Scientific American In Blog Removal Controversy

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Scientific American In Blog Removal Controversy

Posted by samzenpus on Sunday October 13, 2013 @10:15AM 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."

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New Season of Big Bang Theory by Austrian+Anarchy · 2013-10-13 10:17 · Score: 4, Insightful

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

--
Time Bomber the Book coming soon.
1. Re:New Season of Big Bang Theory by phantomfive · 2013-10-13 10:22 · Score: 4, Insightful
  
  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.
  
  --
  "First they came for the slanderers and i said nothing."
2. Re:New Season of Big Bang Theory by rubycodez · 2013-10-13 10:25 · Score: 5, Funny
  
  so Biology-online is mostly what we'd call an urban click-whore?
3. Re:New Season of Big Bang Theory by Anonymous Coward · 2013-10-13 10:33 · Score: 3, Insightful
  
  Well, it oughta be easy! Just because it's rampant doesn't mean it's acceptable! It's time we put a stop to this crap.
4. Re:New Season of Big Bang Theory by Mitchell314 · 2013-10-13 10:44 · Score: 4, Insightful
  
  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.
  
  --
  I read TFA and all I got was this lousy cookie
5. Re:New Season of Big Bang Theory by icebike · 2013-10-13 10:58 · Score: 5, Insightful
  
  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.
  
  --
  Sig Battery depleted. Reverting to safe mode.
6. Re:New Season of Big Bang Theory by fuzzyfuzzyfungus · 2013-10-13 11:20 · Score: 3, Insightful
  
  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.
  What I have to wonder is where the Scientific American flack was during the implicit "If your job involves some sort of communication Do Not make your employer look like an idiot on the internet" training that's sort of common knowledge at this point.
  
  Horrible people are a dime a dozen; but the ones that know how to dress themselves sometimes also learn to keep their mouths shut in situations where it would be trivial for what they said to come back and bite them somewhere painful.
7. Re:New Season of Big Bang Theory by tylikcat · 2013-10-13 11:24 · Score: 2
  
  Context is everything. What might be almost friendly on Reddit is a lot more problematic when coming from an editor of, yes, a blog, but a blog that at least pretends to be professional. And it becomes newsworthy when SciAm gets all "Ooo, can't talk about that!" Which really, is pretty lame and inconsistent with previous policy.
8. Re:New Season of Big Bang Theory by jc42 · 2013-10-13 11:43 · Score: 5, Insightful
  
  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.
  
  --
  Those who do study history are doomed to stand helplessly by while everyone else repeats it.
9. Re:New Season of Big Bang Theory by ancientt · 2013-10-13 11:57 · Score: 3, Interesting
  
  I thought it was just me. I enjoyed a subscription for quite a while, and was content to ignore the political and social commentary for quite a while. Eventually, however, I found it just more effort to focus on the actual science than it was worth. With plenty of other sources to turn to for actual science, finally I just decided not to renew.
  I miss the old days when I could hold the printed pages in my hand and learn something. I still get the data from other sources of course but it isn't quite the same. From time to time I have considered resubscribing in the hope of finding that missed feeling, but it sounds like I wouldn't be pleasantly surprised.
  
  --
  B) Eliminate all the stupid users. This is frowned upon by society.
10. Re:New Season of Big Bang Theory by icebike · 2013-10-13 12:08 · Score: 2, Interesting
  
  But there was no management involved. No one to complain to.
  Am-Si had no way to police the issue. No control at all.
  She got a nastygram from a website.
  She had her own platform to pontificate on the matter.
  Why take it to some third party site and cause an flame war to ensue there?
  Its like taking your family squabbles into Starbucks or starting a shouting match in a Restaurant.
  When they throw you out, how is any part of that THEIR fault?
  
  --
  Sig Battery depleted. Reverting to safe mode.
11. Re:New Season of Big Bang Theory by Anonymous Coward · 2013-10-13 12:25 · Score: 3, Insightful
  
  Because others reading the 3rd party site might find it of interrest that biology-online wants free work and when they do not get it they act like a little kid.
  Why did you post your thoughts here on slashdot instead of on your 'own platform'?
12. Re:New Season of Big Bang Theory by Concerned+Onlooker · 2013-10-13 12:48 · Score: 3
  
  Yep. It's how you act when no one is watching that determines your true character.
  
