Well, in case you hadn’t noticed already, what with several of their best science writers and various scientists and philosophers leaving, and the content being driven more and more by politics/religion rather than science, ScienceBlogs has removed any doubt that they have, in fact, jumped the shark. They are now the home of Food Frontiers, an Orwellian nutrition blog written by PepsiCo.
The only blog I still read there regularly is Laelaps, but maybe I’ll just wait for the book instead.
Recommended instead of ScienceBlogs:
Not Exactly Rocket Science and The Loom, among others at Discover Blogs.
Adaptive Complexity and others at Scientific Blogging
Catalogue of Organisms and Sex, Genes & Evolution at Field of Science
Genomicron (that’s me!)
And just for fun:
Hey now – most of the bloggers at science blogs aren’t too happy about this. But why punish the good bloggers there for this? Like Brian Switek, or Jason Goldman, or Scicurious, or… well, me, I think. Being sponsored by Pepsi doesn’t change what we write. Just don’t read the new blog/advertisement.
Christie(Quote)
There are indeed some good science bloggers at ScienceBlogs, but they’re increasingly diluted — and this is a particularly huge dilution of credibility.
T. Ryan Gregory(Quote)
Decided to check out your blog, you know, to be fair. Oops! Bad timing, I guess:
Pepsi — just another blogger?
T. Ryan Gregory(Quote)
Yeah, I mean that’s clearly pretty damning evidence. PepsiCo advertisements placed squarely where they belong in the advertising boxes of the website? This is definitive proof that a PepsiCo-sponsored blog is going to feed up nonsense in the content section of said blog.
Bobo(Quote)
How many other science bloggers on ScienceBlogs buy site-wide ads?
T. Ryan Gregory(Quote)
Irrelevant. Come back when you’ve got some evidence that (1) the blog claims that “Pepsi cures diabetes” or makes up some other equally ridiculous pro-sponsor rubbish, or (2) sponsorship has soured ScienceBlogs as a whole.
(Although I agree that the name is no longer particularly appropriate, and the only reason I go there is for PZ’s posts which quite often have little to do with science. But I’ll point out briefly that your own blog, even when posts are science-related, often acts more as a vehicle of self-promotion than as a channel to output evolutionary biology or genomics.)
Bobo(Quote)
Every now and then I talk about philosophy and logic on this blog, when I’m not just self-promoting. For example, I might mention logical fallacies such as straw man or tu quoque if the topic should arise.
T. Ryan Gregory(Quote)
Interestingly enough, I use Adblock Plus and MVPS’ hosts file and as a result, I don’t see any of these ads. The things I’m missing out on, I guess?
I think the outcry may be reacting too soon. So far Food Frontiers has a grand total of 1 post. Let’s see what else they come up with.
Nick Gardner(Quote)
It’s the principle of the thing — this is a corporate blog on a supposedly independent science site.
T. Ryan Gregory(Quote)
Scienceblogs was never a “supposedly independent science site”, but a tool of a publisher to advertise their magazine. In order to make money.
Jonathan Badger(Quote)
Sorry, I meant that the individual bloggers were independent, but if Pepsi is also buying ad space they’re clearly not in it for the blogging.
T. Ryan Gregory(Quote)
Most (not all, just most) of ScienceBlogs jumped the shark a long time ago. Some, I would argue, never even needed to jump anything.
Thomas Joseph(Quote)
Well, it certainly could have changed names from ScienceBlogs to something else a long while ago.
T. Ryan Gregory(Quote)