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.

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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 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
4. 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.
5. 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.
6. 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.
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.

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Three Squirrels
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/

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--- "Many of the truths we cling to depend greatly on our own point of view." ~ Ben Kenobi, 'Return of the Jedi'
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).
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)
"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".

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Learn to love Alaska
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.

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Natural != (nontoxic || beneficial)
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/
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.