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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?"
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.
I'm a Programmer. That's one level above Software Engineer and one level below Engineer.
If you're not a rational actor, why should anyone bother reading your argument?
> "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).
Warning: this article may contain humor, sarcasm, parody, and perhaps even irony. Read at your own risk.
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.
"I may be synthetic, but I'm not stupid." -- Bishop 341-B
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.
http://rocknerd.co.uk
Which is the one describing when real sugar replaces HFCS across the product line.