The Questionable Authority

Goodbye

Category:

When Pepsigate first erupted, I was extremely unhappy both with that situation and with how Seed had been treating its bloggers. I did not join the large (and still growing) group of departing ScienceBloggers at that time. I've invested a great deal of time and effort here, and felt that - despite the credibility that we all lost as a result of Seed's amazingly idiotic decision to sell Pepsi a blog - there was still a lot of potential for ScienceBlogs to be a force for positive change.

You might have noticed that I just used the past tense quite a bit in that last paragraph.

During our behind the scenes discussions since the Pepsi Explosion, I listed a number of steps that I thought Seed needed to take in order for ScienceBlogs to have a chance at continued viability. So far, they have not shown that they will be able to do any of those things. The headquarters response, or, more accurately, non-response to Bora's departure yesterday sealed that impression.

I have nothing but respect, admiration, and gratitude for the various community managers and editors that Seed has assigned to ScienceBlogs over the years. They've done a stellar job under what can be exceptionally trying circumstances. Unfortunately, I have absolutely no confidence that they will be able to get any more support from their higher-ups than they have been getting. At this point, even with the site melting down around their shoulders, they have not been able to take rapid or decisive action.

ScienceBlogs has meant a lot to me, and it's been a privilege to be here. I'm not going to be stopping blogging, but time constraints may force a brief delay before I'm able to get up and going at a new site. If I still have access here, I'll edit this post with a link to the new site when there is one. If not, you can follow me on Twitter (questauthority) and I'll let you know when and where I'm up again.

Posted by Mike Dunford at 12:00 PM • 15 Comments • 0 TrackBacks

I suppose it was only a matter of time...

Category: Humor

...before someone used Pepsigate as the inspiration for some painfully good satire. Well done, Bob.

Posted by Mike Dunford at 8:14 AM • 5 Comments • 0 TrackBacks

The personal life update:

Category: The Blog

Since I've obviously started blogging again (at least for the moment) I thought this might be a good time to bring you up to date on the latest excuses reasons I haven't been blogging much over the last few months.

I've been working a real, live jobby job. It's one that has extremely limited internet access, and has been exhausting enough that I haven't really had the energy to write much after work - I'm now an Assistant Aquatics Manager on an Army base. (Think Hasselhoff with a big goatee and bigger gut.) I'll probably have more to write about that later. For now, I'm still working on figuring out what is and isn't going to be appropriate for me to write publicly and under my own name.

I'll have more to say about that, and other things, later on. For now, I've got to run. There's a big downside to being employed in a physical fitness field on a military base - every now and then I'm forced to wake up at an hour even more insanely early than the soldiers do, because someone has to get things ready for them to do their 0-dark-30 morning PT. And tomorrow is one of those days.

Posted by Mike Dunford at 10:30 PM • 6 Comments • 0 TrackBacks

Pepsico, Scienceblogs, and the Future

Category: Misc

This is not the post I though I'd be putting up today. This morning, I fully expected to come home from work, post my already-written "I quit" post, and point you all to a WordPress blog I set up yesterday. As of this moment, I'm not leaving Sb. As of this time next week, who knows?

As some of you have gathered, a lot of the bloggers here have frustrations with Seed that extend well beyond the Pepsipocalypse, pressures that, in some cases, have already led bloggers to quit. I'm certainly in the frustrated group, and to be honest I was strongly considering moving on well before the latest incident. I have not (yet) done so for a number of reasons - some selfish, some less so (at least I hope). I do not have high hopes that Seed is going to be successful in addressing all, or even most, of the concerns that the Sb writers have. But as of now I'm willing to give it one more shot.

Right now, I'm going to try to explain at least some of what's happened in very general terms - I'm not going to violate any confidences, or reveal any confidential internal material. But I think that, particularly given recent events, ScienceBlogs readers are entitled to get a bit more information, presented a bit more coherently, then they have gotten so far. I should note that this is my own view, and other bloggers might see things a bit differently.

Let's start with Adam Bly, the Seed founder and CEO. I've met him, I've spoken with him a few different times now, and I genuinely believe that he sees science as a force for positive change in the world. He sees an ongoing engagement between scientists (from all fields and places of employment), policymakers, educators, and the general public as an absolute necessity for making science a more effective positive force. His goal is to try to facilitate that engagement, and he set up Seed to do just that.

