ScienceBlogs.com Deals With Community Backlash Over PepsiCo Column 299
History's Coming To writes "Several writers for the ScienceBlogs.com collective have publicly resigned from the site, and many more have voiced concerns over parent company Seed's decision to include a paid blog under the nutrition category from PepsiCo. The blog was to be written by PepsiCo food scientists, detailing their work. The UK's Guardian newspaper has picked up on the story, and includes a letter from Seed editor Adam Bly which covers the company's rationale."
The ScienceBlogs Team later canceled the PepsiCo blog and apologized, instead leaving their users with a few tough questions: "How do we empower top scientists working in industry to lead science-minded positive change within their organizations? ... How do companies who seek genuine dialogue with this community engage?"
Translation (Score:5, Insightful)
"How do we empower top scientists working in industry to lead science-minded positive change within their organizations? ... How do companies who seek genuine dialogue with this community engage?"
Translation: "Damn, how do we get away with this next time? Do you know how much money Pepsi was giving us for selling out your reputations? This 'wall between editorial and advertising' concept is so outmoded and pre-Web 2.0, you know."
And we can only blame ourselves (Score:3, Interesting)
Well, it is. But well, we all know how well subscription based models tend to work out. And not a lot of people donate to their favorite sites, either. And increasingly large amount of people hate advertisements and use adblock. (You can go on about "Well, that's originally THEIR fault for all the flashy banners and whatnot" but it is irrelevant, really. Even sites with a decent advertisement policies get hurt.) Any ads that can be identified as such can be blocked... So our behaviour is forcing the site o
What If I never click adverts anyway? (Score:2, Insightful)
What if I am NOT influenced by adverts, do not click them and avoid the products mentioned within them?
Surely they lose nothing if I just block silently, it would never have influenced me anyway. How common is paying by impression?
Re:What If I never click adverts anyway? (Score:5, Insightful)
What if I am NOT influenced by adverts, do not click them and avoid the products mentioned within them?
You are influenced by adverts whether you know it or not. Now, your conscious influence may be stronger than the unconscious; I am fairly adept at detecting the manipulation attempted by advertisement, and it makes me angry. But that doesn't make you immune to the techniques used. It only means that they must be employed more subtly to work on you.
Re:What If I never click adverts anyway? (Score:4, Funny)
Mod parent +1: Refreshing.
Re: (Score:2)
Absolutely right. No amount of blocking, ignoring, fast-forwarding or opting out is going to protect you from the influence of ubiquitous advertising.
One way I demonstrate this whenever someone tells me that they "ignore advertising" and are "not affected by advertising" is by asking them how they came to know the names of the products, or see if they can complete the last few words of a jingle, or simply by asking them which brand name products they
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
I'm quite certain that you are right about the subconscious influence. It's like I can hear little wheels whirring away, when I am forced to look at an advert. The company and/or the product is categorized and filed under "NEVER BUY FROM THESE ASSHOLES!" Weeks of months later, when I realize that I need some doo-dad, I shop around, and actually search for whatever it is. When I see the name, or trademark, or whatever, I rank that product down about ten notches.
And, it's not that hard to do, if you're no
Re:What If I never click adverts anyway? (Score:5, Insightful)
Surely the fact that you actively avoid the products mentioned within the advertisements means that you are influenced by them?
Re: (Score:2)
The complete opposite influence they want me to have maybe?
I don't understand your comment.
Re: (Score:2, Insightful)
I don't understand your comment.
Even if it's the opposite effect of what they would like you to do, it's still an influence. So you saying that you are "not influenced" is 100% wrong. It's just not the type of influence the advertisers would like to have on you. This really isn't that hard to understand.
Re:What If I never click adverts anyway? (Score:5, Insightful)
I guarantee that you have not been able to ignore advertising or cause it to have the opposite influence. You're fooling yourself.
What kind of computer do you use? What kind of portable media player? I guarantee that you chose them because of advertising. You know which components to buy when you build a computer because of advertising. You know which cereal to buy because of advertising.
Even if you buy the cheap store-brand of corn flakes, it's because the store-brand is piggy-backing off the effect that Kellogs' advertising had on you or you wouldn't even know to buy corn flakes.
I bet you know the names of Apple's laptop computers. I bet you know the names of the individual programs in Adobe's Creative Suite. I bet you can tell me the names of car models made by the biggest car companies. All because of advertising.
There's a long game in advertising too. Even if you aren't directly influenced to run out and buy a product, you learn the names, you learn the qualities that made one brand better than another. Eventually you will make a decision, and though you think you're making the decision based only upon your own independent thinking, the marketing plays a bigger role than you think.
Re:What If I never click adverts anyway? (Score:5, Interesting)
I understand your point, it may be true of certain things.
I found the cheapest laptop I could find at the time. In the past all my computer have been bought by untechnical people and they were cheap. I honestly think the software is more important.
I do not have a personal entertainment player, I read books.
I dislike Adobe products. I dislike Apple products. I know what they are.
I cannot drive and I use public transport. I am apathetic for motor vehicles.
I buy cheap clothes. A pair of jeans is jeans whatever way you look at it.
The way my life is arranged is that I put products into categories. Nobody can tell me what category a product is in. A cheap plasticy pen is NOT a fountain pen. An optical mouse is NOT a trackball.
Honestly it's the only differentiation you need. It means you can stop comparing different brands products and learn about the categories that solve your problem.
