posted in a comment. Most are completely devoid of content, like yours.

Re:Legitimate Blogs?

[mister_playboy]

Probably 98% of blogs are personal opinions with no factual, scientific basis.

How does that differ even a little bit from what you read in a newspaper or see on TV?

It's always up to the reader to critically analyze what information they receive.

Re:Legitimate Blogs?

[Anonymous Coward]

legitimate as in someone's genuine opinion, not paid bullshit to create publicity.

Re:Legitimate Blogs?

[ObsessiveMathsFreak]

Probably 98% of blogs are personal opinions with no factual, scientific basis.

And what makes you think the situation for traditional media sources is any better? Personally, I think blogs do a far better job than traditional media sources in providing high quality, relevant and original content.

Re:Legitimate Blogs?

[afabbro]

It would be like holding Wikipedia up as the definitive source of accurate information on everything and ignoring the genuine work of researchers and scientists.

Wikipedia is more accurate than the EB. Holding up the bad Wikipedia articles and claiming that they invalidate Wikipedia is yet another logical fallacy, I believe inductive but I still need to practice identification of fallacies more. However, I can smell one a mile away.

Who said anything about EB?

Re:Legitimate Blogs?

[Anonymous Coward]

It is funny how the article complains on how the PepsiCo blog detracts from "legitimate blogs". So now we are casting blogs as a legitimate source of information? Probably 98% of blogs are personal opinions with no factual, scientific basis.

Yeah, and what about the 2%?

Re:Legitimate Blogs?

[CptNerd]

Don't Panic, it was Mostly Harmless.

What If I never click adverts anyway?

[improfane]

What if I am NOT influenced by adverts, do not click them and avoid the products mentioned within them?

Surely they lose nothing if I just block silently, it would never have influenced me anyway. How common is paying by impression?

Re:What If I never click adverts anyway?

[drinkypoo]

What if I am NOT influenced by adverts, do not click them and avoid the products mentioned within them?

You are influenced by adverts whether you know it or not. Now, your conscious influence may be stronger than the unconscious; I am fairly adept at detecting the manipulation attempted by advertisement, and it makes me angry. But that doesn't make you immune to the techniques used. It only means that they must be employed more subtly to work on you.

Re:What If I never click adverts anyway?

[neokushan]

Surely the fact that you actively avoid the products mentioned within the advertisements means that you are influenced by them?

Re:What If I never click adverts anyway?

[Anonymous Coward]

Mod parent +1: Refreshing.

Re:What If I never click adverts anyway?

[improfane]

The complete opposite influence they want me to have maybe?

I don't understand your comment.

Re:What If I never click adverts anyway?

[Anonymous Coward]

The complete opposite influence they want me to have maybe?

I don't understand your comment.

Even if it's the opposite effect of what they would like you to do, it's still an influence. So you saying that you are "not influenced" is 100% wrong. It's just not the type of influence the advertisers would like to have on you. This really isn't that hard to understand.

Re:What If I never click adverts anyway?

[Tom]

What if I am NOT influenced by adverts,

Then you should immediately report to the nearest psychology lab and make a living being examined for this highly unusual trait.

Advertisement today contains more science than Spirit and Opportunity. It practically is a science of its own - the science of manipulating masses, often unconsciously, and especially in such a way that they are either unaware of it or in complete denial.

Ockhams Razor says you are not immune, you are in denial.

Re:What If I never click adverts anyway?

[Anonymous Coward]

Influenced is influenced. Perhaps someday you will avoid a product that could have saved or extended your life because you didn't like the advertisements on a website.

How far do you want to take it?

Re:What If I never click adverts anyway?

[PopeRatzo]

You are influenced by adverts whether you know it or not.

Absolutely right. No amount of blocking, ignoring, fast-forwarding or opting out is going to protect you from the influence of ubiquitous advertising.

One way I demonstrate this whenever someone tells me that they "ignore advertising" and are "not affected by advertising" is by asking them how they came to know the names of the products, or see if they can complete the last few words of a jingle, or simply by asking them which brand name products they own and why they chose those products over their competitors.

A lot of money and research has gone into marketing techniques. There's no question they work, and they work on everyone.

Re:What If I never click adverts anyway?

[PopeRatzo]

The complete opposite influence they want me to have maybe?

I guarantee that you have not been able to ignore advertising or cause it to have the opposite influence. You're fooling yourself.

What kind of computer do you use? What kind of portable media player? I guarantee that you chose them because of advertising. You know which components to buy when you build a computer because of advertising. You know which cereal to buy because of advertising.

Even if you buy the cheap store-brand of corn flakes, it's because the store-brand is piggy-backing off the effect that Kellogs' advertising had on you or you wouldn't even know to buy corn flakes.

I bet you know the names of Apple's laptop computers. I bet you know the names of the individual programs in Adobe's Creative Suite. I bet you can tell me the names of car models made by the biggest car companies. All because of advertising.

There's a long game in advertising too. Even if you aren't directly influenced to run out and buy a product, you learn the names, you learn the qualities that made one brand better than another. Eventually you will make a decision, and though you think you're making the decision based only upon your own independent thinking, the marketing plays a bigger role than you think.

Re:What If I never click adverts anyway?

[improfane]

I understand your point, it may be true of certain things.

I found the cheapest laptop I could find at the time. In the past all my computer have been bought by untechnical people and they were cheap. I honestly think the software is more important.

I do not have a personal entertainment player, I read books.

I dislike Adobe products. I dislike Apple products. I know what they are.

I cannot drive and I use public transport. I am apathetic for motor vehicles.

I buy cheap clothes. A pair of jeans is jeans whatever way you look at it.

The way my life is arranged is that I put products into categories. Nobody can tell me what category a product is in. A cheap plasticy pen is NOT a fountain pen. An optical mouse is NOT a trackball.

Honestly it's the only differentiation you need. It means you can stop comparing different brands products and learn about the categories that solve your problem.

I use an old fashioned phone with buttons not a modern phone with a touchscreen. I still maintain I am immune.

If you understand what a product IS based on what it IS and HOW it does it, then you only need to see businesses as 'providers' for a category of product. I couldn't care less what brand my fountan pen is.

Most people are hypnotized by branding.

Re:What If I never click adverts anyway?

[Vintermann]

A cheap plasticy pen is NOT a fountain pen. An optical mouse is NOT a trackball.

And how did you decide that you needed the one and not the other?

Even if you were the one person in the world that was personally totally unaffected by advertising, you wouldn't be free from it. Because you would be living in a society affected by advertising. Even if your choice of soap were totally unaffected by advertising, the kinds of soap your store would stock would not be.

Re:What If I never click adverts anyway?

[stoanhart]

While I don't deny that advertising probably affects me, it doesn't to the degree that you suggest.

>>What kind of computer do you use? What kind
>>of portable media player? I guarantee that
>>you chose them because of advertising.

No, I make all of my major purchases based on careful research and review of the options. I will spend hours and hours online comparing competing products to find the one that offers the best set of features/performance for the lowest price. As to food products, similar idea; I make a list of things I need for the meals I will cook before I go to the store, then I choose the brand for that product based purely on ingredients, nutritional value, and price. Why should I care about the mascot on the box?

Re:What If I never click adverts anyway?

[the_one(2)]

Personally I decide based on price, specs, past experiences with that brand, reviews, other peoples opinions, and the popularity of the product, all before advertising. It's true that for some of those things advertising may be an influence(popularity especially) which in that case will effect me slightly but advertising will still have a quite low direct effect. Of course that might be because I watch very little advertising (noscript + flashblock block basically all ads unless i explicitly allow them)

Re:What If I never click adverts anyway?

[improfane]

That's a very good point.

I figured that they used fountain pens in the past, they must have been serviceable and functional.
  I figured that the ink I use is up to me to supply.
  Plasticy pens seem to stop working and dry out more often than not.
  I figured it would last longer than a plastic pen. I would be less inclined to lose it.

It doesn't take a scientist to figure that a fountain pen is better in the long run.

Notice how there are no brands, products or ideas here given to me from large fountain pen manufacturers. At least I have not listened to any. In fact, I just picked the pen from a writing website practically disregarding the brand to come to a decision. It had a price that seemed reasonable. Of course, the marketing of the manufacturers would have affected this site too, limiting my choices.

But what has my logic confirmed to this date? To this day that pen still works and I have not got through my first ink pot. That's like 4 years and many more to come. It's a cheap fountain pen too. I use it pretty regularly.

I'd say that the profit made by my pens suppliers outweighs my own profit of this pen. That is all what matters.

In regard to my trackball, I was using the category of mouse that used a ball and one that used a laser. So I did some research on wrist pain and found it could be medically diagnosed to be rooted from RSI and computer usage.

I looked up RSI and found that there is a product category for people who suffer from these. That category was Trackpad. So I looked these up and there we have it.

I figure that you should put it into your psyche that you avoid letting people telling you what a particular instance of product you need. They have power over you in that way, you need to reduce it into a category and then you're not hypnotised.

If a brand is the only owner of a cateogyr, then you have to be suspicious.

Re:What If I never click adverts anyway?

[improfane]

That should say trackball, not trackpad.

Woops.

Re:What If I never click adverts anyway?

[Anonymous Coward]

Brought to you by Carl's Jr.

Re:What If I never click adverts anyway?

[Quiet_Desperation]

I do not have a personal entertainment player, I read books.

Why the false dichotomy? I have an iPod *and* I read many books.

I cannot drive and I use public transport. I am apathetic for motor vehicles.

I have a 2 seater convertible roadster that can go 140 mph. Does that make me bad?

I buy cheap clothes. A pair of jeans is jeans whatever way you look at it.

Actually, I'm finding inverse results there. I gave up on the more expensive Levis because they wear out quickly and they went to a single belt loop in the back a while ago. The $20 Lee jeans I buy online last three times as long.

Most people are hypnotized by branding.

[citation needed]

People are allowed to live their lives differently than you without deserving to be judged as "hypnotized"

Re:What If I never click adverts anyway?

[improfane]

My point was not that people use a personal entertainment player OR books. It was more of a 'in place of'. It was that I do not need a personal entertainment player if I have books to keep me entertained. No advertising will convince me otherwise. I don't need a ebook reader either. I want to own my books.

That's fast.

What made you buy 'Levis' to begin with? Was it the wimminz in the adverts? Actually, I don't even know if that's the right brand. Do they have grayed out adverts? Oh well, either way. I will not buy that product. I'll use more 'materialistic' guides on whether to buy a product. Perhaps trying it on to see if it fits? Is there enough room if I put on weight? Is there pockets?

It's right in there with the perfume adverts: how can a perfume have an 'image'? It's a smell and it cannot be represented by an advert.

It's not prejudice. Maybe there is more intangible benefits to products like product image. If so, I'm not falling for it. If you like speeding about in your roadster at 140mph, so be it. That's the image that's comfortable with you. Me? It gives me a uncomfortable feeling of selling out.