ScienceBlogs was originally started as an adjunct to Seed Magazine. Many of the bloggers who were brought here early on came not because of the chances for fame or money (I know neither was a big motivator for me), but because we have views about science, politics, and society that fit in very well with what was presented to us as the Seed mission. We were being offered - we thought - a chance to be a part of the conversation about how best to begin to make a difference.

That conversation has yet to start, despite what we've accomplish here on our own. And when I say "we", I'm not just, or even mostly, talking about the bloggers. I'm talking about the Sb community as a whole, particularly the readers. Bloggers are good for pointing out injustices that need fixing, but you've been the ones who have come through with the support needed to deal with them. You've shown that time after time.

Despite the success of ScienceBlogs, both as a tool for informing and mobilizing concerned people and simply (and selfishly) in terms of traffic growth, Adam Bly and the rest of Seed's big picture management have never seen fit to involve the bloggers in any form of meaningful consultation - or even discussion - about what he is trying to accomplish. That is stupid on so many levels.

The Pepsi blog was a mistake, and a bad one. Because the roll-out was handled badly, Seed, ScienceBlogs, and individual bloggers here (particularly those of us who didn't immediately leave) suffered a substantial credibility hit. This was not just avoidable, it was easily avoidable. If the bloggers had been given any sort of meaningful involvement in discussions about the future of the blogs or Seed as a whole, the entire debacle could have been avoided.

Instead, we wound up with a situation where we took a credibility hit, and SB took a hit, and where we took these hits not just because of something that we had no involvement in, but which could have been easily avoided had we been given the involvement that we've been begging for since 2006. That's a lot to take in one shot. Particularly since Seed had already spent most of the goodwill of their bloggers on other issues over the past few years.

That kind of thing all makes it hard to stay.

At the same time, there are things that make it hard to leave. I've sunk a lot of time and effort into both writing this blog and participating in the broader Sb community. I don't want to walk away from that, particularly since I think that there is still a lot of potential for Sb to grow, to improve, and to become a more effective part of the broader discussion about science and society.

For the time being, I'm staying. I'm not enormously optimistic that Seed is going to change the way they deal with the ScienceBlogs branch of their enterprise, but I'm not - yet - convinced that there is no hope for change. There will almost undoubtedly be discussions both in public and behind the scenes about the future of ScienceBlogs over the next few weeks, and I'm going to wait and see what - if anything - comes of it before I make up my mind.

Addendum:
While I was working on this post, Adam Bly was publishing the first post on his own, brand-spanking-new, ScienceBlogs blog. The fact that he's making at least that much effort gives makes me just slightly optimistic. Or at least not entirely pessimistic.

Posted by Mike Dunford at 9:19 PM • 3 Comments • 0 TrackBacks

ScienceBlogs: The Choice of a New Generation?

Category:

A few of you might have noticed that there's a new blog here at ScienceBlogs - one that does not exactly seem to be receiving a warm welcome.

Pepsico - the makers of much of the sugary caffeinated goodness that gets me through the day - seems to have managed to purchase a blog here. (Contrary to popular belief, that's not actually the strategy I employed to get my slot. I don't have corporate pockets, so I went with "beg and grovel" instead.) For obvious reasons, having a corporation blogging about their products at Sb raises some concerns about things like conflicts of interest, the increasingly blurry line between "news" and "news releases", and the like.

Some bloggers - better ones than I - have already talked about leaving Sb as a direct consequence of the Pepsi deal.

I'm not sure that I'm going to be blogging here for much longer, but if I do leave, the Pepsi thing is probably not going to be the main reason.

Read on »

Posted by Mike Dunford at 11:19 PM • 4 Comments • 0 TrackBacks

Aaaaaannnnnnddddd... We're back.

Category:

It's been a while since I've posted, because I've been busy goofing off and having fun - I took a long European vacation (pictures and posts to follow). I'm back, mostly recovered, and almost back to my normal routine.

Posted by Mike Dunford at 7:40 PM • 10 Comments • 0 TrackBacks

Federal Judge Strikes Down BRCA1/BRCA2 Patents.

Category: Medicine

As of this morning, at least 20% of your genes were patented by someone other than you. The holders of the patents could quite literally forbid you to investigate large portions of your own personal genome. This afternoon, a federal judge in New York handed down a broad ruling that calls into question - thankfully - the entire idea that naturally occurring genes are patentable.