I use an old fashioned phone with buttons not a modern phone with a touchscreen. I still maintain I am immune.
If you understand what a product IS based on what it IS and HOW it does it, then you only need to see businesses as 'providers' for a category of product. I couldn't care less what brand my fountan pen is.
Most people are hypnotized by branding.
Re:What If I never click adverts anyway? (Score:4, Informative)
And how did you decide that you needed the one and not the other?
Even if you were the one person in the world that was personally totally unaffected by advertising, you wouldn't be free from it. Because you would be living in a society affected by advertising. Even if your choice of soap were totally unaffected by advertising, the kinds of soap your store would stock would not be.
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
My choice of soap is 100% influenced by what the hotel stocks today. I probably have a couple years' worth of soap in my linen closet harvested from various hotels across the U.S.
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
I do not have a personal entertainment player, I read books.
Why the false dichotomy? I have an iPod *and* I read many books.
I cannot drive and I use public transport. I am apathetic for motor vehicles.
I have a 2 seater convertible roadster that can go 140 mph. Does that make me bad?
I buy cheap clothes. A pair of jeans is jeans whatever way you look at it.
Actually, I'm finding inverse results there. I gave up on the more expensive Levis because they wear out quickly and they went to a single belt loop in the back a while ago. The $20 Lee jeans I buy online last three times as long.
Most people are hypnotized by branding.
[citation needed]
People are allowed to live their lives differently than you without deserving to be judged as "hypnotized"
Re: (Score:2)
While I don't deny that advertising probably affects me, it doesn't to the degree that you suggest.
>>What kind of computer do you use? What kind
>>of portable media player? I guarantee that
>>you chose them because of advertising.
No, I make all of my major purchases based on careful research and review of the options. I will spend hours and hours online comparing competing products to find the one that offers the best set of features/performance for the lowest price. As to food products, sim
Re: (Score:2)
Personally I decide based on price, specs, past experiences with that brand, reviews, other peoples opinions, and the popularity of the product, all before advertising. It's true that for some of those things advertising may be an influence(popularity especially) which in that case will effect me slightly but advertising will still have a quite low direct effect. Of course that might be because I watch very little advertising (noscript + flashblock block basically all ads unless i explicitly allow them)
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
When you define things broad enough, everything can fall into that definition, meaning the definition has become meaningless.
What kind of computer do you use? What kind of portable media player? I guarantee that you chose them because of advertising. You know which components to buy when you build a computer because of advertising. You know which cereal to buy because of advertising.
Does spending a couple of hours on Newegg or Tom's Hardware count as advertising? Being aware of a brand itself doesn't mean
Re:What If I never click adverts anyway? (Score:4, Insightful)
What if I am NOT influenced by adverts,
Then you should immediately report to the nearest psychology lab and make a living being examined for this highly unusual trait.
Advertisement today contains more science than Spirit and Opportunity. It practically is a science of its own - the science of manipulating masses, often unconsciously, and especially in such a way that they are either unaware of it or in complete denial.
Ockhams Razor says you are not immune, you are in denial.
Reality cracking (Score:5, Interesting)
It is definitely a science like you say but it doesn't mean you cannot learn the science yourself. It's called 'reality cracking' and it's absolutely fascinating:
http://www.searchlores.org/realicra/realicra.htm [searchlores.org]
The idea behind reality cracking is that if you can begin to understand how the adverts work, you can become more aware and wise to how supermarkets, adverts abuse and play on you.
If I do not see the adverts, I am more unlikely to buy them. I do not see adverts on TV because I don't watch it, I don't see them online either. I also read to become aware of the tricks. It saves me more time this way.
I don't have an iPhone. I don't have a Mac, I try buy products that advertise less (like unheard of brands). I am a simpleton.
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
The biggest problem is sites that have articles spread across 15 different pages because 70% of each page is taken up by
1 Site banner
2 Section Banner
3 Ad banner
3 subsection banner
4 social networking/ list every fracking blog block
5 affiliates block
6 random ad blocks
7 multiple intra-site link blocks
8 brainless poll blocks
9 Rich media blocks
10 ect
11 audnauseum
Re:Translation (Score:5, Insightful)
Why aren't government scientists treated with as much skepticism as corporate scientists?
Re:Translation (Score:5, Insightful)
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Why aren't government scientists treated with as much skepticism as corporate scientists?
Man, it must be so nice to live in a world like yours, where the greed and corruption of corporate influence is completely invisible. You know, that world built on the bullshit meme about how "government scientists" have some agenda other than science. You know, all those snooty "intellectual elite" government scientists taking tax-payer money to come up with "theories" that debunk the "scientific" advances produced by hard-working American business scientists.
That said, if the Pepsico "scientists" have
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Who said I was not skeptical of the corporate scientists? Clearly they can not be always be trusted.
I was just pointing out how corporate scientists always get a bad rap and how government scientists tend to get a free pass.
But in fact government scientists have an interest in promoting ideas that free up more funds for their research. Also, as government employees/contractors, they have an interest in pleasing the source of their monies.
Basically it comes down to this. When a government scientist reaches c
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2, Insightful)
There's little incentive for government scientists studying nutrition, for instance, to come up with findings that indicate that a certain product is "nutritious" when it may not be.
