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

[spirality]

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

Re:Translation

[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."

Re:Translation

[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.

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.

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

[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

[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

[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: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?

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.

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.