For example, just recently an editor named “Ofek” at Biology-Online.org asked DNLee to provide some free content for him. She responded with:
Thank you very much for your reply.Here’s what happens less often: the person asking for free content, rather than moving on, responds by saying
But I will have to decline your offer.
Have a great day.
Because we don’t pay for blog entries?Where I grew up, when people politely turn down your request for free stuff, it’s impolite to call them a “whore.” It’s especially bad when you take into account the fact that we live in a world where women are being pushed away from science, one where how often your papers get cited correlates strongly with your gender, and so on.
Are you an urban scientist or an urban whore?
DNLee was a bit taken aback, with good reason. So she took to her blog to respond. It was a colorful, fun, finely-crafted retort — and also very important, because this is the kind of stuff that shouldn’t happen in this day and age. Especially because the offender isn’t just some kid with a website; Biology Online is a purportedly respectable site, part of the Scientific American “Partners Network.” One would hope that SciAm would demand an apology from Ofek, or consider cutting their ties with the organization.
Sadly that’s not what happened. If you click on the link in the previous paragraph, you’ll get an error. That’s because Scientific American, where DNLee’s blog is hosted, decided it wasn’t appropriate and took it down.
Sunday, October 13, 2013
Everyone Else Is Blogging About It, Why Can't I?
I expect Ofek to be out of a job soon.
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6 comments:
Friends don't let friends blog for Sci.Am.
This whole thing is the first time I've heard ANYTHING about Scientific American since I was a kid going through my dad's magazine collection.
PZ Myers, Popehat, and Popehat's more forensic-minded readers are now on the case.
The SciAm editor has changed her story from "We disappeared the post because it wasn't appropriate" to "it was potentially libellous and we couldn't be bothered asking the blogger whether she had evidence for her allegations." She still seems to be insisting that the financial arrangement between SciAm and the content-scraping biology aggregator site that started the furore was TOTALLY NOT A FACTOR.
I wonder if Mickeysoft has a version of Clippy for these situations. "Hi, it looks like you're in a hole trying to dig it deeper. Can I help you compose e-mails and Tweets?"
No evidence yet that 'Ofek' exists as a separate person; he might just be a pseudonym for Elmar Sharafutdinov, Biology-Online owner and domain squatter, who does not give the impression of being eager to share income with other people. As Popehat points out, Ofek's behaviour would be career-limiting in any field of science, but "Biology online" is in the business of spamming and marketing where it's par for the course.
In further developments, the SciAm editor has moved on to minimising the business links between SciAm and the biology aggregator, to the point of casting doubt on whether such links exist:
"We would like to make clear that Biology-Online is neither a part of Scientific American, nor a “content partner.” We are investigating what links we currently have with Biology-Online."
They have updated their "Partner network" page to remove evidence of those links, presumably to aid their investigations and to make the ultimate negative findings slightly more plausible.
This whole thing is the first time I've heard ANYTHING about Scientific American since I was a kid going through my dad's magazine collection.
Those were not the magazines I was looking for.
He had those kind too.
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