Is that why the FDA produced a "food pyramid" which bases the diet on carbohydrates which we know and for centuries have known will cause heart disease and obesity in cases of overconsumption? And why the new revision of it is still overly carb-heavy, though they did reduce the percentage of carb content they recommend for their diet? Is it just simple coincidence that the original food pyramid came out about the same time as the plethora of processed foods hit the shelves? Is it a simple coincidence that M
Re:Translation (Score:4, Informative)
Re: (Score:2)
They (the FDA) represent themselves as being scientific.
Re: (Score:2)
non-rBGH milk tastes more like milk.
Re:Translation (Score:5, Insightful)
Is that why the FDA produced a "food pyramid" which bases the diet on carbohydrates which we know and for centuries have known will cause heart disease and obesity in cases of overconsumption?
Which for centuries were also what built civilizations before our age of abundance. Societies around the globe were built on carbs, whether wheat, or rice, or maize, or sorghum, or potatoes, or cassava, or ensete, or amaranth, or quinoa, or sago, or breadfruit, or plantain, or teff, or millet, or whatever. High carb foods are what sustained humanity throughout most of its existence. This is because we've known for centuries that those foods provide the large amounts of energy that the body needs to keep going, and in the case of the food pyramid, it is assumed that you're using that energy. You can't retcon a conspiracy because lifestyles changed.
that the FDA requires any dairy product which states that it does not use rBGH to carry a notice that the FDA has detected no difference between milk from cows with and without rBGH
There's an xkcd [xkcd.com] for everything.
which is an outright lie?
Got a strong source for that? And no, sites like this [naturalnews.com] are not valid citations.
Re:Translation (Score:4, Insightful)
This. Carbohydrates are not bad. The obesity epidemic of the past decade or two clearly has nothing to do with carbohydrates (alone).
Low-fiber foods that don't make you feel full? Sure.
Overly-refined foods packed with excessive sugar? Sure.
Beverages (including milk, but namely soda and "diet" soda) with as many calories as a meal? Sure.
Every time I see someone claim carboyhydrates are bad for you I put my face in my palm and shake my head slowly.
Re:Translation (Score:4, Insightful)
Yeah, I don't get the bad rap carb foods seem to be getting. I'm not a nutritionist, but it is my understanding that the deal with carbs is just that they are high in energy, and if you're burning a lot of energy, no problem. But today, we're not using all that energy, but we still want our carbs, and our fats, and our sugars, and in large quantities. We want our big greasy burger, and that pile of fries, and a nice cold soda to wash it down. And then the laws of physics rear their their ugly head. All those excess kcals have to go somewhere, and the body still thinks a lion could chase us away from our food supply at any second, so it won't poop them out, and they end up around our middles, and with that comes the problems associated with obesity. If you look at China, they've been eating large amounts of carb filled rice for so long, but only now, with the increased demand for the fats and oils and sugars to go with their rice do we see obesity really rising. The way I see it, there's nothing wrong with what carbs do, all they do is provide higher quantities of energy, just so long as you match your energy in with your energy out.
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
Low-fiber foods that don't make you feel full? Sure.
Fat and protein make you feel full. What's left? Carbs.
Overly-refined foods packed with excessive sugar? Sure.
What do you think sugar is? It's a carbohydrate.
Beverages (including milk, but namely soda and "diet" soda) with as many calories as a meal? Sure.
Milk? If you're drinking half and half, sure.
Soda? It's sweetened with glucose and fructose. Carbohydrates.
Diet soda? How many calories are in a diet soda? Go ahead, look it up.
Anyay, carbohydrates
Re:Translation (Score:4, Informative)
If by 55% you mean 11%. [self.com] So does white wheat flour [self.com]. Quinoa comes in at 15%, [self.com] although it can be higher, so it's a good source of protein, and it has a lot more essential amino acids than most things, so it's a good crop for sure, but it is still akin to a carbohydrate staple food.
Re:Translation (Score:5, Insightful)
Is that why the FDA produced a "food pyramid" which bases the diet on carbohydrates...?
The "Food Pyramid" is not published by the FDA. It's published by the USDA, whose mission is to promote American agriculture. Their pyramid is basically an ad campaign masquerading as a public service.
Re:Translation (Score:4, Interesting)
If you look at other countries, you will see that they got their food pyramids at around the same time. Were they influence by Monsanto, too? All of them?
Which is different from fat how, exactly? The claim that excessive consumption of fat does not cause heart disease and obesity is a rather modern one. And it's a wrong one. And it's a product of the immensely profitable health fad industry.
Regarding labeling, that's a case of regulatory capture [wikipedia.org]. Blaming that on the evil of government scientists is a bit far fetched.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
Re: (Score:2)
Well, it would help if they didn't miscategorise PepsiCo products by putting them under Nutrition. Candy Engineering would (possibly) have been acceptable.
Re: (Score:2, Insightful)
Stick it to the man bro ! Down with capitalist pig science and invention ! Let the state do it !
Say, who turned out the lights [wikipedia.org] ? Hmmm, the phone's not working [wikipedia.org] ... where's my cell phone ? [wikipedia.org].
Frankly even the more "abstract" science largely 0comes from 1 of 2 sources : "scientists" who were really businessmen first and scientist second (or third, or fourth, in most cases), and the church. Massive government sponsorship for science is mostly less than a century old (and already they have a monopoly).
That's why it
how to do it (Score:4, Insightful)
Re: (Score:2, Insightful)
I'd say there's nothing wrong with paid-for blog instead of the usual publishing route... because the peer review should still take place.