Re:What If I never click adverts anyway?

[Viperpete]

While I feel that the greater number of people are affected by advertising/brand recognition influencing their purchasing. I take exception to your statement that it is not possible to personally avoid it.

Stop spending money on crap!

When it comes to equipment, I chose mine based on what I could get for free from people who did not want them anymore. I may not have the best or newest equipment, but I have a lot of it and if anything craps out I replace it from the pile.

When it comes to consumables like food, I purchase whatever non-processed lowest priced locally grown stuff I can find, the only time I care about the name on the label is when I do not like it, so as not to purchase it again. When it comes to something that you cannot find that is not branded, beer for example, I try many different types and settle for the one I enjoy the most for the best price.

I do "recognize" brands, but, I could care less if I'm using my HP flatscreen monitor or the Dell or Acer I have in the basement, I just chose the largest one.

Re:What If I never click adverts anyway?

[apoc.famine]

Same here. (It doesn't hurt to be a poor graduate student either.) I buy on taste, specs, cost, etc. Not brands. Any brand loyalty I have is due to a long experience with the brand which I picked for the previous reasons. And that loyalty goes as soon as it changes.

I built my own computer out of parts that were cheap. I bought my car because my dad and cousin had the same brand, and their cars lasted forever. I've sampled all the beer in a 100 mile radius, and I buy the ones that taste good. In fact, I've never seen a commercial for most of the things I eat and drink, nor the places I eat and drink at. My clothes are generic and purchased on sale, and I don't have a ton of luxury items. My cell phone is pay-as-you-go, and was chosen based on the lowest cost possible.

Advertising is surprisingly effective on a lot of people. However, it's clear that a minority don't pay it any attention at all, and it doesn't affect their purchasing habits.

Re:What If I never click adverts anyway?

[Runaway1956]

I'm quite certain that you are right about the subconscious influence. It's like I can hear little wheels whirring away, when I am forced to look at an advert. The company and/or the product is categorized and filed under "NEVER BUY FROM THESE ASSHOLES!" Weeks of months later, when I realize that I need some doo-dad, I shop around, and actually search for whatever it is. When I see the name, or trademark, or whatever, I rank that product down about ten notches.

And, it's not that hard to do, if you're not shopping for "bling". Those companies that spend the most on adverts tend to oversell the bling anyway, and undersell whatever merits the product might have - if any.

Re:What If I never click adverts anyway?

[Runaway1956]

Oh, yes. Ditto on the grocery shopping. I need x number of fast and easy meals this week, because no one will be at home to cook. The kids don't care WHAT IT IS, just so long as they don't have to spend time cooking. Corn dogs? Nope - no meat in them, it's all "pork and chicken byproducts". These frozen dinners? Nope - the list of preservatives is longer than the list of food ingredients. That frozen dinner? Hmmmm - potatoes, carrots, peas, beef, one preservative, and no artificial colors. Looks pretty good - and it's CHEAPER than the one loaded with preservatives!

I wonder how many people really do look at the ingredients? Why pay for sugar, salt, and a boatload of chemicals, when none of them are actually "good" for you?

Re:What If I never click adverts anyway?

[Yvanhoe]

Actually, I use the following workaround : when making a buying decision, all things being equal, consider the brand, and consider that the brand you have the less heard about is the one to pick. My advice in this situation is to avoid any product or brand you know the slogan of (worse : you know the way to *sing* their slogan). If you can't neutralize the effect of advertisements, negate it...

Re:What If I never click adverts anyway?

[Yvanhoe]

If you know the slogan of the product/brand, don't buy it. This is a fairly simple algorithm.

Re:What If I never click adverts anyway?

[ukyoCE]

Ignoring any subconscious subterfuge by advertising agencies (or Devo), the most basic use of advertising is getting you to know a product or company even exists.

Now that I watch TV almost solely through Netflix, I never see advertisements. While I like this in theory, there are movies that come and go without my ever hearing about them. Sometimes ones I wish I had seen in the theater.

Or even if you know it exists, advertisements keep brands fresh in your mind. A Budweiser ad probably isn't alerting you that Budweiser beer exists, but it's still influencing you.

None of those advertising effects require clicking on the ads, and are probably the bulk of the value that makes advertising something companies consider worth paying for.

Personally I use Flashblock to avoid ever seeing obnoxious Flash advertisements, and block images from individual servers if I find an ad egregiously obnoxious. This works pretty well and makes me feel a little like I'm still contributing to the financial solvency of my favorite sites. I've never bothered to tick "don't show ads" on Slashdot for instance - their ads are generally relevant and not too obnoxious.

Re:What If I never click adverts anyway?

[xeoron]

Wrong adverts don't influence me much at all. I buy things based on how I want to use them: my computer I built and my digiplayer is a iriver, simply because it plays Ogg files, Linux support is better than the Windows App it came with, has a radio that I can record, and runs off easy to replaceable AA battery (it also can run Rockbox).

Re:What If I never click adverts anyway?

[Omestes]

When you define things broad enough, everything can fall into that definition, meaning the definition has become meaningless.

What kind of computer do you use? What kind of portable media player? I guarantee that you chose them because of advertising. You know which components to buy when you build a computer because of advertising. You know which cereal to buy because of advertising.

Does spending a couple of hours on Newegg or Tom's Hardware count as advertising? Being aware of a brand itself doesn't mean much, I'm aware of a lot of brands and I don't have a compulsion to purchase them. When I recently bought a new harddrive, I was aware of Seagate, but didn't buy their product, instead buying a Hitachi (I wasn't even really aware they made HDDs, really), after spending a couple of minutes on Tom's looking at benchmarks. Is this an epic win for Hitachi's advertising department, being that I have never seen an advert for their HDDs? As for what type of computer, in general, I am using, it is a piecemeal bunch of parts, most of them I only bought thanks to good old fashioned word of mouth, reading online user reviews, looking at the raw numbers, etc... Advertisements didn't have a damn thing to do with my purchase. The metric for me was purely a ratio between performance (measured by 3rd parties) and price.

I do own an iPod, but I only got it because it was cheaper than everything else out there (with a $150 discount). I wouldn't have based on the iPod brand, or the Apple brand, or any amount of "Apple is cool" advertisement. I was actually going to get the cheapest HDD player there was at the time, but Apple beat them on price.

Even if you buy the cheap store-brand of corn flakes, it's because the store-brand is piggy-backing off the effect that Kellogs' advertising had on you or you wouldn't even know to buy corn flakes.

All my friends eat cornflakes, I like my friend's tastes, therefore I will eat corn flakes. I grew up eating corn flakes, therefore I eat them. My culture likes them, therefore I do. There are tons of reasons to choose anything that are not based on corporate wishes.

I bet you know the names of Apple's laptop computers. I bet you know the names of the individual programs in Adobe's Creative Suite. I bet you can tell me the names of car models made by the biggest car companies. All because of advertising.

Or by just living in a world surrounded by them. I know a lot about Apple because I researched them awhile ago when looking to buy a computer. I know about them because some of my friends swear by their products. I know about them because of their reputation, etc... I don't know all the products they make, much less Adobe, though, since it isn't relevant to my life. Same with makes of cars. I have no clue. Don't care one bit.

There's a long game in advertising too. Even if you aren't directly influenced to run out and buy a product, you learn the names, you learn the qualities that made one brand better than another. Eventually you will make a decision, and though you think you're making the decision based only upon your own independent thinking, the marketing plays a bigger role than you think.

Yes, marketing often has a role, but it doesn't ALWAYS have a role. There are many products that I have bought where there was NO marketing whatsoever for. There has been even more products that I've bought that were not directly influenced by an ad agency, because I did due diligence and researched the product on my own. There have been tons of products I've discovered the old fashioned way, word of mouth. There have been tons of items where I've gone and incrementally bought all of the different brands until I found one high on the holy cost/quality curve.

Advertising works, sometimes, on some people, and in some circumstances. Not always, universally, and on everyone.

There have been studies showing that if your aware of the gimmicks, advertising has a much lower effect on you, for example.

Re:What If I never click adverts anyway?

[The High Druid]

But releasing the product specs, giving reviewers a chance to look at all the shiney new toys for free are also forms of advertising. The information you are basing your decisions on is out there thanks to some marketing department.

Re:What If I never click adverts anyway?

[HiThere]

Yes, I'm influenced by advertising.
I own one Penguin Computing computer and one ZAReason Laptop.
I don't buy prepared dry cereals, I by chopped oats. Also oat bran. I buy from bulk suppliers.

I've forgotten what Apple is currently calling their computers, except that it's some sort of Macintosh. (Which, I think, makes it a raincoat rather than an apple, but I may have that backwards.) O, laptop. I forget. Something pro? Toyota makes a Prius. I don't know any other models, unless Dodge still makes a Dasher.

OTOH,
Pepsi Cola hits the spot
Twelve full ounces, that's a lot
Twice as much for a nickel too!
Pepsi-Cola is the drink for you!
(and then something I can't remember, because I always ended up replacing it with:
Holy holy holy holy hole-y ghost.)
As you can tell, that was quite awhile ago.

Funny thing, it's been years, possibly decades, since I've bought a Pepsi. (Of course, I don't buy cokes either. Occasionally I buy a Mountain Dew...which I've never heard an ad for, though they do benefit from:
My uncle Bill a still on the hill
Where he makes a rare mountain brew.
The birds in the sky get so drunk they can't fly
On that good .. old .. moun .. tain .. dew.
etc.
)

Re:What If I never click adverts anyway?

[jshackney]

My choice of soap is 100% influenced by what the hotel stocks today. I probably have a couple years' worth of soap in my linen closet harvested from various hotels across the U.S.

Re:What If I never click adverts anyway?

[Anonymous Coward]

umm...i decide which components to buy to build my computer when i go into the store and start looking at specs on the boxes. I don't watch TV, the radio i listen to tends to advertise to small business owners and home owners and the computer illiterate (advertising firms to make ads for *your* business, exterminators, tile cleaners, landscapers, etc.., and lifelock, carbonite, etc...) I'm in none of those categories and have no use for those products. So you can go through life with minimal influence by advertising.

Re:What If I never click adverts anyway?

[Anonymous Coward]

I rate a company who tries to force ads in my face harshly. I don't read magazines or newspapers now and I won't watch TV with ads. I'm to the point I don't want to go to movies due to the ad cramming and I'm an opponent of animated billboards. I consider marketers to be amoral fiends who should be regulated to the strangulation point.

I rate companies based on their level of evil. Apple, microsoft, sony, mcdonalds, general welfare motors won't get my money.

I won't spend a dime more on something if there is a cheaper and comparable product.

I buy what I need based on reviewed or known quality, price, performance, warranty and reputation.

Re:What If I never click adverts anyway?

