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Scientific American In Blog Removal Controversy

Posted by samzenpus on from the take-a-deep-breath dept.

Lasrick writes "Danielle N. Lee, Ph.D, the Urban Scientist blogger at Scientific American, has been mistreated twice: once by the blog editor at biology-online.org and now by SciAm itself. The blog editor asked Dr. Lee to contribute a blog post at Biology-Online, and when she declined (presumably for lack of monetary compensation), the blog editor asked her whether she was 'an urban scientist or an urban whore.' Then, SciAm deleted her blog post, in which she wrote about the incident."

6 of 254 comments (clear)

  1. Re:I agree with SciAm, sort of. by Autumnmist · · Score: 5, Informative

    Except the whole point is that many science bloggers at SciAm have posted "non-scientific" posts as well, so the "this is not about discovering science" excuse is BS.

    http://blogs.scientificamerican.com/context-and-variation/2013/10/12/this-is-not-a-post-about-discovering-science/

    --
    --- "Many of the truths we cling to depend greatly on our own point of view." ~ Ben Kenobi, 'Return of the Jedi'
  2. Re:Talk about sexism... by Rolpa · · Score: 2, Informative

    97% of the time, the term is applied to women. Do you think they would have expressed themselves in such a manner if she were a man?

  3. Explanation from Sci Am's Editor in Chief by Schnoodledorfer · · Score: 4, Informative

    This was recently posted on Sci Am's website: A Message from Mariette DiChristina, Editor in Chief. It looks like a pretty reasonable explanation to me. The excuse is that it happened on a three-day weekend (Monday is Columbus Day in the USA) so they were short staffed. They were worried that if the accusation isn't correct, they could be sued, so they want to check the accuracy of the blog first. They acknowledge that they should have done better and claim that they will develop procedures for the future.

    --
    Knowledge is the small part of ignorance that we arrange and classify. (Ambrose Bierce)
  4. Re:New Season of Big Bang Theory by forand · · Score: 5, Informative

    It should also be noted that the blog with the offensive editor is a business partner of Sci-AM so they are not an innocent bystander. This blog has a screen shot of Sci-AM's "Partner Network" before it was edited. Furthermore, her Sci-AM blog IS her blog. As others have pointed out, Sci-AM is being inconsistent at best in their actions.

  5. Not innocent-- but they did apologize by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 4, Informative

    Sci-Am is not the platform to settle scores for private insults. Taking it there merely damages Sci-AM,
    an innocent bystander.

    The site in question was a Scientific American partner. They were not an "innocent bystander."

    For what it's worth, Scientific American has apologized.
    http://jezebel.com/sciam-apologizes-for-deleting-bloggers-post-on-being-c-1444576536

    And, looking at the link in the original article, biology online is no longer listed as a partner site.
    It's not here: http://www.scientificamerican.com/partners/
    although it was there as of October 4: http://www.scientificamerican.com/partners/

  6. blog recruiter fired. by hooiberg · · Score: 5, Informative

    Well, the bastard has been fired: http://www.biology-online.org/biology-forum/about34647.html Good riddance.