Scientific American and Blogs

Today, the editors of Scientific American published a post announcing a new vision for the Scientific American blog network. It is not exactly clear how that new vision is going to play out. It does seem to mean that many excellent blogs on the network, including those written by friends, will go away.

Blog editor Curtis Brainard’s discussion of controversy surrounding one of their blogs reads like a prelude to today’s announcement.

We are currently revising guidelines with our blogging community with the aim of preventing missteps.

The new “Blog Network Guidelines” are strict, and appear specifically geared to preventing controversies like a blog posting racist and sexist arguments.

It is too early to comment on whether this is the “right” approach. Frankly, I am hopelessly conflicted as a number of friends doing excellent work will be losing a gig. It is, however, telling that Scientific American is recognizing that they have to take responsibility for everything that appears under their brand:

Among other things, people expect a higher level of accuracy, integrity, transparency and quality from media organizations, and that expectation applies as much to blog content as it does to more traditional content such as news and features—especially because many readers do not differentiate between the two types of content.

On a lighter note, this booilerplate disclaimer is ridiculous:

The views expressed are those of the author and are not necessarily those ofScientific American.

If the views of “The Editors” do not necessarily reflect the views of Scientific American, whose do? In this case, it seems obvious that the only resolution is to conclude that Scientific American as a publishing company is incapable of holding “views”, which may be upsetting to certain members of the Supreme Court.


Filed under: Items of Interest Tagged: blogs, Curtis Brainard, Scientific American

PhD gender gaps around the world

How Nations Fare in PhDs by Sex

Periscopic, for Scientific American, visualized the number of PhDs awarded in various countries. You might expect men to be in high percentages and women to be in low, but it's not always in that direction.

In the U.S., women are going to college and majoring in science and engineering fields in increasing numbers, yet here and around the world they remain underrepresented in the workforce. Comparative figures are hard to come by, but a disparity shows up in the number of Ph.D.s awarded to women and men. The chart here, assembled from data collected by the National Science Foundation, traces the gender gap at the doctoral level for 56 nations. The situation in individual countries varies widely, but as the numbers make clear, there are interesting exceptions to the global trend.

Each view shows a vertical dotted line to indicate where PhDs awarded are an even split between men and women. To the left of that dotted line shows where men earn more PhDs than women, and on the right, where women earn more than men.

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Feynman the Creepy Genius

Another tone-deaf post (now taken down)* related to women and science from Scientific American Blogs sparked a great disturbance in our little corner of the internet around the question of whether or not we should care that Richard Feynman was both a genius and really creepy. Our friend, Matthew Francis has an excellent, thoughtful reply to this discussion.

He starts with a particularly important point about the perils of creating a moral equivalence between personality quirks and serious character flaws in our heroes:

Very few heroes can survive scrutiny unscathed. They all have flaws, by virtue of being human. However, hero-worship blurs those flaws,  leveling them: truly nasty aspects of a person’s personality or behavior become on par with little quirks and eccentricities. In that way, we justify our worship.
-Dr. Matthew Francis

Another friend, Janet Stemwedel has an excellent post** on the ethics of evaluating our heroes as individual components, the sum of their parts, or something in between, which should inform all our thinking on individuals like Feynman, or anyone else you think is a great [insert profession], but kind of a dick.

Before you remind me that I should be grateful that individuals of such staggering genius with intellects that cast mine in deep shadow have walked among us, I will remind you that it is a virtual certainty that for every Feynman or Einstein, there are several individuals with greater creativity and intellect who have lived under less fortunate circumstances and who we would be praising today but for the fact that they were not given the same opportunities.

Unfortunately, the comments have been predictably disappointing. I used this as an opportunity to make good on the positive commenting pledge I made with Eva Amsen. Maybe you should try it too?

*I have some thoughts on the editorial & perception difficulties of being Scientific American Blogs as currently structured.

**Hat tip to Matthew Francis.


Filed under: Follies of the Human Condition Tagged: ethics, heroes, Janet Stemwedel, Linkonomicon, Matthew Francis, Richard Feynman, Scientific American

Editorial Expectations

The views expressed are those of the author and are not necessarily those of Scientific American.
-Scientific American Blogs Disclaimer

There is no requirement that what you say you are and what your audience expects you to be will be the same thing. It is very hard, however, to tell your audience that their expectations and reactions are “wrong”.

Scientific American finds itself in this position once again thanks to another tone-deaf post on the Curious Wavefunction blog on the Scientific American Blogs network. Scientific American makes the disclaimer that the content of individual blogs on the blog network does not represent Scientific American.

No matter what they say, people are naturally going to assume that something published under the Scientific American branding will represent Scientific American quality and values. 

The disclaimer may be adequate to keep any legal mud from sticking – though the legal team does seem willing to pull the trigger on taking down posts to reduce potential liability.

