Nerdery

The Times takes on cur­rent debates in lin­guis­tics, and asks:

But 70 years on, it is sure­ly time to put the trau­ma of Whorf behind us.

All I can think is: “Nev­er! The House of Mogh is dis­hon­ored for sev­en gen­er­a­tions!” Then I remem­bered that Duras ulti­mate­ly did get the right­ful blame for the Khit­o­mer mas­sacre, and I felt bet­ter about it.

Somebody’s getting married

And that some­body’s me! If this post goes up when I sched­uled it to, the cer­e­mo­ny will have just started.

It’s been a crazy year of plan­ning, but every­thing seems ready to go as planned. Tomor­row we go on a hon­ey­moon and I’m oblig­ed to leave my com­put­er behind, so no blog­ging until late August. 

Deb­bie and I are both par­tic­u­lar­ly grate­ful to Judge Vaugh­an Walk­er for the ear­ly wed­ding present he gave us this week. His deci­sion strik­ing down the hate­ful Propo­si­tion 8 is filled with pow­er­ful reminders of the impor­tance of mar­riage in soci­ety at large, and its impor­tance to mar­ried cou­ples. Until mar­riage is acces­si­ble to every lov­ing cou­ple, we’ll both feel like our mar­riage is incom­plete, and we’re grate­ful that Judge Walk­er helped move Cal­i­for­nia and the nation so much clos­er to true equality.

On a less abstract lev­el, I’m proud to say that my sis­ter-in-law will be mar­ry­ing the woman of her dreams next year, and we live in hope that her mar­riage will always and for­ev­er car­ry the same sig­nif­i­cance in law and cus­tom that our mar­riage does today.

If any­one cares, there are wed­ding reg­istries at Amazon.com and Bed, Bath, and Beyond, and no one would stop you from help­ing cov­er the costs of our hon­ey­moon through Paypal:

Truth be told, though, we’re just as hap­py to have you hon­or our wed­ding by giv­ing to Equal­i­ty Cal­i­for­nia, which con­tin­ues its work chang­ing peo­ple’s minds about mar­riage equal­i­ty. Help them end mar­riage segregation!

Deep Thought

Con­ven­tion cen­ters and con­ven­tion cen­ter hotels should offer free inter­net access. There’s no excuse not to do so. 

And no, Louisville Con­ven­tion Cen­ter, it does not cost $100/day to pro­vide access in your exhib­it hall. Hell will freeze over before I or any sane per­son would pay any­thing like that. Frankly, hotel-near-the-Louisville-Con­ven­tion-Cen­ter, $12.95 is too much to spend per day. Charge a dol­lar a day if it makes you feel better.

Happy Birthday to me!

I’m anoth­er year old­er, as is Mick Jagger!

#SBFAIL Continues

Yes­ter­day, Bora Zivkovic announced he was leav­ing Sci­ence­Blogs. This is kin­da huge. Bora is as close to a sci­ence­blog­ging god as any sci­ence­blog­ger will admit to believ­ing in. He gives every evi­dence of omnipres­ence and omni­science about the inter­play of sci­ence and the inter­net. He’s cre­at­ed many of the ideas that keep the sci­ence­blog­ging com­mu­ni­ty togeth­er, not least the Sci­ence Online conferences.

And his Sb farewell shows why he’s so beloved. He seems to have tak­en the two weeks since Pepsi­blog was announced and decid­ed to go out with a bang. He ana­lyzes what Sci­ence­blogs did well, how it cre­at­ed its own ecosys­tem of sci­ence­blog­gers and how it affect­ed the way oth­er sci­ence­blog­gers did what they do. And then he looked for­ward, pre­dict­ing, how those ecosys­tems would change in the wake of Pepsi­blog, and the ongo­ing exo­dus from Sci­ence­blogs in the wake of its ill-con­sid­ered plan to sell its respectabil­i­ty to the high­est bidder.

One of his most strik­ing pre­dic­tions is that the exo­dus was not over:

And more are leav­ing, and will be leav­ing, due to “Bion’s effect” [which explains why peo­ple stay at par­ties to remain part of a group, and then all leave at once as soon as a few group mem­bers head for the door]…

Yes, sud­den­ly every­one is get­ting their coats on, all at the same time. This par­ty is not as fun as it once was. Time to go.