[Anonymous Coward]

I have a 2 seater convertible roadster that can go 140 mph. Does that make me bad?

Nowhere does OP make value judgments about "good" versus "bad" people.

Most people are hypnotized by branding.

It does mean you're hypnotized into thinking you need a waste of aluminium/gas. inb4 "it's my money, who are you to judge", "I enjoy driving fast in my vanity rocket", and "you don't know what I use it for."

Re:What If I never click adverts anyway?

[metrix007]

Oh, Hogwash

If you have even the least amount of will, or the least ability to think critically, then you won't be magically subjected to advertising without your knowledge.

It isn't science, it is still just psychology. And like Psychology, what is true for masses does not have to be true for any individual.

The reason advertising works is because people are dumb, not because of advanced clandestine techniques.

Re:What If I never click adverts anyway?

[h4rr4r]

This is me, I have spent so much time comparing and selecting an item that a new item has arrived in that market space.

I selected my droid phone because due to a phone stipend from work I actually make more money by taking a smartphone. I also selected it because it was rooted when I bought it. Sure I have seen advertising for it along highways and in stores, but that impacted my buying decision far less than the objective comparison of my financial situation and ability to do what I want with the device. Anyone who gets a smartphone and is not being paid to have it directly or indirectly is an idiot.

Re:What If I never click adverts anyway?

[laddiebuck]

I guarantee that you have not been able to ignore advertising or cause it to have the opposite influence. You're fooling yourself.
Oh good, a chance for some fun. What kind of computer do you use? What kind of portable media player? I guarantee that you chose them because of advertising. You know which components to buy when you build a computer because of advertising. You know which cereal to buy because of advertising.
The only computer I have is the laptop my company brought me. I don't have a portable media player. I don't buy cereal.

Even if you buy the cheap store-brand of corn flakes, it's because the store-brand is piggy-backing off the effect that Kellogs' advertising had on you or you wouldn't even know to buy corn flakes.
The ingredients I buy and the dishes I cook would not surprise a 16th century peasant, save for fruits like oranges and bananas. You're right, I don't know to buy corn flakes, because I have no idea what value they'd give me. I do know that I'm in no worse shape than people I know who eat corn flakes. Actually, the last reference to corn flakes I remember is them being dismissed by someone in Roald Dahl's story "Charlie and the Chocolate Factory". I do see ads sometimes, but I couldn't actually describe a single one I've seen.

I bet you know the names of Apple's laptop computers. I bet you know the names of the individual programs in Adobe's Creative Suite. I bet you can tell me the names of car models made by the biggest car companies. All because of advertising.
You're right, I do, but only because that's what my company bought me and I dug around on the Debian wiki on how to install it on various Apple laptops. I haven't the faintest clue what Creative Suite even is. I'm notoriously bad with car models, though I know a couple of 60s brands and could tell you a couple of models that my friends have, but I couldn't actually match them up to a picture. Except perhaps the Mini, which I saw on Top Gear.

There's a long game in advertising too. Even if you aren't directly influenced to run out and buy a product, you learn the names, you learn the qualities that made one brand better than another. Eventually you will make a decision, and though you think you're making the decision based only upon your own independent thinking, the marketing plays a bigger role than you think.
Actually, I don't have time to pay attention to ads. Most on the Web are blocked and I don't watch television. I subconsciously ignore billboards. When I buy products, and I don't buy many (before you go on about shampoo, body wash and shaving cream brands, I just use soap for them all), I either go by price (as with toothpaste), habit (as with Old Spice deodorant because my grandfather used it) or developed taste (as with alcohol). Now, I'm not your typical consumer as I'm poor and spend extremely little, and that almost all second-hand. I did buy a refurbished ThinkPad once, largely on the reputation it had amongst my friends -- whether that was due to advertising, I don't know, but it held up much better for me than Dell laptops I've used.

Re:What If I never click adverts anyway?

[Nyder]

What if I am NOT influenced by adverts, do not click them and avoid the products mentioned within them?

You are influenced by adverts whether you know it or not. Now, your conscious influence may be stronger than the unconscious; I am fairly adept at detecting the manipulation attempted by advertisement, and it makes me angry. But that doesn't make you immune to the techniques used. It only means that they must be employed more subtly to work on you.

Hmm, what if adblock, well, blocks them? How do they influence us then?

Re:What If I never click adverts anyway?

[Nyder]

The complete opposite influence they want me to have maybe?

I guarantee that you have not been able to ignore advertising or cause it to have the opposite influence. You're fooling yourself.

What kind of computer do you use? What kind of portable media player? I guarantee that you chose them because of advertising. You know which components to buy when you build a computer because of advertising. You know which cereal to buy because of advertising.

Even if you buy the cheap store-brand of corn flakes, it's because the store-brand is piggy-backing off the effect that Kellogs' advertising had on you or you wouldn't even know to buy corn flakes.

I bet you know the names of Apple's laptop computers. I bet you know the names of the individual programs in Adobe's Creative Suite. I bet you can tell me the names of car models made by the biggest car companies. All because of advertising.

There's a long game in advertising too. Even if you aren't directly influenced to run out and buy a product, you learn the names, you learn the qualities that made one brand better than another. Eventually you will make a decision, and though you think you're making the decision based only upon your own independent thinking, the marketing plays a bigger role than you think.

What sort of sheep are you?

I built my own computer. Not buying parts that were advertised, I bought parts that I did research into on what was best. I didn't pick up some cheap video card because it was on sale, I went with the best performer (at it's time).

I bought an ipod. 120gb. Why ipod? Because I'm an apple fanboy? Nope, not at all. I bought an ipod because there was few choices of >100 gb mp3 players. The ipod did what I wanted to, in a nice clean UI. I don't use itunes, I use winamp. All in all, i'm very happy with the ipod, just don't care how it stores music on it. (i sort of prefer the directory/sub method.

As for ceral, I buy what I like. ya, usually it's on sale, but I only find that out when i actually go to the store. I don't eat alot of breakfast, so I don't really buy ceral much. But as for food, I tend to buy whats cheap in the store, within stuff I like.

I know it's hard to believe, but it stand to reason that there are people who are not affected by advertising. They probably don't care about having to "fit in" with society, or keeping up with the jones. Or maybe they are just oblivous to stuff like that.

Just seems to me, those of you that are jumping on peeps saying advertising doesn't affect them, are jealous because they are sheep when it comes to advertising.

One thing I've learned in this life is closed minds make the impossible.

Re:What If I never click adverts anyway?

[Nyder]

What if I am NOT influenced by adverts,

Then you should immediately report to the nearest psychology lab and make a living being examined for this highly unusual trait.

Advertisement today contains more science than Spirit and Opportunity. It practically is a science of its own - the science of manipulating masses, often unconsciously, and especially in such a way that they are either unaware of it or in complete denial.

Ockhams Razor says you are not immune, you are in denial.

So, people that are blind & deaf are just in denial about being not immune to ads?

Or is it your in denial about your view point being correct?

Re:What If I never click adverts anyway?

[drinkypoo]

Hmm, what if adblock, well, blocks them? How do they influence us then?

If you consume any major-label media then you're receiving product placement. Cigarettes and diamonds are two very early and very successful examples of Hollywood product placement.

Re:What If I never click adverts anyway?

[mgblst]

The reason you are wrong, is that you can never know how much you are being swayed by advertising. Yet you seem to think you can. If you ever buy any products, you are probably swayed by advertising. You or I just will not know it.

Even when you buy the cheap jeans you can be swayed. You realize they price jeans a particular way to target the expensive fashionistas as well as the cheapos like you.

Re:What If I never click adverts anyway?

[tighr]

Mountain Dew is a Pepsico product. Thanks for supporting Pepsico!

Re:What If I never click adverts anyway?

[sserendipity]

You and my dad. Whenever my sister or I are home and open his soap cupboard, we say, "Me retirement soap!"

Re:What If I never click adverts anyway?

[sserendipity]

News for nerds. Stuff that matters?

Re:What If I never click adverts anyway?

[rec9140]

"I guarantee that you have not been able to ignore advertising or cause it to have the opposite influence. You're fooling yourself."

Really.... To be influenced you have to SEE the ads...

I tirelessly use ad blocking techniques for online and other means ie: TV ala the DVR.... FF x60/

So how are these ads influencing me? at 60x I see about 1 second of them.. I couldn't tell you what
the current ad schemes are for most companies. Throw in the fact that TCM has NO COMMERCIALS, FOXMO, NO commercials...

"What kind of computer do you use?"

I built it myself... and I've never seen ads for Asus, Abit, NVidia, AMD etc.. Of course with my blocking they would have a tough time getting to me.

"What kind of portable media player?"

None. Never had one, other than the radio in the car.. NO... ads = seek button... now I have Sirrius and NO ADS! Just 40,50,60, Sinatra! It has a CD player that I think will play CD's with MP3's on it... never looked.

" I guarantee that you chose them because of advertising. "

BZZT

"You know which components to buy when you build a computer because of advertising. "

No its because I went to Newegg did a search for NVidia 1GB RAM, dual DVI output. Then selected the one I liked from the cards listed. No ads involved.

I don't use ati (even though owned by AMD) for their stupid driver BS and dropping support of cards only 1-2 years old, plus even on winslobber their drivers sucked and getting tht the things to work was nothing but torture.

"You know which cereal to buy because of advertising."

That one I will give you to a point, since SAT AM cartoons were the staple... and PC's didn't even exist at that point in time... Although I've been a very good channel clicker even then.. how else to watch you toons when they schedule them opposite each other...

"Even if you buy the cheap store-brand of corn flakes, it's because the store-brand is piggy-backing off the effect that Kellogs' advertising had on you or you wouldn't even know to buy corn flakes."

Nope. I almost ALWAYS purchase store brand, period. Unless I've tried it and found it inferior to another product. Also its normally CHEAPER, BIGGER BAG and/or BOX most times, and I purchase what I like FLAVOR and SUGAR CONTENT WISE. No sugar then I probably am not buying!

"I bet you know the names of Apple's laptop computers."

Nope, don't use crapple. Next.

"I bet you know the names of the individual programs in Adobe's Creative Suite. "

No again... apt doesn't seem to know of this program either. So whats it do? A better package name to try in apt or Synaptic?

rec9140@rec9140-quad-desktop /proc $ sudo apt-get install adobecreativesuite
[sudo] password for rec9140:
Reading package lists... Done
Building dependency tree
Reading state information... Done
E: Couldn't find package adobecreativesuite
rec9140@rec9140-quad-desktop /proc $

"I bet you can tell me the names of car models made by the biggest car companies. All because of advertising."

Again, no. Lets see there's Plymouth, err.... Saturn....errr.....Pakcard.... err....Theres some more... wait.... Oh I give up...

Re:What If I never click adverts anyway?

[PopeRatzo]

An optical mouse is NOT a trackball.

Which trackball do you use?

