Scienceblog writers dismayed over new corporate Pepsi blog

Update 5: Pepsi has reportedly been removed from Scienceblogs.

Update 4: Scienceblogs announces changes on heels of Pepsi fiasco.

Update 3: I should add that in my correspondence with multiple sources, one thing comes through loud and clear: the writers at Sb care deeply about their vocation and their site. They sure don't do it for the money; most of them make far below minimum wage when the work is averaged out over time. They do it because these men and women are dedicated not just to science, but in giving science a much needed voice during a time when science and scientists are routinely marginalized or worse by anti science institutions and corporate dominated media. That's part of the reason some of them are so upset over this. But it'll be old news in a day or two, so please continue to visit Scienceblogs, it's the biggest collection of quality cutting edge science writing online.

Update 2: I've gotten ahold of a confidential, internal email sent to some science bloggers and posted it in its entirety below the main post. The sender, Adam, is presumably Adam Bly, the head honcho of Sb. I'm also told that science blogs may have been struggling financially for some time, which might help explain the Pepsi fiasco -- that's not confirmed and it's assuming that Pepsi is paying Sb for the privilege of posting, which I have not been able to confirm either.

Update: Scienceblogs editor Evan Lerner has released this statement to the Guardian UK:

As part of this partnership, 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. The focus will be on innovations in science, nutrition and health policy. In addition to learning more about the transformation of PepsiCo's product portfolio, we'll be seeing some of the innovative ways it is planning to reduce its use of energy, water and packaging.

Science blogs is a collections of science writers online. It's managed by Seed Media who also publish Seed Magazine. It was started a few years ago when blogs were still relatively new. Sb quickly grew to be a haven for some of the best science writing on the internet, and a smashing success in new media at least as far as visibility. They regularly add new science writers and feature links to some great stuff.

Sb's bloggers, or sciblings as they're known by those in the know, have been a daily stop for me since inception -- two of my best online science friends, PZ Myers and Ed Brayton, are founding members -- and the source or inspiration of probably half the material I've written on over the years. Many writers there have been kind enough to link my own articles, and act as on or off the record experts at the drop of a hat, sparing me more needless mistakes than I can count in the process. So I'm sad to note a kerfuffle of sorts has broken out over a new blog, sponsored and written by Pepsi-cola, reportedly about food and nutrition. The reaction among established writers is not universally negative, but it's pretty close and could get worse: 

Laelaps -- This is not the end of Laelaps - I will keep writing somewhere, and you can always check out my blog Dinosaur Tracking on the Smithsonian website - but if SEED insists on valuing corporate money over creativity, honesty, and integrity, then I will have no choice but to move elsewhere.

Living the Scientific Life -- It's taken me a few hours to cool off enough to write coherently and without using (too much) profanity after I learned that ScienceBlogs added a corporate PR "blog" about nutrition written by PepsiCo. I think I've learned all I care to know

Pharyngula -- There won't be a scrap of honest opinion expressed over there that isn't filtered and vetted by cautious editors before making it online, and it will all toe the Pepsi line. It's going to be boring. It's going to blur the line between blog content and advertising. It's going to be bloodless dull blogging that will diminish the Scienceblogs brand.

Jason Goldman -- I would strongly recommend that it be made clear on every post, in addition to in the profile space and on the about page in big bold red letters, that Food Frontiers is a sponsored, corporate blog. This is the lesson I took away from the LA Times debacle. Let is be unambiguously clear that this counts as advertisement, and is a corporate, sponsored blog.

PalMD -- So PepsiCo's PR flacks basically own a the center column content on one of our blogs. This is not only a fundamental conflict of interest, it's also deceptive. If PepsiCo is providing the content, it should, in my opinion, be clearly labelled as advertising. It could be argued that since it is clearly announced that the content is PepsiCo's, that transparency is maintained, but it's not. Readers of the other 70-odd blogs at Sb expect independent content in the center column. 

Several writers have told me they had no heads up this was coming. One or two speculated in their posts that perhaps the management at Seed didn't think it would be so controversial because a similar effort was launched with GE a while back (Whenever a new blog launches on Sb, I usually see introductions and promotions on the sites of the established writers, I haven't come across any such promos for the Pepsi blog outside of controversy). If that's the case, management misjudged this badly. Some science bloggers have packed up and left, others are on indefinite hiatus, a blog version of a strike. Still more are threatening to leave or go on strike, and I'm told the new blog is causing quite a headache behind the scenes for everyone. I hope to have more soon.