And off he goes, to his new, inde­pen­dent blog.

And for a full day, Sci­ence­blogs man­age­ment said noth­ing. And that seems to have been the last straw. PalMD threw in the tow­el. Then Mike Dun­ford, Suzanne Franks, Deb­o­rah Blum (with an assist from Ten­nyson), Sharon Astyk, and Maryn McKen­na put in their papers. PZ Myers has put his blog on hia­tus.

When the first round of peo­ple decamped from Sci­ence­blogs, I thought hard about join­ing them. And I did­n’t do it then for three rea­sons. First, I real­ly do like Sci­ence­blogs. Despite all the non­sense they do, for the non­com­mu­ni­ca­tion and the slow pay­ment, I like it here. I like the peo­ple and I like the mis­sion. I want them to suc­ceed and I want to be part of that suc­cess. Sec­ond, I don’t want to blog on my own. I like the peo­ple here and even as our ranks dimin­ish, I’d rather be part of this group than not. Third, I’m going to be on a bit of a planned blog­ging hia­tus start­ing Thurs­day because of my wed­ding and hon­ey­moon, and a cou­ple con­fer­ences I’m going to this week and next, and I’d rather make any move after I get back and have time to build traf­fic at a new site.

But Bora is right about Bion’s effect. I felt it two weeks ago, and feel it even more strong­ly now. The peo­ple who make Sci­ence­blogs a com­mu­ni­ty are all leav­ing, and the par­ty’s over. I don’t know quite what I’ll do, yet. Maybe man­age­ment will fig­ure it all out between now and when I get back from Brazil, and we’ll all look back and laugh. I hope so. I still want Sb to suc­ceed. But it won’t with­out the blog­gers it already lost. PZ, who has­n’t left yet, makes up a lot of the site’s traf­fic, but Bora is what keeps Sci­ence­blogs tick­ing. I’d say he was the soul, but a lot of us are real­iz­ing that Sb’s soul dis­ap­peared a while ago.

I’ll be tying up some loose ends in the next few days, and will have more to say on TfK’s future plan before the blog goes dark­ish for the wed­ding and honeymoon.

A clarification we should never have needed

So Pepsi­blog has final­ly died. Seed will be hav­ing a con­fer­ence call with us blog­gers about how to mend the dam­age. Leave ques­tions or com­ments to pass along in the com­ments. This was the only move they could make at this point, but it may have come to slow­ly to fix the rep­u­ta­tion of Sci­ence­Blogs. It can’t have been an easy choice, as the Pep­si mon­ey could pay for a cou­ple months’ salary for the peo­ple who take care of us.

For a sense of the dam­age done, one need only look to one of the newest Sci­b­ling, an insti­tu­tion­al blog from Brookhaven Nation­al Lab­o­ra­to­ry. They, along with the Weiz­mann Insti­tute of Sci­ence and the SETI Insti­tute, joined as the first blogs writ­ten by research orga­ni­za­tions, rather than indi­vid­ual blog­gers. When they joined, no one real­ly had any prob­lem with it, or any ques­tions about the propriety.

But in the wake of Pepsi­blog, they felt a need to make A Clar­i­fi­ca­tion:

we want to clar­i­fy Brookhaven’s involve­ment on this site. â€¦

There’s no mon­ey being exchanged between Brookhaven and ScienceBlogs.

Of course, we see this as a good pub­lic rela­tions oppor­tu­ni­ty. But that does­n’t mean that this space will only be used to redis­trib­ute press releas­es (and I hope our first posts have shown that).

We want to be an active and valu­able mem­ber of this com­mu­ni­ty, but we’ll leave that to you to judge. 

And look­ing at their posts thus far, it is good stuff. Until Pepsi­blog, I’d nev­er have sus­pect­ed them of being adver­to­r­i­al. This is the dam­age that Pepsi­blog has done to the rep­u­ta­tion of the site. Every blog­ger can now have their motives and fund­ing ques­tioned because Seed made a bad call. Can­cel­ing the Pep­si deal does­n’t restore the site’s rep­u­ta­tion, it just stops any more imme­di­ate dam­age, and shows that the man­age­ment is respon­sive, though some­what slow and out of touch with their read­ers and blog­gers. Fix­ing that will take time.