Re:What If I never click adverts anyway?

[PopeRatzo]

I will spend hours and hours online comparing competing products to find the one that offers the best set of features/performance for the lowest price.

Where do you find out about the "best set of features/performance for the lowest price"?

Re:What If I never click adverts anyway?

[PopeRatzo]

Does spending a couple of hours on Newegg or Tom's Hardware count as advertising?

Absolutely. Why do you think hardware manufacturers love Tom's Hardware? People read that and get excited about buying new equipment.

I bet Tom's Hardware gets more than half their readers to buy hardware that they don't need.

That's the ultimate test: Did you ever buy anything you didn't need? Advertising is not just about buying a particular brand, it's about creating a consumer culture, and all of us participate in the consumer culture. Some of us just delude ourselves into thinking we don't.

Re:What If I never click adverts anyway?

[PopeRatzo]

Toyota makes a Prius.

Cha-ching!

Re:What If I never click adverts anyway?

[PopeRatzo]

One thing I've learned in this life is closed minds make the impossible.

If your mind is closed to the possibility of ubiquitous advertising's effect on you, I guarantee you are susceptible.

How did you know that iPod was the only player with >100 gb? If you buy "what's on sale" you are very specifically being affected by advertising. Almost always the product "on sale" is not the best buy, but rather it's the product that the store is trying to get out the door fastest. The fact that you see the little sign that says "on sale" and make your decision based on that shows just how much you are being affected.

Re:What If I never click adverts anyway?

[PopeRatzo]

"I bet you know the names of the individual programs in Adobe's Creative Suite. "

So, you've never heard of Photoshop.

Sure.

I'll bet you've used the term "photoshopped" to describe a photo that's been altered.

You're not only affected by advertising, you unknowingly participate in propagating it.

Re:What If I never click adverts anyway?

[improfane]

It's a logitech trackman. I am looking for others as I have only been using the 'thumb trackballs'. I want to try a 'finger trackall'.

Re:What If I never click adverts anyway?

[vadim_t]

What kind of computer do you use?

Used many. I've had Asus, HP, Toshiba and Dell laptops.

I basically go search by the characteristics I want (memory, graphics, size, weight, etc), then pick something from there. Generally I find about 4-5 laptops with the right specs, and choose from that by the minor things like looks and small price variations.

What kind of portable media player?

Cowon D2.

What I did was going to the wikipedia comparison page, looking at the columns, and picking something I liked.

I guarantee that you chose them because of advertising.

Nope. I've never ever seen an ad for the MP3 player, and didn't know the brand existed. Nobody I showed it to heard of Cowon either. I just looked around and found something that fit my needs (playing ogg, good battery life)

You know which cereal to buy because of advertising.

Actually no. I buy systematically. I'll try a new brand every week until I've tried them all, then buy the brands I like best. I do the same thing with restaurants, ice cream, etc.

Re:What If I never click adverts anyway?

[JordanL]

The fact that a company advertises makes their products less fit for your needs when you independently have determined that you have a need for that product?

That's pretty irrational.

Re:What If I never click adverts anyway?

[ultranova]

The fact that a company advertises makes their products less fit for your needs when you independently have determined that you have a need for that product?

No, the fact that a company advertises makes choosing its products carry an unfortunate side-effect of helping fund advertising.

That's pretty irrational.

Actually, it's perfectly rational to take into account the long-term effects of making a particular choice, such as giving money to a company that engages in behaviours you disagree with. In fact, not taking these things into account would make your behaviour irrational, since rationality means making the choices that give you the best chance of achieving your goals while avoiding bad things (technically speaking, to maximize expected utility).

Re:What If I never click adverts anyway?

[ultranova]

What kind of computer do you use?

Self-built PC compatible.

What kind of portable media player?

None.

I guarantee that you chose them because of advertising.

No, I chose them because of price.

You know which components to buy when you build a computer because of advertising.

No, I got a price list for components from a webshop, then went through that in ascending order, checking Wikipedia for information, until I had a cheapest sufficient part for my needs in every category.

I suppose you could consider a price list a form of advertising, if you really pushed the definition.

You know which cereal to buy because of advertising.

No, I go to the store, see which one is cheapest, and buy that.

What kind of moron buys food by brand?

Even if you buy the cheap store-brand of corn flakes, it's because the store-brand is piggy-backing off the effect that Kellogs' advertising had on you or you wouldn't even know to buy corn flakes.

Actually, I buy bread.

I bet you know the names of Apple's laptop computers.

No.

I bet you know the names of the individual programs in Adobe's Creative Suite.

No.

I bet you can tell me the names of car models made by the biggest car companies.

No.

So, how much did I won?

Even if you aren't directly influenced to run out and buy a product, you learn the names, you learn the qualities that made one brand better than another.

The thing is, I'm not thinking in terms of brands, except when one manufacturer manages to produce such a shoddy product I'll avoid them from then on. I think in the terms of price and properties, and filter advertising out as noise.

Eventually you will make a decision, and though you think you're making the decision based only upon your own independent thinking, the marketing plays a bigger role than you think.

I suppose it's always possible that astroturfers have planted false information in my sources. That's one more reason to hate them.

Re:What If I never click adverts anyway?

[ultranova]

That's the ultimate test: Did you ever buy anything you didn't need?

That's a meaningless question, since it doesn't qualify "need" with "for something". Every want can be viewed as a need ("I need designer clothes to be appreciated by my peers") and every need as a want ("I don't need to stay alive, I just want to").

So no, neither I nor anyone else has ever bought anything we didn't need; yet it's just as justified to claim that nothing you could ever buy is something you actually need.

Advertising is not just about buying a particular brand, it's about creating a consumer culture, and all of us participate in the consumer culture. Some of us just delude ourselves into thinking we don't.

Holy circular argument, Batman!

Everyone participates in consumer culture. Therefore those who think they don't are just deluding themselves, and are in reality participating in consumer culture. Therefore everyone participates in consumer culture.

Re:What If I never click adverts anyway?

[Runaway1956]

Ultranova made a good answer to your post. I'll point out, though, that in most cases, whatever doo-dad you have to have is probably produced by numerous companies. Company A adds bling, and advertising, mostly marketing to the non-tech savvy, who are only interested in "pretty". Company B indulges in a lot of bling, but they forego the intensive advertising. Company C just makes the best, most utilitarian product they know how, and does very little if any advertising. Company D makes a cheap knockoff, with shoddy quality. Now, which brand of doo-dad do you think I'm going to buy?

In SOME rare cases, the only company that produces a quality doo-dad is the company that spends zillions on advertising. In such a case, I'll be forced to choose their product.

The best example might be a cell phone. I NEED a phone. There are a dozen choices on the market that are highly overpriced, much more capable than most people ever need, with all kinds of eye candy and bling. I don't need or want geo-location, don't need or want 99 applications, don't need or want texting - I could go on. All I want to do is accept incoming telephone calls, when people need me.

My choice? I go to WalMart, plop down a couple of twenty dollar bills for a no-contract cheapo telephone, activate it, then reactivate it monthly. Cheap, reliable, and I'm only buying what I NEED.

Re:What If I never click adverts anyway?

[Omestes]

As the other replier stated; define "need". Did I need a new hard-drive, probably not. But then again do I need a computer, or coffee, or a books, or a television, or a car, or cats, or any food above the absolute basics? Probably not. If we removed advertising completely from our lives we probably would still demand things in excess to mere survival requirements. For example computing in general, I started using computers only because my neighbor had a smoking hot, brand new 8086 that I was sometimes allowed to play games on, baring the existence of any advertising for computer companies, I probably still would own a computer, and enjoy tweaking them. Barring ads, I would still drink coffee, have cats, enjoy long walks on the beach, etc...

Your question is dead on though, even if I disagree with the sentiment. Advertising is about creating artificial needs, and conflating wants with needs. The "consumer culture" aspect is largely accidental, and isn't a planned aspect of advertising, it is a natural growth from unfettered capitalism, made worse by our largely sedentary, passive culture.

Re:What If I never click adverts anyway?

[Anonymous Coward]

You must be retarded. Maybe he tried them, did you think of that. Or did your corporate overlords not make an ad yet telling you to.

Re:What If I never click adverts anyway?

[stoanhart]

Well, I read reviews. If product B offers 85% of the features of product A, but at half the price, I will choose product B, as it offers more value for my money. In almost every major purchase I've ever made, I found that there is always one or two such product Bs on the market. You just have to find them.

Re:What If I never click adverts anyway?

[Tom]

The reason advertising works is because people are dumb, not because of advanced clandestine techniques.

It isn't magic, just applied science. And the reason it works is not that people are dumb, but that people are people. No matter what your IQ, you can not help but be startled at a sudden sound, or look into the direction of a movement in your peripheral vision. Your attention is drawn to certain things because a million or so years of evolution have selected for that kind of attention. There's great research out there on why we are making more false positives then false negatives in our judgements (the short version: Mistaking a rabbit for a lion isn't a fatal mistake, ignoring the lion because it could be just a rabbit is).

It isn't science, it is still just psychology.

Psychology happens to be a science, no matter how much it irks your computer-nerd arrogance.

Re:Heres an idea

[houstonbofh]

Don't be a whore ?, remember when people put things on the Web out of passion not greed ?

Ahh... The grand old days of geocities! Those were the days... Wait a minute... Most of those pages sucked! Of course most pages today suck! So when were the good days again?

they should set up their fscking own blog

[Anonymous Coward]

if a company like pepsi doesnt have the resources to set up a goddamn website ... well .... who does .

Re:they should set up their fscking own blog

[cyp43r]

They wanted to utilise some of the credibility of having real scientific results besides theirs presented alongside. A Pepsi site would have zero credibility in presenting scientific results.

Re:they should set up their fscking own blog

[Eponymous Coward]

A Pepsi site would have zero credibility - at first. Science is science, doesn't matter who is doing it or why. Publish your results and let others scrutinize and try to replicate the results. Pepsi could indeed build a positive reputation for research, much in the same way that Bell Labs did so many years ago.

Re: That question at the end

[Anonymous Coward]

Why is it so bad? To me this was not about changing attitude and behaviour towards the negative impact of their current ingredients and their impact, but more so it was an opportunity to extend their science outside their labs, in order to involve and reach out to other scientists to create an extended research initiative.

So when companies reach out to create open research, why is it that they are met with doubt and discontent?
Yes I understand many companies intend to exploit, but it is not always so. How do we encourage those that are willing to improve?

S.O.S.

The LeftischScienceBlog

[thethibs]

I'd never heard of this blog until I read about it here. Clearly, the first thing to do was to go see.

Why would a science blog site not have room for PepsiCo scientists? Why would anyone not want the opportunity to review and challenge their work and engage them in intelligent dialogue, as is the norm in real science?

