(Updated July 22, 2010 — been hard to keep up with all the changes! Let me know if I have left anyone out.)
Update: The strike is over! SEED seems to have agreed to the changes requested.
BIG Update: PZ Myers of Pharyngula is going on strike until SEED makes changes both in its communication policies and improves its technical support! (Greg Laden joins the strike.)
Update: Food Frontiers is officially off of Scienceblogs. It remains to be seen how this will affect the bloggers’ decision to stay or go — some have already stated that they won’t be coming back.
If you haven’t heard, the Scienceblogs community has gone through a tremendous upheaval over a short span of 24 hours, with a number of their best science writers basically resigning from the community in protest. The spark that ignited the powderkeg was the introduction of a corporate paid for and sponsored blog to the science blogging mix, Food Frontiers: a blog by PepsiCo on nutrition, of all things! This has been seen by many, if not most, of the bloggers as corporate propaganda masquerading as legitimate science, which hurts the reputation of said bloggers and corrupts the integrity of the system.
I don’t have enough of an understanding of the details to make a strong statement about the controversy here (at the very least, the whole thing seems like a very big PR clusterf#$k on the part of SEED). Right now I can understand the arguments of both those who have chosen to stay at SBs and those who have chosen to move on to, or rather back to, independent blogging. I did want to say that I support all of the Sciencebloggers and feel your pain right now (hell, the whole thing has made me anxious, and I have no association with SBs!).
I also wanted to help out those who have departed by throwing a few links towards their new/old homes!
- Abel Pharmboy of Terra Sigillata has left SBs, and will for now be taking up residence on wordpress.
- Mike Dunford of The Questionable Authority has departed SBs, with no word yet on new digs.
- Grrlscientist of Living the Scientific Life has left SBs; no clear final destination for her yet, but she can be found on her Nature Network blog and her long-dormant wordpress site.
- Deborah Blum of Speakeasy Science has left SBs and returned to her old blog.
- Maryn McKenna of Superbug has left SBs and has shifted over to Superbug.
- Suzanne Franks of Thus Spake Zuska has left SBs and has moved over to wordpress.
- PalMD of White Coat Underground has left SBs; for now, he will be at his former wordpress site.
- Bora Zivkovic of A Blog Around the Clock has left SBs; he will be, at least temporarily, blogging on wordpress.
- Travis Saunders and Peter Janiszewski of Obesity Panacea have left SBs and have returned to their original site.
- Anne Jefferson and Chris Rowan of Highly Allochthonous have found a new home for their blog within the brand-new domain name all-geo.org.
- Eric Michael Johnson of The Primate Diaries has decided to leave SBs; he doesn’t have a new home yet, but can be found on his Twitter and Facebook accounts. He is in the midst of an “exile” tour of various other scienceblogs, including this one!
- Blake Stacey of Science After Sunclipse has returned to his original wordpress blog.
- Scicurious of Neurotopia has returned to her site at are you scicurious?
- Brian Switek hasn’t decided where he’ll end up permanently. In the meantime, he is posting on his author page for his upcoming book, and also writing posts for Dinosaur Tracking for the Smithsonian.
- David Dobbs is now at Neuron Culture.
- Dave Bacon, The Quantum Pontiff, has returned to his original blog in a move only partly related to Pepsi.
- Alex Wild of Myrmecos returning to his old site.
- Rebecca Skloot of Culture Dish has, at least for the moment, moved her blog to her personal site.
- Mark Chu-Carroll of Good Math, Bad Math is officially leaving Scienceblogs.
People who were undecided but seem to be staying (for now):
- Mike, the Mad Biologist has tentatively decided to stay with SBs.
- Class M has decided to stay with SBs in light of the reversal regarding PepsiCo.
- Eruptions has tentatively decided to stay with SBs.
- The Thoughtful Animal is “cautiously optimistic” about SBs and has decided to stay.
- Causaubon’s Book feels that management exceeded her expectations in fixing the mess and is back to work.
I’ll try and update this when I hear more about where folks are ending up…
Note: Carl Zimmer is also keeping a list of evacuees here.
Skulls in the Stars 
Thanks for sending a link my way; I’m not sure when I’ll be using my WordPress site to any serious extent (or if I’ll set up a new one, etc.), but it’s appreciated.