Some more on PepsiBlog

Sci­b­ling Super­bug has a good sum­ma­ry of what’s wrong:

Sum­ming up: By includ­ing this cor­po­rate-writ­ten blog in its sta­ble of oth­er­wise inde­pen­dent blogs, and espe­cial­ly by pre­sent­ing it in the same for­mat as the inde­pen­dent blogs, with insuf­fi­cient label­ing and trans­paren­cy, Sb has imper­iled the cred­i­bil­i­ty of all of its blog­gers. The eth­i­cal shad­ow is par­tic­u­lar­ly acute for the blog­gers who write about obe­si­ty and food cul­ture, but the ques­tion of con­flict of inter­est, and influ­ence over con­tent, could now be asked of any of us. There may have been a way to do this bet­ter: open the con­cept for dis­cus­sion in advance of launch­ing the blog, sequester the blog in a sep­a­rate sec­tion, design the page dif­fer­ent­ly to clar­i­fy its inevitably adver­to­r­i­al con­tent, remove any PR man­age­ment from the posts. This was not that way.

And erst­while Sci­en­tif­ic Amer­i­can edi­tor John Ren­nie has a good sum­ma­ry of the ways in which Pepsi­Blog vio­lat­ed pub­lish­ing stan­dards, fail­ing to sep­a­rate edi­to­r­i­al con­tent from advertising.

Final­ly, we have Adam Bly, the head of our cor­po­rate food chain, explain­ing fur­ther revi­sions to Pepsi­Blog. These changes do seem to acknowl­edge and address many of the for­mal issues peo­ple raised. Adver­tis­ing will be clear­ly labeled as “adver­to­r­i­al,” though label­ing it “adver­tis­ing” would be supe­ri­or. Paid con­tent will not go into the Google News feed, and paid con­tent will be labeled clear­ly in RSS feeds.

This does­n’t address all of the broad­er issues at work, but it should slow the bleed­ing. I expect that those of us who haven’t jumped ship over this will not, and a few of those who did decide to leave may be lured back if the over­lords man­age to fig­ure out how Sci­ence­Blogs got to its cur­rent state of inter­nal dis­af­fec­tion, and puts in place a sys­tem to pre­vent future breakdowns.

On corporate content

The Sci­ence­Blog­gers have been whoop­ing it up on Twit­ter, pissed as can be that Pep­si­Co has bought a blog on Sci­ence­blogs to talk about nutri­tion and pub­lic health issues. This is very sil­ly, and the tweet­ers have been work­ing hard to come up with hypo­thet­i­cal exam­ples that might match the absur­di­ty of this situation.
Bear in mind that Pep­si­Co does­n’t just pro­duce Pep­si and oth­er tooth-destroy­ing, obe­si­ty-pro­duc­ing fizzy waters sea­soned with high fruc­tose corn syrup. It pro­duces a wide array of fast foods and snack prod­ucts that have been cred­i­bly cit­ed as instru­men­tal in caus­ing the obe­si­ty epi­dem­ic, and their efforts in Capi­tol Hill and city halls have blocked reg­u­la­tions that would have cut back on those nutri­tion­al threats. 

Is this like sell­ing BP a Sci­ence­Blogs-brand­ed blog about marine biol­o­gy? Is it like Phillip Mor­ris Altria buy­ing a Sci­ence­Blogs-brand­ed blog about lung health? In my opin­ion: yes. It’s true that Seed has had short-term cor­po­rate-spon­sored blogs like this before, but rarely in a con­text so … seedy.

GE spon­sored a blog to talk about engi­neer­ing and tech­nol­o­gy. A biotech firm spon­sored a blog about biotech and biotech equip­ment. Shell talked about ener­gy research. Those blogs were over­seen by Seed staff and writ­ten by peo­ple out­side the cor­po­rate sponsor.

And a cou­ple of promi­nent sci­en­tif­ic research insti­tu­tions have recent­ly start­ed col­lec­tive Sci­ence­Blogs-brand­ed blogs which will sure­ly include a bit of insti­tu­tion­al spin and puffery. But read­ers expect a cer­tain amount of self-pro­mo­tion from blogs, so that’s not the end of the world, as long as the con­tent is good.

