I honestly can’t imagine why anyone thought a Pepsi sponsored blog at Scienceblogs would be a good thing.
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by John Cole| 16 Comments
This post is in: Science & Technology, Blogospheric Navel-Gazing
I honestly can’t imagine why anyone thought a Pepsi sponsored blog at Scienceblogs would be a good thing.
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cleek
well that’s just ’cause you’re not a scientist.
middlewest
Sigh. In my day, I would have been beaten to the Simpsons quote.
Troy: “If you have three Pepsis and drink one, how much more refreshed are you? You, the redhead in the Chicago school system?”
Girl: “Pepsi?”
Troy: “Partial credit!”
El Cid
I hate that I know this, but for those looking for soft-drink related news & discussion from the industry perspective, there already is one.
Redshirt
I was reading all about this yesterday. It does seem terrible, but it’s also not surprising. I would expect to see more of this, not less.
Though, I think it likely if it gets bad, Scienceblogs will lose some of their more popular bloggers.
Walker
@Redshirt:
Good Math, Bad Math announced it was leaving today.
Barry
Carl Zimmer has a list of refugees:
http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/loom/2010/07/07/oh-pepsi-what-hath-thou-wrought/
Stogoe
“They drove a dumptruck full of money up to my house! I’m not made of stone!”
Redshirt
@Walker: I just saw that. I suspect that’s the first of many. I’d suspect PZ Meyers to go soon enough.
Sigh. I loved the site for what it was – pure science nerd blogs. But I doubt it will survive now. But I also strongly suspect someone will set up a similar enterprise soon enough, without PepsiCo’s support.
Redshirt
Quick update! Looks like ScienceBlog did the right thing. Here’s the quote on PZ’s blog:
” We have removed Food Frontiers from SB.
We apologize for what some of you viewed as a violation of your immense trust in ScienceBlogs. Although we (and many of you) believe strongly in the need to engage industry in pursuit of science-driven social change, this was clearly not the right way.
How do we empower top scientists working in industry to lead science-minded positive change within their organizations? How can a large and diverse online community made up of scientists and the science-minded public help? How do companies who seek genuine dialogue with this community engage? We’ll open this challenge up to everyone on SB and beyond in the coming days so that we can all find the right solution.”
Good for them!
r€nato
I’m a bit perplexed by the hysteria over it. Why not simply blog in rebuttal to whatever PepsiCo blogged about? Or just trust that ScienceBlog readers are more intelligent than the average person and can either avoid PepsiCo blogging or read it while keeping in mind that it’s corporate propaganda?
Redshirt
I think it’s the notion that – if you didn’t know it – there’d really be nothing to identify it as a wholly owned and created corporate blog. It greatly tarnishes the objectivity of the rest of the blogs.
Gone now though, so kudos to the SB management for realizing their error and correcting it quickly.
Next time, perhaps they could discuss such moves before implementing them.
Stogoe
“engage industry” is corporate speak for “chow down at the money trough”.
First off, “genuine dialogue” is never going to happen with industry, because it’s bad for the stock price. But a good start would be to allow their R&D staff an unfettered, unedited blog space, free from PR meddling. Which is never going to happen. And I could never fully trust any such attempt in any case.
fucen tarmal
e=mc2
with the value of c=coca cola sucks. now explain the theory again, keeping in mind that c=coca cola sucks.
nah i can see why folks are and should be a bit unnerved by this, but there needs to be a place in between owner and editor of a site or enterprise, and corporate dupe that will pay money to be a friend and no one cares what they say think, or how everything said affects them…
we just assume that everyone will sell out their principles in an instant. i would think, by watching for sponsor bias, there could be some self policing to mitigate the feifdom. if not we are fucked in so many more ways than scienceblog.
Paul L.
Like defending John Holdren’s Forced abortions and mass sterilization needed to save the planet.
chrismealy
The Pepsi blog can’t be worse than gnxp.
cervantes
I honestly can’t imagine why anyone thought a Pepsi sponsored blog at Scienceblogs would be a good thing.
Very simple, I’m sorry to say. Pepsi is paying for it. It’s 100% infomercial. Scienceblogs, in case you didn’t know it, is a for-profit company.