I can say whatever bo**ocks I want on /. and someone will tell me I'm wrong - fine. I can put up my own blog and say the same bull with comments disabled, that's fine. But I could pay /. to post my comments, and all's good - if people can still say I'm wrong.
(cue the 'wits' replying with the obvious now :)
So the paid-for aspect only becomes a problem if there's some coerc
Re: (Score:2, Insightful)
Re: (Score:2)
what's the problem? (Score:2, Insightful)
Everything was fully disclosed and on the up and up. Are Pepsi scientists to be shunned just because they work for Pepsi? What am I missing here?
Re: (Score:2)
What am I missing here?
The fact that corporate propaganda has no place in a community dedicated to exchange of information and ideas, uncolored by the pursuit of profit?
Re: (Score:2)
ScienceBlogs is supposed to be a place for creative, and sometimes controversial, opinions. My favorite ones are Respectful Insolence and Tomorrow's Table, and all the time, you read things there that plenty of people would get all in a huff about. Does anyone think the Pepsi blog would do that? Do you think they would ever once mention the insanity of the anti-vax movement, or the senselessness of the 9/11 truthers, or call alternative medicine purveyors out on their incoherent conspiracies? Think the
Re: (Score:2, Insightful)
What am I missing here?
It's a blog posting and not a paper in a peer reviewed journal. And considering how the internet works, many folks would pick up on that blog post and cite it as fact.
It would be equivalent to a cigarette company scientist posting things on a blog about the health effects of smoking.
So it's like Wikipedia. I don't see the problem. You talk as if you are trying to protect stupid people from themselves. I'd prefer if we let people read all sources, determine the veracity of those sources themselves, and make up their own damn mind about things. You know, freedom of speech, press, religion...
Re: (Score:2)
Pepsi scientists? WTF
Sir, I will have you know that I received my Ph.D in Pepsiology(tm) at PepsiCo(tm) University(R). My paper "Why the masses find Pepsi(tm) so Delicious(R)" is considered to be the seminal work on separating suckers from their money.
Asinine (Score:4, Insightful)
While these are important questions, it should be obvious from their past behavior that PepsiCo as an organization is not interested in any layman's definition of "nutrition."
High fructose corn syrup in EVERYTHING, food products that boil down to simple carbs, trans fats and salt, and beverages that are little more than sugar water with some caramel coloring. This is a company designed to maximize profit by exploiting the still-ingrained hunter-gatherer instincts in us all, and what of the externalities associated with a lifestyle of chugging soft drinks and pounding Cheetos and Fritos? Fuck it.
These guys deserve greater scrutiny than the tobacco companies, and to wail about their trials and tribulations attempting to engage a public that is becoming more health conscious after foisting products upon them that encourage obesity, high blood pressure, and compulsive consumption is the highest form of absurdity.
Re:Asinine (Score:5, Insightful)
I'm very sorry that a can of Pepsi killed your mother and molested your dog, but don't you think that perhaps this much anger directed toward a company that produces junk food is a little unwarranted?
They provide something that people want, then you rage at THEM for that? If no one was buying their product then they wouldn't be in business, so how about directing a little bit of that ranting in the direction of the general public that supports them, because last time I checked no one is marching into people's homes and forcing cola down people's throats.
Foisting it upon them? Please
Re:Asinine (Score:5, Insightful)
Ah, you're one of those "free will" types who believes people are rational actors. Quaint.
While each person certainly bears personal responsibility for his actions, psychology hasn't given us the notion of the enabler for kicks. Social responsibility starts at the top.
I also take issue with your claims that people "want" corn so processed it retains zero nutritional value, fats so perverted the body can barely process them, and sugar that is heavily biased towards being stored as fat rather than burned that then creates a depressed insulin response and the near-instant desire for more. Their "food" is the equivalent to crack, heavily engineered to maximize appeal and shelf-life at the expense of its resemblance to genuine nutrition. Nobody benefited from the switch away from sucrose and unprocessed oils except their executives.
Also, while my wording is strong, your speculation on my emotional state says more about yours. What's got you defending the purveyors of food that have had a heavy hand in the worldwide increase in obesity, diabetes, and all sorts of other fun chronic conditions that we all pay for in the end?
I am not angry that they sell what they do. I am irritated that they sell what they do and pretend there's any nutritional value to it, and I am bitterly amused by you folks with no appreciation for the malleability of the average consumer's mind.
Want (Score:2)
I also take issue with your claims that people "want" corn so processed it retains zero nutritional value, fats so perverted the body can barely process them, and sugar that is heavily biased towards being stored as fat rather than burned that then creates a depressed insulin response and the near-instant desire for more.
Yes, they do "want". They want crack, they want meth. We all want that stuff. It's just that some folks don't know about the consequences, and some know and are willing to suffer them.
And then we, as a society, pay for it.
Nanny-state my ass. We need a stingy state. A real attention to lowering government costs, instead of the phony one we're always being sold. We need to tax the crap out of this junk to save ourselves some money. If the consumer wants something which screws society, then they can pay
Re:Asinine (Score:5, Interesting)
They probably shouldn't.
There's increasing evidence that... well, there's just no point to arguing because people's internalized beliefs are fairly static.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2010/jul/03/confirmation-bias-scientific-evidence [guardian.co.uk]
"The classic paper on the last of those strategies is from Lord, Ross and Lepper in 1979: they took two groups of people, one in favour of the death penalty, the other against it, and then presented each with a piece of scientific evidence that supported their pre-existing view, and a piece that challenged it; murder rates went up or down, for example, after the abolition of capital punishment in a state.