It doesn't take much perusing (look it up) of the ScienceBlog site to understand why. It's hard to miss the theme that selects what gets blogged and what's ignored. Challenge? Dialogue? It is to laugh.

They really should be honest about their mission and name it the LeftScienceBlog.

Re:The LeftischScienceBlog

[Anonymous Coward]

Then get on there, with some facts and figures, and change it. I am So Very Tired of people claiming science has political leanings. Science isn't left or right, science IS. If you can't prove that they are wrong, or show logical steps that they are missing in their conclusion, then they are right and you are wrong, until you can prove otherwise. It's okay to be wrong sometimes.

Re:The LeftischScienceBlog

[thethibs]

Really? Science is?

Science has no politics, no culture? It is to laugh.

You're confusing science with the real world. The real world is. Science is a lens through which we discover aspects of the real world. That lens, its color and refractive index, and the direction it points are the result of human choices about what, in the terms used by the gang opposed to the pepsico blog, "is legitimate".

Politics and culture deeply affect both what science is chosen for doing (can you say stem-cell research, human trials, gender differences in mathematics?) and, once done, what is reported and where.

Scientists are routinely crucified for reporting findings that go against the PC grain. Can anyone be so naive as to believe that this has no effect on what other scientists choose to study and report?

Re:The LeftischScienceBlog

[Cyberax]

"LeftScienceBlog" it's funny, because science has real left leaning.

Several corporations have successfully sponsored projects on ScienceBlogs: "Collective Imagination" sponsored by GE and "The Energy Grid" sponsored by Shell. But both of these projects were written by independent bloggers, not by companies' PR stuff like in this case.

PS: I'm a regular Scienceblogs reader. And I rely on their frontpage to show interesting stories from blogs that I don't follow in my RSS feeds.

Re:The LeftischScienceBlog

[Anonymous Coward]

In the OP's defense, there is a lot of left wing blogging on ScienceBlogs. I found the site last year, but gave up after a month because there was so little actual science content. There was a lot of "D'oh! Look what $REPUBLICAN_POLITICIAN or $RELIGIOUS_PERSON said today! Let's all take a dump on them! Ha ha!"

OK. I even agree with their distaste for $REPUBLICAN_POLITICIAN or $RELIGIOUS_PERSON, but I can go to one of the hundred million political sites for that.

One guy was doing things to Eucharist crackers or something proving that they are not really holy... I think. It was unclear. I asked what his point was, and I was called a "Chrisitian cry baby" and some rather nasty things I have not heard outside of middle school playgrounds by about 20 people who had never even heard of me before I posted. When I told them that, no, I'm an atheist who was just trying to understand the point of abusing crackers, the same 20, scientific-method believing people called me a liar.

So, I left. Life's too short. There's a lot of science fan posuers out there. They claim to be rational thinkers and cry "Science!" at every oppurtunity, but they really are just sad little people with a whole host of personality disorders.

Re:The LeftischScienceBlog

[Cyberax]

"I'm an atheist who was just trying to understand the point of abusing crackers, the same 20, scientific-method believing people called me a liar."

That was PZ Myers. He did this in support of freedom of speech and religion.

Re:The LeftischScienceBlog

[thethibs]

Wow. There are still half-wits on /. who think "Troll" means "Disagree".

Get out of your mother's basement and into the real world, kid. The stale air is damaging your brain.

Re:The LeftischScienceBlog

[hawkfish]

Then get on there, with some facts and figures, and change it. I am So Very Tired of people claiming science has political leanings. Science isn't left or right, science IS.

Science as a methodology may not be political, but the choice of what to investigate most certainly is political.

Not clear what the problem is

[ildon]

I'm not sure what happened here that was so bad. Isn't the whole point of science to judge people on the merits of their work? Why should it matter if they work for PepsiCo or not? Just look at the work and judge it on its own. If it's crap, say it's crap, and why it's crap. Don't just ignore them out-of-hand due to who their employer was. I can't even find the PepsiCo blog to read it to see what was so terrible about it, and everything I read just says "IT WAS FROM AN EVIL CORPORATION" which doesn't say shit about the content or the quality of its science.

If they were killing gypsies, jews, and midgets for their experiments, I might understand the negativity, but they make food products, not all of which are even unhealthy, and none of which are that bad when taken in moderation, like all indulgences.

Re:Not clear what the problem is

[ObsessiveMathsFreak]

I can't even find the PepsiCo blog to read it to see what was so terrible about it, and everything I read just says "IT WAS FROM AN EVIL CORPORATION" which doesn't say shit about the content or the quality of its science.

High quality science can come out of corporate labs, but only when it is in the interests of the company. There is little doubt that PepsiCo scientists are well aware of the health effects of their companies products, but there isn't a snowball's chance in a sauna that such information will ever be released on their blog. In the meantime, the carefully controlled flow of information putting the company and its products in a positive light gains credence and respectability by being on a credible site such a Scienceblogs, and all the while every other blog on the site loses credence by having this propaganda held up next to their content.

This has been dubbed corporate propaganda, and it's a succinct and insightful description. The entity known as PepsiCo may have been granted the human freedom of speech to engage in this sort of thing, but that doesn't mean other people have to associate themselves with it.

Re:Not clear what the problem is

[Eponymous Coward]

The thing is, Pepsi has their own website. They can publish whatever they want there and earn their reputation, the same as everybody else. In this case, they were trying to purchase credibility from a site that had a good reputation.

Re:Not clear what the problem is

[ildon]

Then their posts should have stood on their own merit (or lack thereof, whatever the case may be).

Re:Not clear what the problem is

[ildon]

So what if it's in the interest of PepsiCo? That doesn't exclude it from being in the interests of anyone else. And as long as people made logical, well reasoned rebuttals, and as long as those rebuttals aren't censored, then all we have is an opportunity to gain from their posts, even if the gain is entirely in discrediting them publicly.

Re:Not clear what the problem is

[Reziac]

"High quality science can come out of corporate labs, but only when it is in the interests of the company"

Not necessarily. Here's a real example:

Ralston Purina has a big nutritional research kennel. One of their projects was to determine dogs' preferences in protein sources. They published the results in their magazine: All dogs preferred meat; from there it went downhill through eggs, milk, fish, and chicken came in dead last (some dogs preferred to starve rather than eat chicken). On the very next page in the same magazine was an ad for their newest product, "with the great taste of chicken that dogs love!" Clearly marketing and research had never met.

Point being, corporate research may publish real, unbiased results even in the face of contrary BS from the same company's marketing department. Do we really know that Pepsi's research is biased? *Assuming* it's biased (and in line with what the marketing dept. wished to "prove") is just as much "bad science" as if it were indeed biased.

But today's educated idiots prefer to believe that every fringie does far more "legit" research (failing to notice that said fringies usually have something to sell you, too).

Re:Not clear what the problem is

[Eponymous Coward]

In a way I agree. The problem as I understand it, is that they weren't selected for the blog due to the content of their report. Rather, they were included because they paid for inclusion. It's a bad precedent to set I think. It harms the reputation of the blog and of the other people published there.

Mucha ado...

[Registered Coward v2]

If they are open about the source of the material and that it is paid I really don't see anything wrong with it. Readers will be aware that the blog is coming from a specific viewpoint and source; and can decide how much credibility they have and what biases may exist. To me, it's better than the blogger who may have an unrevealed conflict of interest or bias yet presents their viewpoint as factual and unbiased.

The broader issue is, as pointed out, how do you engage with the broader public? Scientific papers are nice but most people never know they exist, let alone read them. An open forum allows a level of interaction and skeptical inquiry that rarely exists today; cutting that off is not very useful. Of course, the cynic in me thinks there are people, on both sides, who don't desire such rational discussion since it may go against long held positions and point out fallacies in those positions. Silencing a messenger is teh easist way to prevent the message from being delivered.

unemployed scientists?

[ushere]

i presume the only scientists we're expected to tell the truth are either unemployed, or working for the gov / education dept?

as long as ANY relationship is clearly stated i'd be happy for any company scientist to state his claim / belief.

we're NOT as studpid as we're made out to be....

"dialogue" (Ha!)

[Type44Q]

" 'How do companies who seek genuine dialogue with this community engage?' " Companies do not "seek" anything; the people who run them seek something... but it surely isn't dialogue. Any appearance to the contrary is just that, an appearance.

Re: That question at the end

[Anonymous Coward]

But the real question Seed is faced with is probably "How are we supposed to make money from ScienceBlogs if you won't let us sell out to a company that's probably killing more people than Philip Morris ever did?"

To which I replied the following. It might be of some interest to more knowledgeable veterans. I'm posting here because it seems they are so desperate about money that they did not publish my comment:

Want to make money off science?

Do it in style.

Make games where players can go to planets with varying gravity,
atmosphere, where space ships choke due to lack of oxygen, where
genetically reprogrammable bacteria / cells are used to make organic
suits for space pioneers.

Spore is the only game that really makes ordinary people *think* about
science, however faulty and limited.

That's where you get the money - make great games that people play
online for a fee.

There are tons of good free open-source game engines, hundreds of
story lines from indie and established science fiction franchises.

Make deals with Lucasfilm, Roland Emmerich, the Stargate franchise,
there are tons more.

Science education will go multimedia / simulation in the next decade,
in the mainstream. Kids and elders can *simulate* things they want and
print out on 3D printers in nearby towns / cities.

That's the future of science.

You guys are idiots to tie up with Pepsi, instead tie up with Lego,
Starwars, Startrek, Stargate, Terminator, Transformers, X-men.

There's great depth, variety and solid longevity in plots concepts and
the sheer scale of visuals and grandeur possible.

With all that science fiction, all the new Mars and Moon projects
around, String theory and cool multiverse stuff going around, you
idiots are tying up with Pepsi, an industrial chemical factory making
unethical junk substances.

How exquisitely unscientific and short-sighted.
Totally unbecoming of a science setup.

You want free advice, free help, free software and links, we are all
right here - you make money, let us write apps (planets, plots,
technology in the game) and make money.

Live and let live.

Don't suck and help suck like Pepsi.

Nobody believed Sergey and Larry's idea for one full year. Then, one
gentleman handed them a bunch of big bucks. And here we are now, at
the start of the semantic web, everyone with a gmail address with 7GB
free space and https for no charge.

He who has the balls, will get the bucks. All it takes is doing.

What a deceitful framing of the issue.

[jonnat]

How do we empower top scientists working in industry to lead science-minded positive change within their organizations? ... How do companies who seek genuine dialogue with this community engage?

It's rather simple: open your blog network to scientists who work in industry, which you already do.

It's rather dishonest to claim that the backlash from your sell-out of the site has the effect of preventing industry scientists to engage in "genuine dialogue" with the broad scientific community. If anything prevents this engagement, it's the draconian IP protection rules companies impose to their R&D staff. If a company is genuinely interested in a dialogue and not disguised propaganda, they can simply allow their researchers to have blogs in which they can discuss their work or issues they encounter in their environment.