The ruling in question most directly affects the BRCA1 and BRCA2 genes, which have been implicated in hereditary breast cancer. Myriad Genetics patented those two genes, and has been jealously guarding those patents. This has restricted research into those genes, and has prevented the development of any alternative methods for tests involving those genes. The ACLU filed suit challenging the patents last year, and the ruling in question came in response to their request for summary judgement.

I'm still reading through the 156-page ruling, which can be downloaded from the ACLU's website (pdf), but I think I may have already found one of the quotes that - if the ruling survives the appeals process - is likely to have extremely wide-ranging effects on genetic research in the future:

Because the claimed isolated DNA is not markedly different from native DNA as it exists in nature, it constitutes unpatentable subject matter under 35 U.S.C. 101.

Myriad is sure to appeal the ruling, so the case is most likely far from over. But it at least gives cause for hope that research into human genetics will not be restricted by firms that claim patents on part of our very physical makeup.

Posted by Mike Dunford at 9:09 PM • 15 Comments • 0 TrackBacks

What the scientific community can (and should) learn from the pending UK rail strike

Category: Politics

Next week, I'm going to be in the UK. My plans for the trip are centered on two things: the room I've booked in London for the week, and the 8-day rail pass I purchased a couple of months ago. This morning I hit the National Rail website to start figuring out exactly which trains I need to take to get to the destinations I've been planning to hit. After the third or fourth inquiry I ran, I began to notice a disturbing pattern: every train I might want to take had a little yellow exclamation point icon under "status". Clicking through to details brought up a notice that, "industrial action may affect this train" and a link for yet more detail.

Clicking through to that link, I was able to find enough context to figure out that "industrial action" translates as "strike" without needing to resort to my English-English translation dictionary. I have defended unions on this blog before now, so the brief rush of euphoria that was brought on by my linguistic prowess was followed by an almost pleasant diversion into the etymology of the phrase "hoist with his own petard".

Then I moved on and began to look into the details involving both the "industrial action" and the underlying disputes.

The brief version of affairs is this: unions representing railway signalers and maintenance workers have announced that their members have authorized action, and that if the disputes that they have with Network Rail are not resolved forthwith they will strike from Tuesday to Friday of next week. The maintenance workers will be on strike for the entire period, while the signalers will only walk off during the peak hours from 0600-1000 and 1800-2200.

The representatives of the unions point out that they are being kind enough to wait until (just) after Easter to stage their walk-out. The representative of the group of companies that run the trains has (predictably) called the planned action "deplorable", because the unions are not putting the passengers interests ahead of their own. The Daily Mail, noting that the strike is set to begin on the day when the prime minister is expected to announce the date of the next national election, called the unions' timing "blatantly political."

My own reaction to the strike plans, particularly given their potential impact on my own travel, is a bit complex:

Read on »

Posted by Mike Dunford at 6:49 PM • 11 Comments • 0 TrackBacks

Remembering Megan

Category: Personal

If it takes a village to raise a child, I was particularly lucky to grow up in the middle of a wonderful little village in the middle of the Bronx. All things considered, the village did a pretty good job with a whole bunch of kids, who have since spread out all over the place. Some have gone on to really cool editing gigs, occasional appearances with Keith Olbermann, and our own Wikipedia pages. Others have wound up working as lifeguards in Lower Alabama. But pretty much all of us came away from the village we were raised in with at least three things: a strong understanding of the importance of community, a strong sense of social justice, and the simple knowledge that the best way to make sure that a problem gets fixed is to get in there and fix it.

Those are not things that we know because someone sat us down and talked to us about them. They're things we learned by watching the adults who were around us, and important to us.

Today, we're all mourning the loss of one of the adults who loomed large in our lives. Yesterday, while bicycling to work, Megan Charlop was struck by an opening car door and forced into the path of a city bus. Her death leaves a gaping wound in many, many lives.

A couple of obituaries have already appeared, and I'm sure more will follow, because Meg was important to her community - her family - in so many ways. Chris Hayes described her as, "One of the most righteous, humane,compassionate human beings I've ever had the good fortune to know." The Bronx Borough President talked about her "tireless advocacy". My brother Dan talked about how full of life Meg was, "in every sense of the word." Philip Alcabes says that Meg "wasn't a maker of big policy. She was a maker of many small differences."

Meg Charlop showed me what love of neighbor really looks like, and how much of a force it can be. And so much more. I will miss her a great deal, and my heart bleeds for her family.

Posted by Mike Dunford at 4:25 PM • 3 Comments • 0 TrackBacks