The results were as you might imagine. Each group found extensive methodological holes in the evidence they disagreed with, but ignored the very same holes in the evidence that reinforced their views."
But that doesn't make the arguing less fun!
Re:Asinine (Score:5, Funny)
I used to think that people's point of view was malleable, but the study you linked to convinced me otherwise. I have therefore changed my mind.
Re: (Score:2)
Posts like yours make me sad we can't at least do some sort of non-mod upvoting on slashdot.
Re:Asinine (Score:5, Insightful)
Years ago, I was amused and horrified when I went to a talk by Carl Schank. He was saying that people don't think when they converse. Instead, they just listen for key words and index those to stories they can reply with, such that a conversation is just one story after another, related only by key words, not key ideas.
One of the people listening to the talk said "Well, but right now, I'm asking you a question about your comment. How does that fit? it seems like I'm thinking about what you say, and reacting to the ideas, rather than simply repeating a story."
Schank waves his hands and says, approximately, "No, no, no. I'm not talking about us, here. I'm talking about Them. You know, normal people."
So much for that theory. Only not. Because the theory and the study actually still holds, to some extent. It holds with dumb people most of the time, and smart people some of the time. We can all be rational actors when we want to exert that effort. The problem is that it's an effort.
For some people it's really, really hard, and for other's it's not so hard. We need to teach people to do it more, and we need to understand that they don't do it a lot of the time and react/legislate accordingly. You cannot argue that people are 100% rational actors and thus we should get the hell out of their way, and you cannot argue that people are lemmings, and we need to make a safe cage for them. To do either is a rhetorical trick to prevent action.
Re:Asinine (Score:5, Funny)
I'm very sorry that a can of Pepsi killed your mother and molested your dog
NO! The can molested my mother and killed my dog, you insensitive clod!
Then it ate my cat!
I'll get you, can!
CAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAN!!!!!!!!!
Re: (Score:2)
High fructose corn syrup in EVERYTHING, food products that boil down to simple carbs, trans fats and salt, and beverages that are little more than sugar water with some caramel coloring. This is a company designed to maximize profit by exploiting the still-ingrained hunter-gatherer instincts in us all, and what of the externalities associated with a lifestyle of chugging soft drinks and pounding Cheetos and Fritos?
I was taught that there are four major food groups: salt, sugar, fat and starch . . .
If our hunter-gatherer ancestors went out looking for Pepsi . . . I don't think that much of civilization as we know it would be around.
Hmm . . . what a question for them? "Do you want a Mammoth for dinner, or should I just pick up some packs of Cheetos and Fritos?"
Cue to alien archeologists in the future scratching their heads, and saying "This species seemed to die out, because of diabetes and heart disease . . . how
Re:Asinine (Score:5, Insightful)
I don't think the HFCS issue you americans suffer from is Pepsi's fault, in other continents they use different sources of sugar, it's just that your government has decided to make corn so cheap that using other sources of sweetness becomes financially unsound, if consumers were actually willing to pay more for non HFCS soft drinks I'm sure you'd see them on the market as the soft drink companies have no inherent interest in serving you bad sugar, they just want to sell soft drinks.
Re:Asinine (Score:4, Informative)
It's actually the government's fault, Nixon's fault to be precise.
You should watch this presentation [youtube.com] on fructose if you are interested to find out why exactly the fructose is a poison equivalent to ethanol (alcohol) and how it kills you slowly in the same way and causes obesity and other diseases in humans.
What is interesting is how this came about, by the Nixon's government deciding that they want to eliminate food prices as an issue for reelection. Nixon - the same guy responsible for getting away from sound money (gold standard), they same guy setting up minimum wage laws, while opening the job market to China, the same guy who destroyed the working health insurance for people by getting government subsidies into it and causing the insurance prices to skyrocket, this guy is also responsible for the deteriorating health of the humans in this world through consumption of fructose.
By fixing food prices to make them 'stable', he caused the food producers to start searching for new and exciting ways of using the cheapest ingredients available, obviously that would be the most subsidized ingredients - corn, soy, wheat, rice (cotton as well, but that's not food.)
By getting government into health insurance (CHIP), he created a moral hazard for the medical establishment that allowed it to spike the prices up, which happens only when government guarantees to pay, same problem with government loans for higher education - prices shoot up.
By creating minimum wage laws the jobs below the minimum wage disappeared, this increases unemployment and kills entire segments of jobs (does anybody check your oil and tire pressure at a gas station anymore?) Doing this while opening trade with the cheapest provider of labor is asking for destruction of your own production capacity, which is the real reason behind the economy going south.
Nixon was an interesting fella, he allowed the special interests to dominate and to take over.
Re: (Score:2)
Corn syrup began replacing cane sugar in World War II - because of wartime rationing and losses of freighters to the U-Boats prowling the Atlantic and Gulf coasts.
Re: (Score:2)
Well, of-course corn syrup was used before, that is not what the argument is. The argument is that fixing of the food prices lead to the industry searching for the cheapest ingredients to replace normal ingredients in all processed foods, while at the same time getting rid of a very important food element (which you will not find in the government's 'food triangle' structure): Fiber. Fiber lets your body to process the sugars better leading to less harm, but it is difficult to keep on the shelves forever.