What’s scary about Pep­si’s blog is that, while it does iden­ti­fy its cor­po­rate own­er­ship, it does not mark the con­tent as adver­tis­ing. It does not clear­ly indi­cate that Sci­ence­Blogs was paid to pub­lish that con­tent, in con­trast to most of the con­tent on Sci­ence­Blogs which they pay oth­ers to produce. 

Where pre­vi­ous such blogs host­ed blog­gers not affil­i­at­ed with the spon­sor­ing com­pa­nies, the authors of this blog are. And they are not marked as adver­tis­ing, a vio­la­tion of stan­dards and jour­nal­ism since way back.

Like many of my Sci­b­lings, I’m ner­vous about this. Part of what makes Sb great is that the blog­gers are inde­pen­dent, diverse, and expert in their fields. Some odd stuff will sneak in around the edges, there’ll be dis­agree­ments, but you can be fair­ly sure that the peo­ple writ­ing here are writ­ing what they think is the best sci­ence. Bring­ing in cor­po­rate blog­gers as if they were doing the same thing breaks the trust of read­ers. It’s a dif­fer­ent thing, and should be set apart clearly.

Heck, sci­ence jour­nals are oblig­ed to mark as adver­tis­ing any papers whose authors pay page charges. That seems extreme, but it’s a reminder that stan­dards exist for this, and Sb ought to hold itself to a high stan­dard pre­cise­ly because of the over­all qual­i­ty of the blogs it chose to bring into the fold. When some­one buys their way in, it’s only fair to read­ers to mark that distinction.

I also know that Sci­ence­Blogs and its par­ent com­pa­ny have been work­ing hard to keep afloat in a dif­fi­cult time for pub­lish­ing, and I’m all in favor of their find­ing new rev­enue streams. But allow­ing cor­po­ra­tions to white­wash their record by hijack­ing Sb’s good name and post­ing as if they were inde­pen­dent voic­es on mat­ters of nutri­tion is just wrong.

Janet Stemwedel right­ly notes that this cre­ates huge con­flicts of inter­est, and those con­flicts ought to be divulged much more clear­ly, both on the blog itself, in links to the blog from the Sci­ence­blogs front page, and in the Sci­ence­blogs RSS feed. In all those set­tings it should be clear­ly marked as paid adver­tis­ing. If the blog­gers Pep­si employs do a good job, then those blog­gers will still get lots of traf­fic. Oth­er­wise it’ll go the way of all adver­tis­ing, and be ignored.

PalMD notes that Sci­ence­blogs is also indexed by Google News, and that fail­ing to mark adver­tis­ing con­tent sep­a­rate­ly vio­lates expec­ta­tions out­side the Sb sandbox.

Grrrrlsci­en­tist is so pissed that she’s talk­ing about leav­ing Sb, and for good cause. I’m not quite ready to go that far, but if the boss­es han­dle mat­ters poor­ly, I’ll have to make some tough choices.

Mark Chu-Car­roll is so upset that he’s sus­pend­ing his blog for a few days until this sorts out. I prob­a­bly won’t do the same, but again, we’ll see. Note an impor­tant point: Mark works for a big cor­po­ra­tion and blogs on top­ics at least tan­gen­tial­ly con­nect­ed to his day job. But no one doubts his legit­i­ma­cy because he proved him­self as a blog­ger. Pep­si’s peo­ple could do the same, but buy­ing access is not the right way to do it.

Any­way, weigh in in the com­ments, and keep an eye on the twit­ter hash tags #sci­bloxy­morons and #sci­bloxy­moron for proof that blog­gers can make any­thing fun.

Happy Canadia Day, Canadians!

Enjoy this cel­e­bra­tion penned by Cana­di­a’s finest car­toon­ist, Kate Beaton:

Poet Laureate

Ever since I edit­ed my high school poet­ry mag­a­zine, I’ve been a fan of W. S. Mer­win, both as a poet and as a trans­la­tor of poet­ry. In hon­or of his selec­tion as US Poet Lau­re­ate, here is one of my favorites – Sep­a­ra­tion by W. S. Mer­win:

Your absence has gone through me
Like thread through a needle.
Every­thing I do is stitched with its color.