There are a couple of catches. First, as more traditional print magazine content moves online (whether behind a paywall or not), the line between a “blog” and an “article” that has editorial guidance and fact-checking blurs. While the difference may be very clear to professional editors and writers, we cannot assume that is the case for any given reader. Some readers are going to come to blog posts with the same high expectations they have for a Scientific American print article, and there are many bloggers on Scientific American Blogs that regularly deliver on those expectations.

Second, the Scientific American Blogs network benefits from its association with the Scientific American brand. That brand is built on reader expectations for interest and quality. The good news for Scientific American is that they have successfully associated their brand with quality and integrity. The bad news is that we are going to expect to see those things anywhere that brand is used.

When you are a household name with 100+ years of history, you cannot make those expectations and associations go away with a boilerplate disclaimer. You probably can’t make them go away at all.

A structural problem for Scientific American Blogs is that the network is too big and the editorial staffing too small to be able to provide the kind of editorial oversight the Scientific American brand leads people to expect. There are, however, indications that the new Scientific American Blogs editor, Curtis Brainard, is grappling with these issues and is working to address them.

 


Filed under: Follies of the Human Condition Tagged: blogs, Curtis Brainard, Scientific American

Happy Birthday, Flying Trilobite & Artologica

©Glendon Mellow. (All Rights Reserved; Used with Permission)

One of my favorite science artists and people, Glendon Mellow, is celebrating his birthday by launching his new website, glendonmellow.com. In addition to being a fabulous artist in a variety of media (including tattoo design), Glendon helps run the Symbiartic blog at Scientific American and is a tireless advocate for both the positive use of art in science communication and supporting the creators of such content.

It is also our own Michele Banks’ birthday. You can celebrate with her by asking her to send you an aesthetically pleasing gift from her Etsy shop. I understand that some of her work from the collaborative art show Voyage of Discovery is being made available too.


Filed under: The Art of Science Tagged: Art, Artologica, Flying Trilobite, Glendon Mellow, Michele Banks, sciart, science art, Scientific American, Symbiartic, voyage of discovery

#standingwithDNLee

Blogger, post-doc, and science communicator DN Lee politely declined an offer to work for a money-making operation for free. The word “whore” was used in response. DN Lee wrote about this experience and what it meant from her perspective as a black, female scientist at an early stage in her career. The overlords at Scientific American deleted the post for very vague reasons without consulting with DN Lee.

But that is not how the Internet works. And that is not how the online science communication community works. As requested by Dr. Isis with DN Lee’s permission, we are putting up the censored post. Unlike Scientific American, we think the human experiences of scientists are of interest to people who are interested in science. To get a grasp on the issue you can read the following:

UPDATE 14 OcTOBER 2013

DN Lee’s original post is back up at Scientific American after the factual accusations were confirmed. She does not get the credit she deserves if you are reading this here in measurable ways that will benefit her career. So, we are removing the post as its utility has passed.

As many, including yours truly, guessed early on, the take-down was due to lawyers worrying if the alleged events (ie, emails) were authentic. The lawyers were not necessarily worrying that they were made up. The correspondent may not have been a real Biology-Online representative (he was).

Scientific American stepped in it by obfuscating about the real reasons for the takedown, allowing it to appear that they did not try very hard to discuss the legal concerns with the author before or immediately after the takedown, issued conflicting explanations, appeared to doubt the victim’s veracity, and used explanations that easily reminded folks of loaded rhetoric used routinely to dismiss and distract. They also seem to have failed to grasp the immediacy of response necessary to manage response on the internet.

It doesn’t make the folks at Scientific American bad or misguided. They aren’t. They were very unaware of the situation they were stepping into, and that isn’t a good excuse for such an organization. It was legitimate to expect better. The whole incident was about managing appearances, and they failed. Hopefully, this has been a learning experience.

 


Filed under: Follies of the Human Condition, Items of Interest Tagged: #standingwithDNLee, Biology-Online, DN Lee, Scientific American

Giving credit where credit is due

Earlier this week, the very popular Facebook science outreach site, I Fucking Love Science, came under fire for its seemingly systematic use of copyrighted material from a variety of artists without attribution or their permission. This sparked a “conversation” – most of which is depressing and not worth reading – about how content should be shared. Over at the Symbiartic blog at Scientific American, artist (and the guy you want to design your tattoo for you) Glendon Mellow has, in the words of Peter Edmonds, composed an “important, smart post” summarizing his thoughts on the issue.

As members of the online culture, we don’t have to accept that image theft will always be the dominant way of sharing visual information online: culture matures. Expectations change. But right now, large portions of science communication online are part of the problem. - Glendon Mellow, “Mash-Up This! Science Communication’s Image Problem”

*Hat tip to Peter Edmonds.