Reality cracking

[improfane]

It is definitely a science like you say but it doesn't mean you cannot learn the science yourself. It's called 'reality cracking' and it's absolutely fascinating:

http://www.searchlores.org/realicra/realicra.htm

The idea behind reality cracking is that if you can begin to understand how the adverts work, you can become more aware and wise to how supermarkets, adverts abuse and play on you.

If I do not see the adverts, I am more unlikely to buy them. I do not see adverts on TV because I don't watch it, I don't see them online either. I also read to become aware of the tricks. It saves me more time this way.

I don't have an iPhone. I don't have a Mac, I try buy products that advertise less (like unheard of brands). I am a simpleton.

Re:Reality cracking

[Tom]

The idea behind reality cracking is that if you can begin to understand how the adverts work, you can become more aware and wise to how supermarkets, adverts abuse and play on you.

I know. I've been reading stuff on searchlores before it was named searchlores.

But, even if you are aware of it, that doesn't mean you are immune. The only thing you can do is filtering it out, and I don't mean with your brain. I don't watch TV, due to the rampant advertising (and the fact that there's nothing worthwhile on). I browse with Adblock, I have spam filters everywhere.

Nevertheless, unless you live in a very remote area, you can not help but be bombarded by advertisement every day. And it works, even if you understand perfectly well how and why.

I try buy products that advertise less (like unheard of brands). I am a simpleton.

Doesn't matter. Even that is a demographic recognized and targeted by advertisement agencies. They just use different, less-obvious methods to reach you, that's all.

Re:Reality cracking

[Anonymous Coward]

Just because you are aware of it does not mean it stopped affecting you.

Re:Reality cracking

[ChienAndalu]

I try buy products that advertise less (like unheard of brands). I am a simpleton.

Why not try to buy the product with the best cost-benefit ratio?

Why should Pepsi pay them?

[Anonymous Coward]

Why should not their blog stand on its own and prove its worth the community?

After reading some of the blogs and comments on that site all I can say is, what a big bunch of prima donnas who all got their panties in a wad because they weren't given enough consultation as they believe their due

"commercials"

[pizzach]

The broader issue is, as pointed out, how do you engage with the broader public?

Seriously? Did you seriously ask this? The place where Pepsi would get their message out the easiest and to the most people who count would be through television commercials. Maybe at the end of the commercial tell people to check out the "facts" at pepsi-health.com.

This is straight forward. People know what it is. It also doesn't feel as sneaky as some other methods where they try to pass off the tests as having been done by someone else. I'm sure you remember the commercials talking about eggs having less cholesterol than they had thought? Or the ones talking about some food products being high in fiber or low in fat?

Commercials are the domain for companies to get their message out. This hasn't changed for a long time. Why is everyone so confused about their existence now?

Re:"commercials"

[Phroggy]

Commercials are the domain for companies to get their message out.

How about: paid advertising is the domain for companies to get their message out. This includes not just television commercials, but also radio commercials, magazine ads, newspaper ads, billboards... ...and paid ads on web sites.

If the ad is clearly marked as such, I don't see a problem with this. Newspapers run ads that resemble news stories all the time, and to avoid confusion they mark them as "PAID ADVERTISEMENT" at the top. ScienceBlogs.com can do the same. As long as everything is clear and out in the open, what's the problem? If you don't want to read it because you aren't interested in whatever Pepsi's marketing team is trying to sell you, then just skip over the paid content and be thankful someone is helping to financially support the web site you enjoy.

Re:"commercials"

[Registered Coward v2]

The broader issue is, as pointed out, how do you engage with the broader public?

Seriously? Did you seriously ask this? The place where Pepsi would get their message out the easiest and to the most people who count would be through television commercials. Maybe at the end of the commercial tell people to check out the "facts" at pepsi-health.com.

This is straight forward. People know what it is. It also doesn't feel as sneaky as some other methods where they try to pass off the tests as having been done by someone else. I'm sure you remember the commercials talking about eggs having less cholesterol than they had thought? Or the ones talking about some food products being high in fiber or low in fat?

Commercials are the domain for companies to get their message out. This hasn't changed for a long time. Why is everyone so confused about their existence now?

Exactly, and as long as ScienceBlog clearly marks it as paid content from Pepsi it's no different (or worse) than any of the other ways companies get their message out. Such a paid blog is just another commercial, IMHO, and people can differentiate that from any other source of information and value the information accordingly.

The real danger, is from people who purport to be unbiased reporters of facts in a blog when they really have some underlying POV they want to put across. Such astroturfing is much more troublesome and insidious than a company putting a paid blog up and it being clearly identified as such.

As a side note, print media and televison has been doing that for quite some time "With paid advertisement" splashed across pages that appear to be articles and the ever popular "Paid Programing" infomercial.

Want

[wonkavader]

I also take issue with your claims that people "want" corn so processed it retains zero nutritional value, fats so perverted the body can barely process them, and sugar that is heavily biased towards being stored as fat rather than burned that then creates a depressed insulin response and the near-instant desire for more.

Yes, they do "want". They want crack, they want meth. We all want that stuff. It's just that some folks don't know about the consequences, and some know and are willing to suffer them.

And then we, as a society, pay for it.

Nanny-state my ass. We need a stingy state. A real attention to lowering government costs, instead of the phony one we're always being sold. We need to tax the crap out of this junk to save ourselves some money. If the consumer wants something which screws society, then they can pay extra for it.

Was it marked as paid?

[cenobyte40k]

It's a food scientist writing a blog about the food science work they do. As long as it was marked as paid content space I don't know what the big deal is. Hell even if it was not, it's just a blog page from a legitimate scientist doing legitimate work that millions of people enjoy every day. Would it been a problem if this scientist had written this blog and not paid for the space? Honestly people need to get over themselves, they might not like Pepsi but he is still doing science.

Lies. All lies.

[John Hasler]

> "How do we empower top scientists working in industry to lead science-minded
> positive change within their organizations?

You don't. There are no top scientists working in industry. Anyone working in industry who is not a downtrodden oppressed worker is by definition a despicable tool of the esploiters. (except the executives. They're demons).

> ... How do companies who seek genuine dialogue with this community engage?"

They don't. Companies are irredeemably evil and seek only to damage the "community". Anything they say that looks like an attempt at "dialogue" is a lie (everything they say is a lie. Even when it was true before they said it).

What is the actual uproar about?

[Dcnjoe60]

It seems that most of the rants on this story are with regard to PepsiCo being paid to post on the blog. Does that mean there would not be any of this uproar if they blogged for free? Of course this assumes the other bloggers aren't paid, either. Because if they are, then who is to protect us from their paid agenda?

However, if one looks at the original question posed: "How do companies who seek genuine dialogue with this community engage?" then it seems somewhat hypocritical to suggest that the only way professional researches who work for a corporation should only be allowed to publish papers into the scientific community, when they already reach that audience and not the general public. And besides, why should this standard only apply to corporate researchers? Government researchers and those in colleges and universities also have a lot at stake in pushing their own agendas.

I guess what is really at stake here is whether or not this blog site is for the general public or limited to the scientific community. If the latter, aren't scientists and researchers able to discern between what is propaganda or not in their field? And if it is for the scientific community, wouldn't a simple disclosure of the work relationship suffice, like it does in presenting research papers?

On the other hand, if the site is for the general population to obtain information, then why is it alright for /. for instance, to have professionals in their field to submit stories or comment on stories related to their field. Aren't these posters also tied to some corporation, government or university?

Of course is sites like ./ or Scieneblogs only allowed non-professionals to post and comment, then they really wouldn't be too useful, would they? Who would use WebMD if the only sources were not from the professional medical community?

It seems that either the issue is about paid renumeration for content or the content itself. If the purpose of the blog (or even /.) is to allow the free (as in beer) discussion of ideas, then the content should be allowed regardless of renumeration or not. If on the other hand, the concern is that content may be tainted by the contributors ties to industry (or government, etc.) then why just single out content from industry and not other tainted sources. Of course, if all of those tainted sources were screened out, then where would the news and information on such sites actually come from?

It's is kind of funny that people at Scienceblog resigned over this, based on tainted content. I guess their readers and posters aren't sophisticated enough to discriminate between real science and fluff. /.ers on the other hand seem much more capable of picking apart a scientific article, pointing out insufficiencies and down right falsehoods -- and I'm pretty sure to say that we (/.ers) aren't all professionals.

Maybe, some of the responses to this article are correct. If you work for industry, government or educational institutions, you should only rely on officially publishing research to get your message out. Of course, they would then have to ignore who is funding the research in the first place as that might lend bias to author's paper.

In the end, I am glad that /. allows the free dissemination of information without censoring the source, thus allowing the community to accept or reject the information presented.

Re:What is the actual uproar about?

[Burpmaster]

It seems that most of the rants on this story are with regard to PepsiCo being paid to post on the blog.

PepsiCo was paying ScienceBlogs.com to be able to post their blog there, not the other way around. Now does the uproar make sense to you?

Re:What is the actual uproar about?

[Dcnjoe60]

And that differs from all of those ads paying ScienceBlogs to be present on the site? If a blog is posted by PepsiCo and identified as such, what different does it make. Plus, reading the different objections on ScienceBlogs was not about who was paying, but rather, PepsiCo, paying or not would use the blog for propaganda. Furthermore, the concern was that anybody who's employment was from PepsiCo or some other corporation should not be allowed because of the same potential for bias and propaganda (ie who would say something against their employer?). However, that argument is hollow as all scientists are employed by somebody, either industry, universities or the government. If we can't trust the blog from those in industry, then how can we trust those at universities, since they depend on swaying opinion to receive grants or the government who needs to control opionon for .

If I am a univeristy researcher researching alternative energy, how unbiased will my blog be towards fossil fuels? More importantly, how the reading public know whether what I am saying is unbiased or not? Or, if I am a university researcher researching food additives, but lo and behold, the research is funded by the food industry, how is that not any more tainted? Could I be trusted to not bite the hand that feeds me? And again, what assurance would the public have reading the blog have?

Would all of this not be solved by PepsiCo's blog stating that the content is paid for by Pepsico, so the reader could then make their own decision as to the reliability? In such a case, would that not be more open than the university researcher relying on grants from entities unknown to the reader? Or even the government itself?

In the end, though, the red flag went up because PepsiCo was doing this, without the deeper analysis of what protects the reader from the exact same biases in the other bloggers.

So the issue remains, if the blog is about dissemination of ideas, then should all sources be on equal footing? Or is it just about disseminating ideas approved by Scienceblogs (and if so, then why is it an issue as to whether they are paid for that dissemination or not?

Re:What is the actual uproar about?

[Burpmaster]

Please read the first paragraph of Wikipedia's article on ScienceBlogs. It's an invite only merit-based blog network. The whole point is to host only blogs that are good science. If PepsiCo paid money to bypass the normal selection criteria and post bad science, then that's bribery plain and simple. I shouldn't have to explain why that's bad.