Confidential – For Internal Use Only

July 7, 2010

Dear ScienceBloggers,

Our mission at ScienceBlogs has always been to host and help spur the world's conversation about science. What started as an experiment with a dozen blogs has grown to include dozens more high-quality blogs, in three languages, reaching millions of readers in 60+ countries. As you know, we recently expanded the SB platform to include blogs from the world’s foremost research organizations like CERN and Howard Hughes Medical Institute and hope that this new area of our site will grow meaningfully over the coming years. We’ve started to partner with top science festivals like the USA Science & Engineering Festival and the World Science Festival to host their official blogs. We have also hosted blogs on SB from research-based companies like Shell, Dow, Schering-Plough, GE, Invitrogen, L’Oreal (in Germany), and now PepsiCo. I want to address the logic and strategy behind this.

ScienceBlogs has consistently maintained editorial excellence. We syndicate content to the New York Times, National Geographic, and are indexed by Google News. So respected is our platform that the US State Department recently published a post on 3.14. We should all be very proud of what we have achieved in four short years. We have ensured editorial excellence not by editing your posts or telling you what to write – a first principle unique to SB that we will never change – but by learning over four years how to create an environment that encourages your best. We believe that one vital aspect of this SB environment is its intentional diversity. You are all expert at different things, care passionately about other things, and come from different backgrounds and countries. We think this is a good thing and we think it help makes SB tick for our readers. We also think that you cannot have a real conversation about science and its place and role in society unless you pursue and protect this diversity. It’s why we believe that all serious voices in science should have a seat at the table (and we’ve been consistent about what’s serious and what’s fringe or worse).

We think the conversation should include scientists from academia and government; we also think it should include scientists from industry. Because industry is increasingly the interface between science and society. It is our hope that the Xeroxes and Bell Labs of the future will have a real presence on SB – that they will learn from our readers and we will learn from them. That they will break stories on SB and engage our readers in the issues that concern them. 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. And frankly, nor does it disqualify them in the eyes of the Nobel Prize Committee either.

Let me address PepsiCo in particular. 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. PepsiCo employs thousands of scientists working on these problems and they are led by some very serious scientists – eg. their chief scientist worked at the Mayo Clinic and serves on the Board of Governors of the New York Academy of Sciences. (PepsiCo is the same place that makes Tropicana and Quaker Oatmeal.)

We see from some of your initial comments that there is confusion about what “overseen by ScienceBlogs editors” means. We screwed up here and have already corrected it on the blog and elucidated our policy on 3.14. It now reads: “This blog is sponsored by PepsiCo. All editorial content is written by PepsiCo’s scientists or scientists invited by PepsiCo and/or ScienceBlogs. All posts carry a byline above the fold indicating the scientist’s affiliation and conflicts of interest.” This must be 100% transparent so our readers can evaluate the merit of the post for themselves.

Are we making a judgment about PepsiCo’s science by hosting a blog for them on SB? No. (Nor are we making a judgment about your own research for that matter). Are we saying that they are entitled to have a seat at the table? Yes. Do they know that they are opening themselves us to debate? Absolutely. You may disagree with the substance of their posts (as you do on any other blog). You may even call into question their presence on a public forum dedicated to science. It will be up to them to respond. Better yet, it will be up to them to listen and take actions. The sustainability of this experiment lives or dies in the establishment of a transparent dialogue.

Finally, let me address the economics. SB, like nearly all free content sites, is sustainable because of advertising. 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. We started experimenting with sponsored blogs a couple of years ago and decided to market long-term sponsorship contracts instead of sporadic advertising contracts. This is not a new idea: respected magazines have been doing the same thing for years (think Atlantic Ideas Festival going on now or The New Yorker Festival, where representatives of sponsoring companies sit on stage alongside writers and thinkers, or advertorials where companies pay to create content -- clearly marked as such -- instead of just running an ad). We think this may be a digital equivalent. But we accept that we haven’t got it 100% yet. Should we host these blogs under a modified SB logo? Allow our readers to exclude them from RSS feeds? Establish a blogger council that signs off on the scientists who are blogging? Make the sponsor’s logo clearer on the banner? As always, I would very much welcome your feedback and suggestions so we can build a stronger SB for the future. It's in our collective interest to ensure the long-term sustainability of a mission that we all believe is important.

To sum up, we believe that a meaningful discussion about science and society in the 21^st century requires that all players be at the table (with affiliations made clear), from all parts of the world, from every sector of society. And ScienceBlogs is where this is starting to happen.

I hope this short note serves to clarify our logic and reasoning.

Adam