  --
  http://www.rootstrikers.org/
13. Re:New Season of Big Bang Theory by Arancaytar · 2013-10-13 13:19 · Score: 3, Insightful
  
  In a professional context?
  That guys' lucky he's not being sued. Referring to a colleague as a prostitute is sexual harassment.
14. Re:New Season of Big Bang Theory by forand · 2013-10-13 13:43 · 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.
15. Re:New Season of Big Bang Theory by Hartree · 2013-10-13 14:12 · Score: 2
  
  Worse than just the viewpoint changes, is the extent to which the articles are dumbed down.
  In the 70s, the articles tended to start off pretty general, but would go deeper into the subject as you read. It was some high quality writing and information.
  Now, it's gee whiz, multiverse, and other buzzwords. And that's the deepest you get.
16. Re:New Season of Big Bang Theory by OneAhead · 2013-10-13 14:53 · Score: 3, Insightful
  
  Not Scientific American's fault reality has a liberal bias. And yes, very astute of you, it's getting worse and worse; quite dramatically so indeed. Why o why, good lady, would you think that is happening? Why is the shore moving further and further away? Why can't it stop moving?
17. Re:New Season of Big Bang Theory by Bite+The+Pillow · 2013-10-13 17:34 · Score: 2
  
  I repeat, sciam was not the place for this given the alternative blog, which was in fact "in public". Readers who choose to follow the person can get the scoop, while those who prefer impersonal, objective science can read science.
  Did you mention this in a news post or interview mentioning your organization? Guessing no, because you would have been fired. That's the difference between the two blogs.
  Discussing openly and discussing on your employers news feed are wildly different.
Re:"according to emails which Dr Lee screengrabbed by Zero__Kelvin · 2013-10-13 10:28 · Score: 4, Insightful

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

--
Guns don't kill people; Physics kills people! - John Lithgow as Dick Solomon on Third Rock From The Sun
Surprised? Not Entirely by rueger · 2013-10-13 10:41 · Score: 4, Interesting

It seems that the whole scientific publication industry is undergoing big changes, and as a result a lot of sloppy and/or dishonest behaviour is popping up.

As reported at The Guardianand elsewhere:

Hundreds of open access journals, including those published by industry giants Sage, Elsevier and Wolters Kluwer, have accepted a fake scientific paper in a sting operation that reveals the "contours of an emerging wild west in academic publishing". The hoax, which was set up by John Bohannon, a science journalist at Harvard University, saw various versions of a bogus scientific paper being submitted to 304 open access journals worldwide over a period of 10 months.

--
Three Squirrels
1. Re:Surprised? Not Entirely by rueger · 2013-10-13 12:23 · Score: 2
  
  I actually heard a lengthy interview with the author the study last week, and I did not get that impression. Just anti "print anything that comes over the transom as long as they pay."
  
  --
  Three Squirrels
I agree with SciAm, sort of. by PhrostyMcByte · 2013-10-13 10:44 · Score: 2, Insightful

She was right to want to say something and discuss the issue, but stuff like that belongs somewhere that clearly labels it an op-ed piece. It was not an article about science.
SciAm was wrong for removing it without notifying her of why. Perhaps they should have just moved it to an op-ed section for her. Or maybe it's against their policy to comment about competing websites, though that'd be weird. They tweeted this:

Re blog inquiry: @sciam is a publication for discovering science. The post was not appropriate for this area & was therefore removed.
Everyone has moments, hopefully not many, where they are slighted professionally. Having an audience placed in front of you does not mean you get to neglect them and use it as a soapbox for your issues.
1. Re:I agree with SciAm, sort of. by Autumnmist · 2013-10-13 10:50 · 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:I agree with SciAm, sort of. by Anonymous Coward · 2013-10-13 11:07 · Score: 2, Insightful
  
  A quick look at Dr. Lee's other blog posts show a range of topics, some of which are directly science-related and others which talk more about the profession of science. So I call bullshit on the "not appropriate" comment. While it may be true that "every one has moments ... where they are slighted professionally", that does not make it acceptable, and one very effective way to combat such comments is to discuss the comments in a public way so others can see and learn what is and is not allowed. I would think, though, that calling a professional woman a whore because she refused to work without pay is so universally unacceptable that such discussion is not needed. And yet it apparently happened, and that fact further elucidates the difficulties that women face in being treated professionally.
3. Re:I agree with SciAm, sort of. by ArbitraryName · 2013-10-13 12:15 · Score: 2
  
  She was right to want to say something and discuss the issue, but stuff like that belongs somewhere that clearly labels it an op-ed piece.
  I'm not sure what would be a more appropriate than a "blog" to post an opinion. The whole point of a blog section is to separate the articles from more rigorous topics.
  
  It was not an article about science.
  It was an article about the "industry" of science, a topic that is often covered by in that forum.
4. Re:I agree with SciAm, sort of. by Daniel+Dvorkin · 2013-10-13 15:43 · Score: 3, Insightful
  
  Since the topic of her blog is women in science, this actually seems to be right on topic. Do you think the editor would have used a comparable term for a male blogger?
  Of course! Everyone knows there's no such thing as sexism any more (except for sexism directed against men, of course, thanks to the feminazis). This is just yet another example of a woman whining because she's being treated like one of the guys, and if she can't take the heat she should stay out of the kitchen! Or, er, get back into the kitchen. Whatever.
  So I've learned by reading the Slashdot comments every time a "women in ___" story comes up, anyway.
  