It’s possible that the SEED management will get this whole thing sorted out, to the satisfaction of those who haven’t yet made up their minds. (I’ve already seen some changes on the labelling of the blog-shaped advertisement.) The whole thing was managed so incompetently, though, that what might’ve been a necessary evil turned into a serious cluster#%$#!! all around. Any style of management which can lead to that once can lead to it again . . . and I have no interest in going through an acrimonious mess like this, six months or a year from now.
So, good luck to the people staying — and to the folks who’re leaving, let’s do lunch sometime! (-:
I’m partly linking to your old site in the hope that you’ll get off your tush and start posting stuff again! 🙂
I’ve got something much better than a blog post in the works, which I hope to be able to tell everybody about, sooner rather than later.
But… but… you’ll still blog about it, right?
Well, of course. How else will I gloat?
I can add the following:
Going on hiatus while thinking about it all:
Eruptions
Casaubon’s Book
Class M
Mike, the Mad Biologist
Alex Wild of Myrmecos returning to his old site http://myrmecos.wordpress.com/
Mark Chu-Carrol of Good Math, Bad Math quitting, no word where he’s going
Rebecca Skloot of Culture Dish will be at her personal & business site http://rebeccaskloot.com/news/
GrrlScientist of Living the Scientific Life (Scientist, Interrupted) is looking for a new home
Thanks! I’ll add them to the list.
Thanks, GG! Been a really tough day on all of us. Right now the new site is actually called “are you scicurious?” but I’m playing with it still.
Revised the post for you!
Add Highly Allochthonous to the hiatus list (the hiati?) http://bit.ly/aU1AvS
Damn, you’re fast! I was just logging into the site to add Highly Allochthonous…
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OK, just for you, I started moving my content over. Enjoy!
Gaaah!
Superbug just announced she’s on hiatus. That makes sixteen.
Thanks! Updated.
Good Math, Bad Math is also closing up shop. No word yet on where he’ll relocate.
http://scienceblogs.com/goodmath/2010/07/goodbye_scienceblogs.php
Thanks! Updated.
Whine, whine, cry, cry. These bloggers were accepting payments for their writings from SEED, no? Payments came from sponsored advertising, no? Click advertising is a known to be a non-sustainable business model (Who clicks on these things anyhow? Most of us don’t even see them thanks to adblockers.). So these bloggers were supported by corporations up until yesterday. Now they want to play self-righteous over the addition of a new blog that doesn’t even have any content to judge yet and whose authorship is completely transparent. Cry me a river.
Another_Scientist – “Whine, whine, cry, cry” . Really? This is your most sophisticated retort? Even if you have a valid point in your post, I am totally disregarding it. Why not stick your tongue out too while you are at it.
The Food Frontiers blog is one that Pepsi’s been running for a while (on their own domain). The content can only be described as marketing, not science.
That’s the impression I’ve gotten, though I haven’t had a chance to look at it in detail. People who think that this is simply a bunch of anti-corporatist idealists complaining too much should take a look at Martin’s analysis here.
Link broken!
Fixed!
In case people don’t see it:
PZ Myers
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Rebecca Skloot’s site, mentioned above, now hosts her blog.
Thanks! Changes are happening so fast that it’s hard to keep up.
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*headdesk*
If I had heard about this when it happened, I would have left SB in protest last February. No question about it.
The more I learn, the more I picture SEED management as playing a big game of Jenga with the bloggers: how much crap can they pull out from under them before the whole system collapses?
Highly Allochthonous has now moved to http://all-geo.org/highlyallochthonous/.
I strongly encourage everyone to support these writers. They are fantastic, but not being in a larger network drops their readership significantly as folks tend not to hunt around. I like to use feed readers like Viigo for my blackberry, and google reader.
On a personal note, I haven’t made a decision yet as to where or if I’ll go, but for now I’m continuing to write.
I agree; the reason that I put this post up originally was to drive some more traffic to some really excellent bloggers.
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You have Grrlscientist on both lists. You need to remove her from the staying list.
Whoops! Thanks — I’ll fix it. (Things are moving way, way too fast!)
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“Adam Bly, chief executive of Seed, responded that the Guardian article was “ridiculous” and that his company had suffered from revenue loss due to its belief in editorial freedom.”
Cry me a ge#@%$#en river . . .
You know what else hurts revenue, Adam? PISSING OFF AND INSULTING EVERYONE WHO WORKS FOR YOU!!!
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