Re:What is the actual uproar about?

[Dcnjoe60]

Where did anybody say that PepsiCo paid money to "bypass the normal selection criteria and post bad science?" Those would be strong accusations and hopefully you could prove them. From your own wikipedia reference, it mentions that many of the bloggers work in industry. Why is it okay for one industry to be on the site, but not another? The Wikipedia entry says how there isn't supposed to be editorial control, but that seems false, given allowing only certain industries and excluding others seems to be the ultimate in editorial control.

Now, if you have documentation as to PepsiCo bribing anyone at ScienceBlogs then I and many others would like to see it, because even if the so called bribe was refused after it was disclosed, it brings into question anything posted on the site as ScienceBlogs would have zero credibility. So, please, instead of just making unsupported accusations that even those actually involved with ScienceBlogs have not made, show the evidence you have to show how corrupt ScienceBlogs actually is.

Re:What is the actual uproar about?

[Burpmaster]

Where did anybody say that PepsiCo paid money to "bypass the normal selection criteria and post bad science?"

In the slashdot summary:

[...] and many more have voiced concerns over parent company Seed's decision to include a paid blog under the nutrition category from PepsiCo.

In the first linked article, multiple times -- here's one:

They aren't going to be doing any scienceblogging — this is straight-up commercial propaganda.

In the very first reply to this story:

Translation: "Damn, how do we get away with this next time? Do you know how much money Pepsi was giving us for selling out your reputations? [...]"

In my first reply to you:

PepsiCo was paying ScienceBlogs.com to be able to post their blog there

And just about every comment in this discussion that's critical of ScienceBlogs.com. How did you miss the point so many times?

Why is it okay for one industry to be on the site, but not another?

That's a strawman. I'm saying it's OK for any industry to be there as long as they meet the standards and aren't paying to get in. PepsiCo was paying to get in. Are you seriously trying to tell me that PepsiCo would have been accepted on their own merit but just wanted to get rid of excess money?

Now, if you have documentation as to PepsiCo bribing anyone at ScienceBlogs then I and many others would like to see it

Citation 1
Citation 2
NOTE: You should have seen these by now...

because even if the so called bribe was refused after it was disclosed, it brings into question anything posted on the site as ScienceBlogs would have zero credibility.

Wow, a momentary glimmer of understanding the issue. Hold on to that, and don't let go...

White Paper ads

[Mandrel]

"How do companies who seek genuine dialogue with this community engage?"

Many sites publish such material as a "white paper", and display links to it like any other ad. Ad-blockers don't often match on these.

Re:Asinine, how corporate forces shape thinking

[geohump]

Parent's comment is spot on. Please, (if you are so inclined), take a gander at the book "Fat land : how Americans became the fattest people in the world" by Greg Critser.

This book details exactly how the USA's food industries stopped being mainly suppliers of food, but instead learned to market by "addiction stimulation profiles", focusing on how to get people to eat not just more, but much much more. And in the process added chemically prepared materials to the food to enhance those addictive properties and lower costs by replacing nutritious content with junk or waste products.

In my 30+ years of experience in the American High Tech and Finance businesses, I have seen what happens to personal morals and integrity: For most employees who design, or develop products any comments about treating the customer fairly, or "but thats not right" are met with silence, or outright derision. Socially aware employees learn quickly that such statements are career enders and never make them.

In finance and mass market software application companies employees who make such statements, especially more than once, are taken note of and never promoted into management positions that have input on company policy or decision making. Please note that there are many first/second level "management" positions which are simply group leader positions and have no influence on company direction. Employees with good people skills and personal integrity will often be used in these positions because they are respected and liked by their peers but are never promoted beyond those levels. Their careers have dead ended because they have not shown the proper attitude about how to treat/exploit the masses for the benefit of the company.

In companies where scientists are the product developers, like food companies or chemical companies, it is harder to "retrain the employee's thinking" because of the academic emphasis on scientific integrity. Phd's are much harder to redirect into the "proper way of thinking". In these companies the censorship is initially subtle but over time, for a specific employee, can actually become directly confrontational. "Do this or its your job", eg - you will be fired. Note all such companies have employees sign aggressively proprietary NDA's to prevent whistleblowing, (as well as leaking competitive information of course :) )

Over time the end result is that everyone in upper management has the same attitude and the only constraints or requirements on thinking are "Will this make more money for the company?" and "if this is illegal, can we get away with it?".

I'm sure there are exceptions to the above generalizations, especially in other industries. But we should all be aware of the tendency of businesses to this acquire and follow these characteristics. As mentioned in the parent, the Top executives from the largest tobacco companies in the world were willing to go in front of congress, under oath and blatantly lie right to their faces. Further, they had been so completely aware of the actual facts of tobacco's harmful attributes that they made sure that all paper trails, all data that was streamed upward in the company, never ever contained any such claims. The internal social/corporate pressure within each organization was so complete and so well thought out in advance that the entire plan to suppress all such information internally was done completely by word of mouth, off the record, never written down, No incriminating documents at all.

As an interesting corollary, look up the rate of arrests for cocaine use/sale in Silicon Valley and the Massachusetts 128 tech belt and plot those over time and on the same graph, plot the High Tech industry booms and busts. There will be an interesting correspondence. I leave it to the reader to decide what, if anything, it means.

For an excellent dramatized story about this, see the movie "The Insider" with Russel Crowe about a reluctant whistleblower in the tobacco industry, This movie also shows how pernicious business influences are and how the famed investigative TV Show "60 minutes" was stopped dead in its tracks just on the eve of a tremendous expose on the industry.

Re:Lies. All lies.

[afabbro]

> "How do we empower top scientists working in industry to lead science-minded > positive change within their organizations?

You don't. There are no top scientists working in industry. Anyone working in industry who is not a downtrodden oppressed worker is by definition a despicable tool of the esploiters. (except the executives. They're demons).

I like this new word "esploiters". I guess an "esploiter" is a Spanish tyrant. So what I take away from your post is that we need Zorro again. Awesome. I have my father's hate, which needs reblocking...

Pot, Kettle.. black?

[synthesizerpatel]

Unless every writer on the site does it for free with absolutely no compensation for their effort -- then they too are advertising -- 'themselves'.

Granted the pepsiblog would probably have been terrible, but it's just another form of advertising.. But before you get all high and mighty, consider National Geographic, which regularly has _TERRIBLE_ borderline scam advertisements (Amish fake-fireplace, $2 bills for $10 + 5/s&h..) they still have great content that is basically subsidized by the worst elements of marketing.

It's easy to get all pissed off at someone for wanting to cash in a little bit, but if it means the difference between them providing a service, or providing no service.. there's not a lot of ways it can go unless they start charging YOU for reading their content.

Re:Pot, Kettle.. black?

[Scroatzilla]

I think this argument, which is relatively cogent, boils down to "funding has to come from somewhere," and that makes some sense. I think what this represents, though, is the intersection between ethics and capitalism. A company like Pepsi, perhaps indirectly, gains editorial clout by contributing cash to the site.

Therefore, it becomes a strong possibility that, even if the "Pepsi Blog" were to be scientifically accurate, independent blog articles on the site that tout the harmful effects of PepsiCo's products on the human body are unlikely to gain their due attention-- or worse, might be censored. After all, PepsiCo has a major interest in keeping the bar to gaining public awareness of issues that conflict with their profit interest high.

I have recently begun a quest for better health after suffering from stomach pain and being overweight. I was amazed at how ignorant I was even in the simple area of knowing what a proper "portion" of food is. The problem is that large junk food brands have the ability to flood us with imagery of how great their stuff tastes, on a scale that is quite disproportionate to what is actually nutritionally healthy to help maintain proper body weight.

At the end of the day, the growth of PepsiCo and other junk food companies rests on the notion of our gluttony; how they can convince us to consume more and more of their products. This is in direct conflict with what is healthy for the human body. Without an equal awareness of what an actual human diet should consist of, it feels unethical that PepsiCo would be in a position to further suppress information that could benefit many people.

Re: That question at the end

[Vintermann]

False equivalence here: PepsiCo are not so ridiculously dependent on killing people as the tobacco industry, or even the alcohol industry is.

Tobacco companies would lose virtually 100% of their business if all harmful use of their product stopped tomorrow.

Alcohol companies would lose maybe 80%.

How much would general food producers (Pepsico, Kraft, Nestlé) lose? I don't know, but not nearly as much.

Shake up might be good

[Anonymous Coward]

"ScienceBlogs" as a title was a huge lie. Should have been "IdeologyBlogs" or "Blogs By People Who Never Leave Their Fucking Labs To See How Human Society and The Economy Actually Operate". A lot of holier-than-thou ivory tower stuff spewing, really, quite laughable pontifications.

Half the blogs were immature people venting their political spleens lacking factual backup as much as any idiot rant on some religious site. It's a pretty common phenomena- people who reject religion latch on to some political ideology and apply exactly ZERO skepticism to anything on that front. And if you voiced a concern that, you know, maybe this behavior doesn't really advance the acceptance of science, they trot out their little phrases like "concern troll" or whatever. An extremely selfish and insular place. There's some good blogs, but there's some really awful, disgusting people there, and the comments sections are just cesspits of hatemongering by their sycophants.

Remember Scientific American

[Anonymous Coward]

Look at what happened to the once quality publication known as Scientific American. Now it is but a shadow of its former self, having sold out the principles of true scholarship to the lackluster ideals of the popular market.

Re:Remember Scientific American

[Anonymous Coward]

From one of the articles:

"... their [Pepsico] chief scientist worked at the Mayo Clinic and serves on the Board of Governors of the New York Academy of Sciences. (PepsiCo is the same place that makes Tropicana and Quaker Oatmeal.)"

Notice the attempt at providing legitimacy to Pepsico by offering this distinguished resume. Note also the allusion to wholesome foods such as oatmeal and orange juice which attempts to counterbalance the major "junk" offerings of the company.

In my local supermarket can be found Quaker Oatmeal -- right next to the generic oatmeal brand which sells for less than half the price. Is there something magical about the smiling quaker on the package that makes the Quaker brand special? Maybe the Pepsico scientists could tell us.

It is a logical fallacy to believe that an association with the Mayo Clinic or the NYAS will of necessity obviate any zealousness to the cause of the present corporate master.

Re:Remember Scientific American

[CptNerd]

From one of the articles:

"... their [Pepsico] chief scientist worked at the Mayo Clinic and serves on the Board of Governors of the New York Academy of Sciences. (PepsiCo is the same place that makes Tropicana and Quaker Oatmeal.)"

Notice the attempt at providing legitimacy to Pepsico by offering this distinguished resume. Note also the allusion to wholesome foods such as oatmeal and orange juice which attempts to counterbalance the major "junk" offerings of the company.

