As the discord surrounding the PepsiCo-sponsored nutrition blog Food Frontiers grows, Adam Bly has issued a letter to all ScienceBlogs authors defending his company's decision to launch the blog. Bly is head of Seed Media Group and ScienceBlogs.
According to a repost in The Guardian, Bly writes:
We think the conversation should include scientists from academia and government; we also think it should include scientists from industry. Because industry is increasingly the interface between science and society. It is our hope that the Xeroxes and Bell Labs of the future will have a real presence on SB - that they will learn from our readers and we will learn from them. That they will break stories on SB and engage our readers in the issues that concern them. The bloggers who blog on 'corporate blogs' on SB are necessarily credentialed scientists (we make sure of that), in some cases highly credentialed scientists who have published extensively in peer-reviewed journals. The fact that they work at a profit-making company does not automatically disqualify their science in our mind. And frankly, nor does it disqualify them in the eyes of the Nobel Prize Committee either.
For a thoughtful response to that note, check out Paul Raeburn's entry today on Knight Journalism Tracker.
Previously: ScienceBlogs adds Pepsi-sponsored nutrition blog
