Blowout at ScienceBlogs | Giovanna Di Sauro

Blowout at ScienceBlogs – and why it should matter to you

July 26th, 2010 | Published in Blogging, Science | View blog reactions

Who would have thought… ScienceBlogs, the most well-known science blogging community around, seems to be falling apart. Although I doubt that this is the end of ScienceBlogs, some recent departures will have an impact on the science blogosphere. I for one have two simple questions: what will happen to ResearchBlogging? Is the Open Laboratory going to be moving with Bora?

Why should it concern me, may you ask? For two reasons: the impact on media visibility of accessible and high-quality science commentaries generated by bloggers, and in general how this crisis is another reminder that certain potentially damaging corporate approaches to crisis management are still alive and well.

Let’s talk about the first concern: researchers (and science bloggers) are a pretty individualist bunch. ScienceBlogs gave bloggers a chance to create a community of high-quality blogs, but it also gave the readers a chance to learn a lot by going to one place… it was the “supermarket of science blogging”. And, given that science and scientists have a notoriously hard time penetrating the mainstream media, this gave them a chance to gain visibility, as well as to organize themselves. I might be wrong, but it felt like it was the nature of the interactions among bloggers at ScienceBlogs that promoted the birth of ResearchBlogging.

What about the second concern? Corporate over at SB made the usual mistake: they wanted a piece of yummy pie (or should I say, pop) and, because of their gluttony, avoided consulting their bloggers (who, I am sure, they knew might have disapproved of their plans). So they just tried to fly things under everyone’s radar, and introduced a full-blown corporate food science blog fully written by PepsiCo as a new ScienceBlog. I am sure that this would have been fine, if only this blog were treated for what it is – a form of advertising.

What surprised me quite unpleasantly is the obvious fracture between the bloggers and their direct SB contacts (the “overlords”, as they are called), and SMG corporate. This would normally not surprise anyone: most corporate structures still think of opacity as a professional value to be upheld, no matter what. However, what is surprising is that they still thought they could get away with this while dealing with a bunch of freethinking, outspoken bloggers – bloggers who are the only reason why SB can exist in the first place! This is not just an oversight, it’s a bad case of cataracts.

Needless to say, I am sure that SB will keep going, just like Bora and other bloggers will. Science blog networks, which were strongly inspired by ScienceBlogs, will keep popping up, even though it is becoming evident that such networks do require a serious investment in IT to run efficiently. But IT is not enough, as managing networks requires a management mentality not fully understood (or even feared) by many corporate hierarchies: it requires true communication, honesty and transparency, especially during harder times.

When it comes to human networks, lip service to communication and transparency just won’t do: we are wired to spot “cheaters” and, if we perceive anyone to be cheating, we will attempt to do what we can to make sure they do not get rewarded for it. Bora and others felt deprived of their credibility, and lost trust in the SB exec: their departure was only the very human and logical consequence of that perception.

Evidence-based decision seems to be having a really hard time climbing up that corporate ladder, even at Science Blogs. How could have this been managed better?

The first step of crisis management is to avoid crisis altogether. You have quality control systems in place, internal/employee communications, etc. All of these aim at avoiding crisis from emerging. Crisis, however, usually emerge because there are opposing interests at work, and one of them is given privilege over the other at all costs. This is an obviously unsustainable way of managing any business. Let’s take this fiasco as an example:

Bloggers’ interests: transparency, honesty, free speech, and a (small but regular) paycheck, proportional to their blog traffic;
Corporate’s interests: profit profit profit.

The crisis has a chance to bud when these interests are seen as opposing, not complementing each other. We could make countless other examples where the two interests which are seen as competing are safety and profit (BP and Toyota anyone?), but this is the general idea.

Here is the tricky part: these interests are usually not at odds with each other. However, one might involve an expense in the short term, while the other is mistakenly seen as involving no expenses. Just because your aim is called “profit”, it does not mean that reaching it will not involve any expenses. Moreover, financial profit per se is something that is net of any expenses, not something that does not require any expenses whatsoever.

Before you start saying that what I just said is obvious, think again. This is the thinking that leads to crises:

Expense = expense; profit = earnings – expenses

This is, instead, reality:

expense = expenses, some of which are necessary, and some of which can actually increase your profit in the long run; profit = earnings – expenses (where expenses are necessarily different from zero)

Often one thinks that all you need to get there is one or both of these two things: eliminate expenses (ideally to zero) and increase your earnings (ideally indefinitely). The problem with this is that earnings do not emerge out of thin air (unless you are dealing with derivatives): they are something generated out of someone’s work, something that has a cost associated with it. In a way, that cost is the only reason why you can end up with earnings at all at the end of the day. Maths will not tell you this, as you can have expenses = zero and the equation will do just fine.

In this case, bloggers are a cost, and their ideas could be perceived as hard to handle. But those ideas are the reason why the business and its earnings exist in the first place! You cannot have those earnings without those bloggers, and therefore those ideas being churned out. Not paying your bloggers and trying to sneak past them is not the way to increase your profits – it is the way to land into a sure crisis. And it is unsustainable in the long run.

Further Reading: a brief roundup of the ScienceBlogs fiasco