ScienceBlogs' Pepsigate

[realisticphish]

I'm sure everyone here reads at least one blog hosted on Science Blogs. So I'm also sure most people are aware of the current shitstorm going on over the addition of a Pepsi-sponsored nutrition blog to the line-up. This isn't their first sponsored blog, but AFAIK it's the first blog that is being written directly by corporate employees.

My emotions went back and forth on this. My kneejerk reaction was revulsion. A respectable platform of science allowing Pepsi to run a fucking NUTRITION blog? And not just allowing, but being paid to do so.

I understand that the site is a business. Once I cooled down a little bit, I decided that it wasn't so much the idea of having a corporate platform there that got to me (though it's still sickening, frankly). It's the principle of the thing, to coin a phrase. You allow direct corporate input on content, and your credibility collapses. Sb has always had a hands-off approach to their bloggers, but that doesn't matter in terms of external opinion.

Sb is backpedaling like a motherfucker at the moment. They are desperately changing banners and column text trying to make people happy. They are changing things so that this blog is clearly marked as "advertisal" or something like that. But I think they're screwed here. They dropped this bombshell like they would any other blog, and it's biting them in the ass. If they had announced this ahead of time, getting the input from bloggers and posters, things might have gone differently.

I'll wait and see what happens, but I'm not confident.

[trotsky]

1. It's pretty nuts.

I read PZ and Orac frequently, and a couple of others occasionally. But I wish I could say I was surprised by this development. It's the nature of the beast these days - we thought ads to support free TV and cheap newspapers were bad, just wait til we see how far this goes.

[salvorhardin]

2. Carl Zimmer has a list of bloggers who've left Scienceblogs and where to find them now

Here's the link: http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/loom/2010/07/07/oh-pepsi-what-hath-thou-wrought

It'll be interesting to see what actually gets posted at Pepsi's new Food Frontiers blog but I do think this undermines the credibility of Scienceblogs.

[charlie]

4. If they just import their original Food Frontiers blog

Scienceblogs will take a big credibility hit.

http://foodfrontiers.pepsicoblogs.com

It's PR flackery, "science-y", like those Health Minutes on news channels are science of a sort. Every post is a setup for Pepsico to tout its concern, initiative, and good-citizen partnerships for better nutrition.

[charlie]

3. "Food Frontiers"

*snerk*

Dispatches from the cutting edge of sugar water and corn meal 'n grease. They'll never get past the first hurdle, which would be convincing anyone their expertise lies in what could be properly be called food.

Maybe they can win with good old American schwag. FUNYUN FRIDAYS, with 2-for-1 coupons and Chester Cheetos' Scienceblog Snacker of the Week prizes. It's already worked on Adam Bly.

Carl Zimmer is tracking the bloggers who are leaving:

http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/loom/2010/07/07/oh-pepsi-what-hath-thou-wrought/

[salvorhardin]

5. Fantastic news! Pepsi is out!

Everyone here probably reads Pharyngula but I'll post the link just in case.
http://scienceblogs.com/pharyngula/2010/07/pepsico_has_been_expelled.php

[realisticphish]

6. that's great news

now, they need to engage in a dialogue with their bloggers, and find a funding solution. I understand that ad revenue has sucked this year, and they really do need something; this just was the wrong thing to do, and most definitely the wrong manner to implement it.

[salvorhardin]

7. From what I understand it's not just ad revenue

Seed Magazine is doing poorly. That's based on hearsay though, so take it with a grain of salt.

Personally I'd pay to subscribe to Scienceblogs if it was affordable (say $12 a year). I don't read the vast majority of people there but the handful I do read are worth it.

[realisticphish]

8. right

i regularly read 4-5, and semi-regularly another 5 or 6

[salvorhardin]

9. Orac might leave too!?

The fallout from Pepsigate continues. Quite a few of the bloggers who left Sb say they're not going to return and now this shocker from Orac:

Actually, I haven’t decided yet what I’m going to do. I’m at TAM8, which is a good time to chill and think about things. I can say, though, that I’ve had more than a few people come up to me already with a huge WTF is ScienceBlogs doing? However, I may be one of the ones who goes.
http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/loom/2010/07/07/oh-pepsi-what-hath-thou-wrought/#comment-34213

That's from a comment on Carl Zimmer's blog: Comment from Carl Zimmer's blog. And this from Orac on his own site:

I can honestly say that, as I write this in my hotel room in Las Vegas, awake and unable to go back to sleep at 5 AM because of the three hour time change, I don't know myself, including my own case. Pepsigeddon happened at an odd time, and I'm at TAM8 right now, which means that I haven't been paying as close attention to what's been going on as I normally would have. Maybe this is a good thing, because I can wait and see how things shake out, free of obsessing over each little twist and turn in this fast-moving soap opera that's less than two days old. On the other hand, although Seed has taken some steps in the right direction, I'm not sure it's going to be enough. The damage to the brand is serious, and the good ship ScienceBlogs is listing heavily, all due to its captain deciding to have a smoke in the munitions storage area. Here's a hint for Adam Bly and Seed: When a story like this about you makes the newspapers, it's not a good thing for you, and it's not a good thing for your bloggers. Oh, sure, in the short term it'll probably boost traffic nicely, but that's not the kind of traffic boost I want.

Management also clearly doesn't get it, but some of us don't get it either. In fact, some flaming moron here among us didn't help matters by leaking Adam Bly's e-mail to us to the press yesterday. I must admit, I was fuming after I read his e-mail, but leaking it served no purpose other than to publicize our problems and betray a trust to the point where management will likely never trust us again. On the other hand, the e-mail made it clear that to say that Bly doesn't get it is akin to saying that Mike Adams doesn't get medicine, a massive understatement, and its being out there now allows me to do what I couldn't do before: comment on it. Seldom have I seen such a load of self-serving, self-righteous twaddle all built around incinerating a Burning Man-sized straw man argument (that we bloggers object to giving industry scientists "a seat at the table"). It's so epic that it deserves its own heapin' helpin' of not-so-Respectful Insolence if I had the time and motivation. Trust me, I never thought I'd say that about Bly.

Meanwhile someone whom I respect, David Colquhoun, is out and out telling me that I must dissociate myself from ScienceBlogs for the sake of my credibility. Maybe he's right, but I have a lot of history here, and I don't really want to leave. I've never made a rash decision over something like this before, and I don't intend to now, but damned if Bly isn't making it very hard not to. Even so, I'm going to wait at least until after I get back from Vegas next week before I make any decisions. Who knows? Maybe management will manage to extract its cephalic regions from its rectum by then.
http://scienceblogs.com/insolence/2010/07/farewell_good_math_bad_math.php

[realisticphish]

10. Yeah, RI is one of my regular reads

honestly, it means jack to me. I'll read Orac wherever he goes. The one to watch out for is PZ. If PZ leaves, on top of the other high-profile people...

[salvorhardin]

11. Yep. Same here.

I already read Orac at Science Based Medicine under his real name and I'll seek out Respectful Insolence and Mark Chu-Carroll's Good Math, Bad Math and all the others I read regularly wherever they may land.

I doubt PZ will go. He likes the money, but if enough other large name bloggers leave Sb then it'll command much less in advertising and thus PZ's paycheck will be hurt.

[realisticphish]

12. and, really

I don't think PZ gives a shit. He'll always be PZ, wherever he is. And I don't think his blog would suffer from "shill" accusations like a lot of the other anti-woo sites