Re: (Score:2)
And by the way, there is nothing that is a flamebait in the parent post, it is in fact informative. Check out the link that is found there, the link to a presentation on the dangers of fructose by a scientist studying the effects of it.
I understand that any deviation from the 'norm' here is considered a flamebait, the norm being that government cannot do wrong by setting policies, as long as the policies are about spending. What the people miss about these policies are the reasons to why they are set (pol
Re:Asinine (Score:5, Interesting)
No, there is no reason to stop eating fruit. If you'd watched the linked video on sugar, you would know that it's only when the liver is overwhelmed with fructose that it freaks out and follows the pathway to convert the fructose into a harmful substance. In small, slowly absorbed doses, fructose is converted to glycogen in the liver where it's used for fuel. Eating 2 or 3 apples, not a worry. Drinking a few cans of pop, and that's an equivalent fructose dose of 20 or 30 apples, and all that fructose is going to hit the liver faster than it would take to digest even half of a whole apple.
Re: (Score:2)
Nixon - the same guy responsible for getting away from sound money (gold standard), they same guy setting up minimum wage laws, while opening the job market to China, the same guy who destroyed the working health insurance for people by getting government subsidies into it and causing the insurance prices to skyrocket, this guy is also responsible for the deteriorating health of the humans in this world through consumption of fructose.
I think he was also the same guy who legalized run-on sentences.
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
Nixon - the same guy responsible for getting away from sound money (gold standard)
Nixon gave it the final death blow, but FDR killed the gold/silver certificate in 1933. Truman later agreed to the Bretton Woods Agreement, in which foreign currencies were fixed to US dollars, effectively making the dollar the world's standard. During Vietnam (which France had actually helped cause), France ended up draining the gold reserves backing the US dollars, ultimately leading to Nixon's decision to permanently cease the gold standard.
they same guy setting up minimum wage laws
Again, minimum wage laws, as well as wage and price controls, st
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
Some of us will pay more. Until I see a "Hecho en Mexico" sticker on a bottle of Coca-Cola, I won't buy it. The bottlers there use sugar, while US bottlers use HFCS.
'course, they also use a different recipe, which is probably why you prefer it.
I used to think Canada didn't use HFCS in it's Coke. "But I prefer the taste!" I would say, and that's certainly true. But it has fuck-all to do with the sugar, because they use HFCS here, too. What they *do* do is use a different recipe in Canada, though, hence th
Re:Asinine, how corporate forces shape thinking (Score:2)
Parent's comment is spot on. Please, (if you are so inclined), take a gander at the book "Fat land : how Americans became the fattest people in the world" by Greg Critser.
This book details exactly how the USA's food industries stopped being mainly suppliers of food, but instead learned to market by "addiction stimulation profiles", focusing on how to get people to eat not just more, but much much more. And in the process added chemically prepared materials to the food to enhance those addictive properties
Re: (Score:2)
I believe you misunderstand.
My problem is not specifically with the products they sell. My problem is with them presenting the products they sell as nutritious, an intellectually dishonest position at best and outright fraud at worst. Their track record shows a long-term trend of their products becoming significantly less nutritious yet more economical to produce.
Surely as a pathological free-marketeer you agree that a functional free market depends on consumers having access to good information? Perhaps co
Re: That question at the end (Score:5, Informative)
Not by paying Seed/Scienceblogs, that's for sure. How about publishing papers if you have a scientific point to make? Or, if you want to avoid the formality of those, how about a blog at science.pepsi.com? Let the content speak for itself without paying anyone to get a ride on their reputation.
But the real question Seed is faced with is probably "How are we supposed to make money from ScienceBlogs if you won't let us sell out to a company that's probably killing more people than Philip Morris ever did?"
White Paper ads (Score:2)
"How do companies who seek genuine dialogue with this community engage?"
Many sites publish such material as a "white paper", and display links to it like any other ad. Ad-blockers don't often match on these.
Re: (Score:2)
False equivalence here: PepsiCo are not so ridiculously dependent on killing people as the tobacco industry, or even the alcohol industry is.
Tobacco companies would lose virtually 100% of their business if all harmful use of their product stopped tomorrow.
Alcohol companies would lose maybe 80%.
How much would general food producers (Pepsico, Kraft, Nestlé) lose? I don't know, but not nearly as much.
Current list and other details (Score:5, Informative)
Easy Answer (Score:2, Insightful)
"How do we empower top scientists working in industry to lead science-minded positive change within their organizations? ... How do companies who seek genuine dialogue with this community engage?"
The answer is:
Said "top scientists working in industry" are welcome to do all of the above, and should be encouraged to do so in fact, but the determining factor of whether their work is published should be one purely of merit; not payment for publicity or any other form of bribe that results in direct gain to the publisher.
Legitimate Blogs? (Score:2)
It is funny how the article complains on how the PepsiCo blog detracts from "legitimate blogs". So now we are casting blogs as a legitimate source of information? Probably 98% of blogs are personal opinions with no factual, scientific basis.
It would be like holding Wikipedia up as the definitive source of accurate information on everything and ignoring the genuine work of researchers and scientists.
I do not put much credence in anything posted in a blog. Most are merely entertaining, scandalous or based upo
Re: (Score:2)
It is funny how the article complains on how the PepsiCo blog detracts from "legitimate blogs". So now we are casting blogs as a legitimate source of information? Probably 98% of blogs are personal opinions with no factual, scientific basis.