  --
  The correlation between ignorance of statistics and using "correlation is not causation" as an argument is close to 1.
WTF... by MouseTheLuckyDog · 2013-10-13 10:56 · Score: 4, Insightful

is an urban scientist?
Re:"according to emails which Dr Lee screengrabbed by interkin3tic · 2013-10-13 11:06 · Score: 5, Insightful

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).
Talk about sexism... by Rolpa · 2013-10-13 11:17 · Score: 3, Insightful

I think this is a little more outrageous than a joke about big dongles, don't you think? ;)
1. Re:Talk about sexism... by Rolpa · 2013-10-13 11:54 · 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?
Explanation from Sci Am's Editor in Chief by Schnoodledorfer · 2013-10-13 12:04 · 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)
1. Re:Explanation from Sci Am's Editor in Chief by Anonymous Coward · 2013-10-13 12:44 · Score: 2, Insightful
  
  I find the SciAm editor's explanation lame and unsatisfactory.
  Her tweet expressed this: "At Scientific American, we don't allow our bloggers to air personal grievances."
  Her subsequent explanation expressed this: "As a women scientist, I am personally concerned with the type of issues that Dr. Lee raised; however, we simply did not have time to investigate them when she posted her allegations."
  Note that the two are completely different (and I will give her credit for this point, that she was aware there was a big difference).
  Now, assuming her second explanation was accurate, what did the editor do when she found out about the allegations? One would think that she would have immediately recognized this as serious situation, the type of thing that she was hired to handle. She should then immediately
  1) Email Dr. Lee and attempt to reach her by phone, and ask her to confirm/provide details about the allegations made in the blog post
  2) Email the Biology-online editor and attempt to reach him by phone, and ask whether he in fact sent the email in question
  Had the answer to point #2 been "yes", then Dr. Lee's blog post should have remained intact, and the next issue would be, what to do about SciAm's now troubled relationship with Biology-online.
  Apparently the editor-in-chief did none of those things. After all, it was "Friday before a long weekend." Everyone has things to do... places to go... people to meet.
"Private matter"? by Beryllium+Sphere(tm) · 2013-10-13 12:04 · Score: 4, Insightful

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 by AK+Marc · 2013-10-13 12:14 · Score: 4, Insightful

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".

--
Learn to love Alaska
Re:my vote by ArbitraryName · 2013-10-13 12:21 · Score: 3, Insightful

Which is why you're both posting anonymously on slashdot.
Two stories? by rabtech · 2013-10-13 13:35 · Score: 4, Interesting

Why is SciAm claiming the post was off-topic (clearly a bullshit excuse given other bloggers posts) then claiming it was due to legal reasons?
Oh and blaming not telling the author on poor cell phone reception... Right. Someone can click the delete button but can't be bothered to send an email?
It's just lies and more lies, a non-apology, and bullshit. I don't buy it for a second.
My bet: someone at biology online emailed SciAm to complain and SciAm was more than happy to censor Dr Lee. Now that they've been caught, they are furiously trying to backpedal and pretend it's all just a big misunderstanding.
I'm canceling my subscription, I don't want any part of such a two-faced crappy organization.

--
Natural != (nontoxic || beneficial)
I probably would have taken down the response too by russotto · 2013-10-13 13:55 · Score: 2, Insightful

If I were Scientific American, the last thing in the world I'd want to be associated with is this "ofek@biology-online.org" loser. Seriously, unless you're in law enforcement or the sex trade, you probably shouldn't be calling anyone a whore in your professional capacity.
But her response was combative, contained profanity, and implied (if unlikely) threats of violence. If I were a stodgy magazine like SciAm, I wouldn't want to be associated with that either.
Not innocent-- but they did apologize by Anonymous Coward · 2013-10-13 15:01 · 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/
Re:"according to emails which Dr Lee screengrabbed by ArbitraryName · 2013-10-13 16:17 · Score: 2

Non-native speakers often confuse homophones like sheer and shear. Of course hypocritical idiots who incorrectly criticize others' grammar do as well, so I guess if you insist you're a native English speaker...

Zero for two, little guy. English is just not your strong suit no matter how desperately you want it to be. I recommend you refrain from weighing in on someone else's word usage in the future because this thread turned out really embarrassingly for you.
blog recruiter fired. by hooiberg · 2013-10-13 20:32 · Score: 5, Informative

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