Slashdot Mirror
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."
So real science is just like we see it on TV? Nice to know.
Time Bomber the Book coming soon.
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
As reported at The Guardianand elsewhere:
Three Squirrels
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'
is an urban scientist?
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).
I think this is a little more outrageous than a joke about big dongles, don't you think? ;)
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)
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?
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
Which is why you're both posting anonymously on slashdot.
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)
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/
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.
Well, the bastard has been fired: http://www.biology-online.org/biology-forum/about34647.html Good riddance.