You're making the logical fallacies of the appeal to authority and the argumentum ad populum. "Official", established news sources are filled with propaganda, while the fact that the majority of blogs are bullshit has no bearing whatsoever on the others. Nice try though.
It would be like holding Wikipedia up as the definitive source of accurate information on everything and ignoring the genuine work of researchers and scientists.
Wikipedia is more accurate than the EB. Holding up the bad Wikipedia articles and claiming that they invalidate Wikipedia is yet another logical fallacy, I believe inductive but I still need to practice identification of fallacies more. Howe
Re: (Score:2)
It would be like holding Wikipedia up as the definitive source of accurate information on everything and ignoring the genuine work of researchers and scientists.
Wikipedia is more accurate than the EB. Holding up the bad Wikipedia articles and claiming that they invalidate Wikipedia is yet another logical fallacy, I believe inductive but I still need to practice identification of fallacies more. However, I can smell one a mile away.
Who said anything about EB?
Re: (Score:2)
Probably 98% of blogs are personal opinions with no factual, scientific basis.
How does that differ even a little bit from what you read in a newspaper or see on TV?
It's always up to the reader to critically analyze what information they receive.
Re: (Score:2)
And what makes you think the situation for traditional media sources is any better? Personally, I think blogs do a far better job than traditional media sources in providing high quality, relevant and original content.
Not clear what the problem is (Score:2)
I'm not sure what happened here that was so bad. Isn't the whole point of science to judge people on the merits of their work? Why should it matter if they work for PepsiCo or not? Just look at the work and judge it on its own. If it's crap, say it's crap, and why it's crap. Don't just ignore them out-of-hand due to who their employer was. I can't even find the PepsiCo blog to read it to see what was so terrible about it, and everything I read just says "IT WAS FROM AN EVIL CORPORATION" which doesn't say sh
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
High quality science can come out of corporate labs, but only when it is in the interests of the company. There is little doubt that PepsiCo scientists are well aware of the health effects of their companies products, but there isn't a snowball's chance in a sauna that such information will
Re: (Score:2)
So what if it's in the interest of PepsiCo? That doesn't exclude it from being in the interests of anyone else. And as long as people made logical, well reasoned rebuttals, and as long as those rebuttals aren't censored, then all we have is an opportunity to gain from their posts, even if the gain is entirely in discrediting them publicly.
Re: (Score:2)
The thing is, Pepsi has their own website. They can publish whatever they want there and earn their reputation, the same as everybody else. In this case, they were trying to purchase credibility from a site that had a good reputation.
Re: (Score:2)
Then their posts should have stood on their own merit (or lack thereof, whatever the case may be).
Mucha ado... (Score:5, Insightful)
If they are open about the source of the material and that it is paid I really don't see anything wrong with it. Readers will be aware that the blog is coming from a specific viewpoint and source; and can decide how much credibility they have and what biases may exist. To me, it's better than the blogger who may have an unrevealed conflict of interest or bias yet presents their viewpoint as factual and unbiased.
The broader issue is, as pointed out, how do you engage with the broader public? Scientific papers are nice but most people never know they exist, let alone read them. An open forum allows a level of interaction and skeptical inquiry that rarely exists today; cutting that off is not very useful. Of course, the cynic in me thinks there are people, on both sides, who don't desire such rational discussion since it may go against long held positions and point out fallacies in those positions. Silencing a messenger is teh easist way to prevent the message from being delivered.
"commercials" (Score:2)
The broader issue is, as pointed out, how do you engage with the broader public?
Seriously? Did you seriously ask this? The place where Pepsi would get their message out the easiest and to the most people who count would be through television commercials. Maybe at the end of the commercial tell people to check out the "facts" at pepsi-health.com.
This is straight forward. People know what it is. It also doesn't feel as sneaky as some other methods where they try to pass off the tests as having been done by someone else. I'm sure you remember the commercials talking about eggs having
Re: (Score:2)
Commercials are the domain for companies to get their message out.
How about: paid advertising is the domain for companies to get their message out. This includes not just television commercials, but also radio commercials, magazine ads, newspaper ads, billboards... ...and paid ads on web sites.
If the ad is clearly marked as such, I don't see a problem with this. Newspapers run ads that resemble news stories all the time, and to avoid confusion they mark them as "PAID ADVERTISEMENT" at the top. ScienceBlogs.com can do the same. As long as everything is clear and out i
"dialogue" (Ha!) (Score:2, Insightful)
What a deceitful framing of the issue. (Score:2, Insightful)
How do we empower top scientists working in industry to lead science-minded positive change within their organizations? ... How do companies who seek genuine dialogue with this community engage?
It's rather simple: open your blog network to scientists who work in industry, which you already do.
It's rather dishonest to claim that the backlash from your sell-out of the site has the effect of preventing industry scientists to engage in "genuine dialogue" with the broad scientific community. If anything prevents this engagement, it's the draconian IP protection rules companies impose to their R&D staff. If a company is genuinely interested in a dialogue and not disguised propaganda, they can simply
What is the actual uproar about? (Score:3, Interesting)
It seems that most of the rants on this story are with regard to PepsiCo being paid to post on the blog. Does that mean there would not be any of this uproar if they blogged for free? Of course this assumes the other bloggers aren't paid, either. Because if they are, then who is to protect us from their paid agenda?
