Scientific American In Blog Removal Controversy

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."

Comments

New Season of Big Bang Theory

[Austrian Anarchy]

So real science is just like we see it on TV? Nice to know.

Re:New Season of Big Bang Theory

[phantomfive]

Although Biology-online is a nice sounding name, it doesn't look like much but another attempt to make money off clicks, not being a particularly great source of information or biology, but having stuff people want to click on anyway.

Much like Wired.

Re:New Season of Big Bang Theory

[Mitchell314]

There was no anonymity or general audience in the original - and supposedly professional - channel of communication between the scientist and the latter's website representative. Just because something happens over the internet as opposed to IRL doesn't magically make it alright or unimportant.

Re:New Season of Big Bang Theory

[icebike]

In any case, it's kind of hard to get worked up about someone insulting someone else on the internet.

Agreed.
But it wasn't even an internet insult. The insult happened in Email, presumably as private as the NSA will allow it to be.
No one knew about it besides the recipient and someone claiming to represent the blog site.

Reprehensible as it was, It would have ended there, and probably should have.
Her reputation was not enhanced by dragging it into the public.

She had her own blog, The Urban Scientist, on which she could have answered this if she really
felt the need to take a private matter public, but to drag that into someone else's forum was
inexcusable.

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

Re:New Season of Big Bang Theory

[jc42]

Reprehensible as it was, It would have ended there, and probably should have. Her reputation was not enhanced by dragging it into the public.

Maybe not, but airing things out in public can have other benefits. I've on many occasions responded to such harassment by mentioning it to others working for the same organization, and invariably I get replies describing similar treatment that others have received from the same perp(s). I've even seen a few cases where, after a bit of open discussion of the topic, the aggressor was the one fired. This hasn't happened with me, but I'm pretty sure I've triggered at least a few "reorgs" by talking openly about how the org was being run. This can be to most of the workers' (and the org's) benefit in the long run.

Mistreating someone and then trying to intimidate them into silence is rarely in the organization's best interests. It usually means that the upper management is being kept ignorant of their organization's internal problems, and it doesn't take a managerial genius to understand the problems that this can lead to.

In any case, I seriously doubt that it would have ended there. In my experience, people who get away with such things generally conclude that their behavior is accepted, and they continue to treat others the same way.

Re:"according to emails which Dr Lee screengrabbed

[Zero__Kelvin]

Why wouldn't it count as evidence? Perhaps the word you were looking for (two actually) is incontrovertible proof?

WTF...

[MouseTheLuckyDog]

is an urban scientist?

Re:"according to emails which Dr Lee screengrabbed

[interkin3tic]

Scientific publishing operates more on trust than most people realize, and more than the legal system does. If I say I got this band on a western blot, and submit it to Science (the journal), they run routine checks to make sure I haven't done any very dumb editing like in MS paint. They send it to reviewers who will flag it if there's anything glaringly obvious technically. If the claims are extraordinary, they'll require more proof. But at the end of the day, I'm sending them things which could fairly easily be faked.

Why is it this way? Two reasons, one it's impossible to be absolutely sure of anything (as zero kelvin pointed out) and two, because scientists are generally not in it to lie to other people.

So unless there's a good motive for the person to lie, like an undisclosed financial incentive, why don't we assume scientists are being honest? Especially given that no one is disputing it and SciAm gave a politician's apology (or apologized without apologizing).

"Private matter"?

[Beryllium Sphere(tm)]

There's no reason to cover for an abusive person.

It's not a good bet that it was private in any sense. If that's what they said to her directly, what were they saying behind her back?

Re: "according to emails which Dr Lee screengrabbe

[AK Marc]

Nearly everything presented as "evidence" in court is easily faked. Witnesses are bought, knives look like murder weapons, unless everyone on the jury is a medical examiner and can see the wounds don't match the knife type. Evidence is evidence, even if not "strong" or "incontrovertible".