ScienceBlogs trashes credibility: Leaked response from editor.
Outrage over the decision by ScienceBlogs to run a blog produced by Pepsi–see my post earlier today–continues to grow. Best-selling author Rebecca Skloot has now announced her resignation from the site; her Culture Dish will reappear elsewhere. And the Guardian has published a confidential letter from Adam Bly, Seed’s founder and CEO, in which he attempts to justify the decision to give Pepsi a blog.
Excerpts from Bly’s letter to his bloggers:
The bloggers who blog on ‘corporate blogs’ on SB are necessarily credentialed scientists (we make sure of that), in some cases highly credentialed scientists who have published extensively in peer-reviewed journals. The fact that they work at a profit-making company does not automatically disqualify their science in our mind…
Of course we recognize – and of course so does PepsiCo! – that they’ve made a lot of money selling soft drinks and chips. But they also recognize that their future will be troublesome and time-limited without addressing the real and connected issues of obesity and under-nutrition in the world…
For a guy who doesn’t work for Pepsi, or sit in on their corporate board meetings, Bly seems in an odd position to be vouching for Pepsi’s foresight and wisdom. Or maybe Bly does sit in on those meetings–in which case, let’s hope for a leak on that, so we can report it.
We could have a discussion, I suppose, about the quality of science produced by Pepsi’s scientists. One might guess that while some Pepsi research is published and defensible, other studies showing the ill effects of soft drinks might not actually reach the publication stage, or become public at all. Ya think?
Worse, the blog itself does not claim to be about science–it says flat out that the aim is to promote the company:
…we’ll hear from a wide range of experts on how the company is developing products rooted in rigorous, science-based nutrition standards to offer consumers more wholesome and enjoyable foods and beverages.
Yikes. If that isn’t corporate promotion, what is?
But hey, this isn’t about credibility, says Bly. This is about generating revenue to keep the site alive! Who could disagree with that?
But advertising is itself highly unpredictable, as the last year has shown the industry. And securing advertising around topics like physics and evolution is even more challenging as the dearth of ad pages in science magazines indicates.
So, selling ads and making money is hard. How long has this guy been in publishing? He’s just figuring this out?
And did I miss something above? Something about the “corporate bloggers” on ScienceBlogs. You mean there are others?
“We started experimenting with sponsored blogs a couple of years ago and decided to market long-term sponsorship contracts instead of sporadic advertising contracts,” Bly writes. Really. This is news. Which of the blogs on ScienceBlogs are sponsored blogs?
If the credibility of ScienceBlogs was in doubt this morning, it has vanished this afternoon.
- Paul Raeburn
July 7th, 2010 at 3:17 pm
Received the following note from Josh Rosenau, who told me it was fine to post it here. PR.
From: Josh Rosenau
Bly’s reference to other corporate bloggers presumably refers to
previous blogs sponsored by corporations, including blogs sponsored by
GE and by Shell. The difference is that those blogs were written by
independent bloggers, with established reputations. The blogs were
created at the behest of a corporation with a focus chosen by the
funder, but the corporate funder had no control over content, and the
content was not about the funder. This is different.
FWIW, I blog at Thoughts from Kansas, on ScienceBlogs.
July 7th, 2010 at 3:21 pm
There were a couple topical blogs in the past which were sponsored by corporations (one by Shell and one by GE), although the people writing for them were a mix of journalists and bloggers. As one Pharyngula commenter put it:
There’s now noise behind the scenes at SB that changes to the PepsiCo blog’s layout and labelling are being implemented. For me, and I suspect for some others who have packed up and left the site, it’s too little, too late.
July 7th, 2010 at 4:21 pm
Well, no. When the logo says “Shell+ Scienceblogs” and the bio says “This blog is sponsored by Shell” it is unlikely the funder had no control.
Invitrogen, L’Oreal, Dow Chemical and Schering-Plough blogs also were not going to publish anything against their companies.
My point was that this is not materially different than PR people at institutions like CERN, Howard Hughes Medical Institute (HHMI), the SETI Institute, the Weizmann Institute of Science and Brookhaven National Laboratory using Scienceblogs as ways to promote their stuff. It was just that, public relations.
So it seems like Pepsi is getting the brunt of this, or Scienceblogs writers just figured out this was happening.
July 7th, 2010 at 9:35 pm
If bloggers are looking for a change of venue, I’d be happy to discuss hosting their blogs on Science Friday’s web site.
http://www.sciencefriday.com
Ira
July 8th, 2010 at 10:23 am
Some (many? most?) of us didn’t know about the earlier corporate blogs because they were either before our time on ScienceBlogs, or not discussed when they launched. I knew nothing about them — if I had, I would have raised this red flag sooner.
And thanks for the offer, Ira! I’ll pass it along.
July 8th, 2010 at 10:39 am
The outstanding question on “Pepsigate” is this: Why wasn’t such a definitive stink raised before on corporate-sponsored blogs at ScienceBlogs?
Note that I’m not a ScienceBlogs writer, and only a casual reader of content appearing there. But based on Rebecca Skloot’s comment here (http://ksjtracker.mit.edu/2010/07/07/scienceblogs-trashes-credibility-leaked-response-from-editor/#comment-230876), the answer seems to be a mix of a) bloggers’ lack of institutional knowledge and 2) lack of transparency from Seed Media Group.
July 8th, 2010 at 11:09 am
Self-exiled SB’er Brian Switek (Laelaps) reports over at Carl Zimmer’s blog that SB is taking Food Frontiers down. Wonder if anyone can verify this?
( http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/loom/2010/07/07/oh-pepsi-what-hath-thou-wrought/#comment-34224 )
July 8th, 2010 at 11:13 am
Wow – nevermind!
http://scienceblogs.com/seed/2010/07/food_frontiers.php
July 10th, 2010 at 8:27 pm
My own $.02: From one perspective, I think that having reputable writers producing content for blogs sponsored by Shell or GE is just as bad — and maybe worse — than having Pepsi write its own. And from another … what’s the big deal, either way?
Assuming these companies are all fouling our planet with their greed and rapaciousness, screwing over people and despoiling the planet to make a buck, and trying their best to prevent the public from curtailing their excesses or holding them responsible … then who cares whether the authors are company employees or “independent” and “reputable” journalists? Either way, the blog is just marketing, a more sophisticated form of corporate branding than a traditional advert.
If anything, at least the Pepsi employees’ conflict of interest is obvious, bold-faced, front-and-center. And for anyone who wants to say that Shell has no influence on blogs it sponsors … well, pharmaceutical companies don’t have any influence on the clinical trials they sponsor, either. Ahem.
Of course, there’s another perspective here: these big companies aren’t going anywhere, and maybe engaging them in transparent dialogue — commenters, sharpen your keyboards! — and pressing for change is better than just taking your blog and going home. Unless, that is, you think the revolution is going to be led by Whole Foods dumpster-divers.
And how many of us journalists, so outraged at the SciBlogs Pepsi debacle, pay attention to where our own companies’ advertising money comes from — except, that is, to be glad that we’re getting any at all?
Not taking a side either way here … just expressing my own conflicting internal sentiments.
January 28th, 2012 at 11:26 am
I don’t necessarily agree that this looks bad for Bly it definately looks bad for ScienceBlogs, I agree with Brandon – corporate businesses should have no place in politcs or science journals, they are too corrupt and try to distort reality.