However, if one looks at the original question posed: "How do companies who seek genuine dialogue with this community engage?" then it seems somewhat hypocritical to suggest that the only way professional researches who work for a corporation should only be allowed to publish papers into the scientific community, when they already reach that audience and not the general public. And besides, why should this standard only apply to corporate researchers? Government researchers and those in colleges and universities also have a lot at stake in pushing their own agendas.
I guess what is really at stake here is whether or not this blog site is for the general public or limited to the scientific community. If the latter, aren't scientists and researchers able to discern between what is propaganda or not in their field? And if it is for the scientific community, wouldn't a simple disclosure of the work relationship suffice, like it does in presenting research papers?
On the other hand, if the site is for the general population to obtain information, then why is it alright for /. for instance, to have professionals in their field to submit stories or comment on stories related to their field. Aren't these posters also tied to some corporation, government or university?
Of course is sites like ./ or Scieneblogs only allowed non-professionals to post and comment, then they really wouldn't be too useful, would they? Who would use WebMD if the only sources were not from the professional medical community?
It seems that either the issue is about paid renumeration for content or the content itself. If the purpose of the blog (or even /.) is to allow the free (as in beer) discussion of ideas, then the content should be allowed regardless of renumeration or not. If on the other hand, the concern is that content may be tainted by the contributors ties to industry (or government, etc.) then why just single out content from industry and not other tainted sources. Of course, if all of those tainted sources were screened out, then where would the news and information on such sites actually come from?
It's is kind of funny that people at Scienceblog resigned over this, based on tainted content. I guess their readers and posters aren't sophisticated enough to discriminate between real science and fluff. /.ers on the other hand seem much more capable of picking apart a scientific article, pointing out insufficiencies and down right falsehoods -- and I'm pretty sure to say that we (/.ers) aren't all professionals.
Maybe, some of the responses to this article are correct. If you work for industry, government or educational institutions, you should only rely on officially publishing research to get your message out. Of course, they would then have to ignore who is funding the research in the first place as that might lend bias to author's paper.
In the end, I am glad that /. allows the free dissemination of information without censoring the source, thus allowing the community to accept or reject the information presented.
Pot, Kettle.. black? (Score:4, Insightful)
Unless every writer on the site does it for free with absolutely no compensation for their effort -- then they too are advertising -- 'themselves'.
Granted the pepsiblog would probably have been terrible, but it's just another form of advertising.. But before you get all high and mighty, consider National Geographic, which regularly has _TERRIBLE_ borderline scam advertisements (Amish fake-fireplace, $2 bills for $10 + 5/s&h..) they still have great content that is basically subsidized by the worst elements of marketing.
It's easy to get all pissed off at someone for wanting to cash in a little bit, but if it means the difference between them providing a service, or providing no service.. there's not a lot of ways it can go unless they start charging YOU for reading their content.
Funny, Slashdot is more critical than actual site (Score:3)
I just spent the better part of an hour reading the posts actually on Scienceblogs regarding all of this and with the exception of two other bloggers who quit blogging over this, most posters are thinking it was a "knee jerk" reaction and PepsiCo shouldn't have been pulled without first seeing what was actually being posted by them. There seemed to be a real desire by many on the site to here from PepsiCo's R&D scientist on various topics, but they now concede it is unlikely that something like that will every happen.
The most interesting question posed was why people weren't so upset about CoKe blogging on the site. Anyway, from the postings on the site, it seems to be much less scandalous than it does here on /.
Re: (Score:2)
Don't be a whore ?, remember when people put things on the Web out of passion not greed ?
Ahh... The grand old days of geocities! Those were the days... Wait a minute... Most of those pages sucked! Of course most pages today suck! So when were the good days again?
Re: (Score:2, Insightful)
Then get on there, with some facts and figures, and change it. I am So Very Tired of people claiming science has political leanings. Science isn't left or right, science IS. If you can't prove that they are wrong, or show logical steps that they are missing in their conclusion, then they are right and you are wrong, until you can prove otherwise. It's okay to be wrong sometimes.
Re: (Score:2)
Really? Science is?
Science has no politics, no culture? It is to laugh.
You're confusing science with the real world. The real world is. Science is a lens through which we discover aspects of the real world. That lens, its color and refractive index, and the direction it points are the result of human choices about what, in the terms used by the gang opposed to the pepsico blog, "is legitimate".
Politics and culture deeply affect both what science is chosen for doing (can you say stem-cell research, human tri
Re: (Score:2)
"LeftScienceBlog" it's funny, because science has real left leaning.
Several corporations have successfully sponsored projects on ScienceBlogs: "Collective Imagination" sponsored by GE and "The Energy Grid" sponsored by Shell. But both of these projects were written by independent bloggers, not by companies' PR stuff like in this case.
PS: I'm a regular Scienceblogs reader. And I rely on their frontpage to show interesting stories from blogs that I don't follow in my RSS feeds.
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
A Pepsi site would have zero credibility - at first. Science is science, doesn't matter who is doing it or why. Publish your results and let others scrutinize and try to replicate the results. Pepsi could indeed build a positive reputation for research, much in the same way that Bell Labs did so many years ago.
Re: (Score:2)
> "How do we empower top scientists working in industry to lead science-minded > positive change within their organizations?
You don't. There are no top scientists working in industry. Anyone working in industry who is not a downtrodden oppressed worker is by definition a despicable tool of the esploiters. (except the executives. They're demons).
I like this new word "esploiters". I guess an "esploiter" is a Spanish tyrant. So what I take away from your post is that we need Zorro again. Awesome. I have my father's hate, which needs reblocking...