In fact, this association with a Pepsi scientist now invalidates any scientific opinion that comes from the Mayo Clinic or from the New York Academy of Sciences, because both organizations are now tainted by corporate money. This is the defining principal of "follow the money" that we all know is required when corporations are involved.

In my local supermarket can be found Quaker Oatmeal -- right next to the generic oatmeal brand which sells for less than half the price. Is there something magical about the smiling quaker on the package that makes the Quaker brand special? Maybe the Pepsico scientists could tell us.

So, by pricing the same product twice as much, this has obviously reduced the nutritional value of this product when it comes from Pepsico.

Re: That question at the end

[Quiet_Desperation]

a company that's probably killing more people than Philip Morris ever did?"

[citation needed]

Blast (Off) From The Past

[DynaSoar]

My father's cousin was food scientist for Armour. He developed some of the dehydrated items that went into astronauts' meals as far back as the Mercury program, things you find in sporting goods stores and catalogs today. Dehydrated ice cream and banana chips are two I recall eating close to 50 years ago. Of course there'd have been so such backlash back then, as anything NASA related was some of our national heroism. But if he were working today and this occurred I can only imagine him saying "What do you mean you don't want to eat pig anuses? If you don't like pig anuses, why do you eat so many hot dogs?" The people that are complaining about the science don't really care as much about the science as some of the other concerns like using up other countries' water reserves by running reverse osmosis plants to make water for soda or bottled water which they sell back at enormous profit. These social concerns are valid. Attacking the scientists who developed it might get a few people to question their professional ethics but won't do a damn thing to or about the corporation. The corporation, from root words that mean 'to make into a body', may be a body, but when it comes to saber rattling and commoners at the gates with torches, has no head, much less eyes with which to notice them.

Re:Blast (Off) From The Past

[DynaSoar]

Exactly how was this a troll? I was honest and dead serious:

My father's cousin was food scientist for Armour. He developed some of the dehydrated items that went into astronauts' meals as far back as the Mercury program, things you find in sporting goods stores and catalogs today. Dehydrated ice cream and banana chips are two I recall eating close to 50 years ago. Of course there'd have been so such backlash back then, as anything NASA related was some of our national heroism. But if he were working today and this occurred I can only imagine him saying "What do you mean you don't want to eat pig anuses? If you don't like pig anuses, why do you eat so many hot dogs?" The people that are complaining about the science don't really care as much about the science as some of the other concerns like using up other countries' water reserves by running reverse osmosis plants to make water for soda or bottled water which they sell back at enormous profit. These social concerns are valid. Attacking the scientists who developed it might get a few people to question their professional ethics but won't do a damn thing to or about the corporation. The corporation, from root words that mean 'to make into a body', may be a body, but when it comes to saber rattling and commoners at the gates with torches, has no head, much less eyes with which to notice them.

Re:Ass in nine ways

[TapeCutter]

"fagboyz"? - How old are you, 12-13?

Re: That question at the end

[bkeahl]

Taking money from Pepsi would hardly have been selling out. Pepsi certainly wanted to bring a dialog to the blog site, a dialog that works two ways.

The assumption is that the visitors to the site would not recognize the "Pepsi Blog" as, well, a Pepsi blog. I imagine Pepsi would get an earful from visitors to the site and the scientists might even get some good ideas from the visitors - something a good producer wants from the marketplace.

You don't think Pepsi would be thrilled to find a way to produce a marketable product that also appealed to the anti-fructose crowd?

God forbid a dialog between Pepsi researchers, other science types, and consumers might actually promote better understanding and new ideas.

Good on the science bloggers!

[Anonymous Coward]

... "How do we empower top scientists working in industry to lead science-minded positive change within their organizations? ... How do companies who seek genuine dialogue with this community engage?" ...

What an insanely naive statement! Corporate food scientist don't engage in community dialog, they spout self-serving, unscientific, carefully scripted and choreographed marketing statements intended to (are you ready) sell you their products. Nothing more; nothing less.

True science is unbiased and searches for the truth. Corporate food science is heavily biased and searches for dollars. The two are not related.

On the other hand corporate food science is benign compared to corporate pharmaceutical science. (Think tobacco science.)

Re: That question at the end

[Wheat]

Citation: The Kitavans: Wisdom from the Pacific Islands.

  * Refined sugar is non-existant on Kitava

  * Over 75% of Kitavans smoke cigarettes.

  * Kitavans are also unfamiliar with external cancers, with the exception of one possible case of breast cancer in an elderly woman.

Now this is just one example, and there are other factors than refined sugar which contribute to the prevelance of cancer and other degenerative diseases. But it does show you can have a smoking habit and a sugar free diet and be cancer free. Weston Price's research showed that where ever sugar and refined flour was introduced into the diet in people previously eating traditional diets, rates of cancer shot up 10 fold and 100 fold.

Re: That question at the end

[Daniel Dvorkin]

I don't think that's true. One can of Pepsi won't give you diabetes, true enough; it's also true that one cigarette won't give you lung cancer and one beer won't give you liver disease. But all of these products do cause immediate, measurable reactions in the body at the time of consumption, and it's the additive effect of these reactions over time that kills people. It's hard to argue that any of the businesses of producing them is more dependent on "harmful use" than any other -- for all of them, addicts are their best customers.

Pepsi need only publish one article on that blog

[Dracos]

Which is the one describing when real sugar replaces HFCS across the product line.

Re: That question at the end

[Anonymous Coward]

Dude, blogs posts are not citations.

Re:Heres an idea

[zippthorne]

Geocities were for the people with half-vast passion. If you had real passion back in the day, you paid for hosting. It wasn't that expensive unless you wanted a domain, and even they weren't that expensive for the truly passionate.

Geocities had basically the same model as Facebook, except that facebook requires you to use their page-generator, which is linked to their account database instead of letting you put whatever the hell you wanted to up and appending an annoying javascript widget for banner ads.

Quit making me nostalgic for freakin' Geocities of all things.

Spelling: Ockham's vs. Occam's

[HiThere]

I've run into the spelling Ockham's Razor several times recently, but when I ran into it during the 1950's and 1960's it was spelled Occam's Razor. Why should one choose one spelling over the other?

P.S.: I note that my spell checker likes Occam's and doesn't like Ockham's. It can't be a USian vs. British thing, because the places that I originally encountered it were SF books by British authors.

Diabetes is ok, for big pharma at least

[dragisha]

So, it's all for greater good. For club pals of PepsiCo/Monsanto/...

How Corporate Scientists Can Engage The Public

[Jane Q. Public]

It's really pretty simple: stop feeding people bullshit.

People don't trust corporations (or government for that matter) for a very simple reason: historically, they have fed the people loads of bullshit in order to further their own interests.

If they want to gain the trust of the people again, probably the single biggest and best thing they can do is toss out the bullshit, and talk straight.

Case in point: what is one of the big reasons Open Source has been so successful? Because there is little if any bullshit. Anybody can see what's inside, and there is no corporate hype. Now, I don't propose that corporations give away all their secrets... but they do need to stop lying to their customers. If they do that, it may take a few years, but they might gain back some of the trust they lost over the last century.

Re:How Corporate Scientists Can Engage The Public

[hkmwbz]

It's really pretty simple: stop feeding people bullshit.

Says the denialist kook who keeps mindlessly parroting AGW denialist propaganda...

Funny, Slashdot is more critical than actual site

[Dcnjoe60]

I just spent the better part of an hour reading the posts actually on Scienceblogs regarding all of this and with the exception of two other bloggers who quit blogging over this, most posters are thinking it was a "knee jerk" reaction and PepsiCo shouldn't have been pulled without first seeing what was actually being posted by them. There seemed to be a real desire by many on the site to here from PepsiCo's R&D scientist on various topics, but they now concede it is unlikely that something like that will every happen.

The most interesting question posed was why people weren't so upset about CoKe blogging on the site. Anyway, from the postings on the site, it seems to be much less scandalous than it does here on /.

Re:Asinine, how corporate forces shape thinking

[yuhong]

Now of course, none of this is even close to being PR 2.0 compliant. Most dates back to what I call "legacy" PR, which is flawed and obsolete nowadays. And I bet that many companies that does this are ran by MBAs that believe in shareholder value and the quarterly earnings game, another things that was flawed from the beginning and thus obsolete and not what I recommend.

Re:Asinine, how corporate forces shape thinking

[yuhong]

I have this Ars thread, BTW: http://arstechnica.com/civis/viewtopic.php?f=25&t=1113243

Re: That question at the end

[Vintermann]

Depends on what you mean with addicts are their best customers. Of course, if you compare one high-consumption customer with an average-consumption customer, then the first will always look better for the company.

But if you look at market segments, it's not so similar. The heavy user segment will not be all that profitable compared to the average user segment if we are talking about common foodstuff. For potato chips and cola, yes, but probably not for philadelphia cheese. And probably not as bad as for alcohol and tobacco.

Remember, Pepsico would just as happily sell you something sugarfee, or something genuinely healthier in other ways. Tobacco companies simply don't have that option. Alcohol companies arguably have it (alcohol-free beer, etc.) but they don't push it as an alternative, because network effects are far stronger for alcohol products than ordinary commodities.

That's funny - Here's my blog on fixing this

[Onebyland]

Here's an excerpt: Time to hit the Refresh button. Under its note of apology, ScienceBlogs asks these questions: “How do we empower top scientists working in industry to lead science-minded positive change within their organizations? Hey, Pepsi is Refreshing the World by funding great ideas so how about this one: An open forum between the bloggers on ScienceBlogs and the Pepsi scientists about this fiasco and other topics going into the future would be just fine. Yeah, let's talk about it together. If you truly want dialogue, Scienceblogs, then give it a chance. My blog is on: opensalon: Fifth Estate Best Practices and Democracy.

These are the stupidest 666ing questions I've read

[Anonymous Coward]

"How do we empower top scientists working in industry to lead science-minded positive change within their organizations?"

Such scientists shall be readily removed from industry. Not simply one employer, but industry and academia entirely.

"How do companies who seek genuine dialogue with this community engage?"

In the unlikely event a company seeks genuine dialogue with such a community comes into existence they will know to establish a sub-site on their existing web presence.

Deserves a Name

[mdm42]

It strikes me that this sort of thing needs a name. "BP Syndrome"? "The BP Response"? "PepsiCo got BP'd"?

Re:Spelling: Ockham's vs. Occam's

[hawkfish]

I've run into the spelling Ockham's Razor several times recently, but when I ran into it during the 1950's and 1960's it was spelled Occam's Razor. Why should one choose one spelling over the other?

P.S.: I note that my spell checker likes Occam's and doesn't like Ockham's. It can't be a USian vs. British thing, because the places that I originally encountered it were SF books by British authors.

Relax - spelling was invented after William's day, so I think the question is meaningless ;-)