Several scientist are removing their blogs from Seed Media’s Science Blog in response to a sponsored ‘nutrition’ blog by Pepsico wrote Columbia Journalism Review today. As publishing morphs with the times, as traditional credible print sources fall or adapt, as authorship and intellectual property shift with open sharing and free publishing, as we are glutted by lowest common denominator content on the web, losing knowledge in a cascade of facts, losing experts in an avalanche of laypeople – this instance with Pepsico is a significant event in online wellness publishing.

See article by Curtis Brainard: Uproar at ScienceBlogs.com

For wellness practitioners, for health writers, for wellness bloggers, for consumers wanting to find a path to whole person wellness, developments like these are important to watch and know where to land, where to write, and how to build networks of credibility distinct from the tide of amateurs, laypeople and advertising. Yes advertising supports content in most cases. There is a symbiosis here in a way and done well like will support like. However Pepsi’s products clearly do not support nutrition, and are of a different source than Science Blog authors.

Sites like Science Blog have worked hard to develop web cred as a legitimate varied source of expertise. Topics like food and nutrition especially need neutral voices as consumers are bombarded by advertising and trends so finding helpful sources is challenging. We are at a time when printed publishing is waning and digital content looms and grows, with all its chaotic lowest common denominator haystack hiding the needles of experienced wisdom.

From Howard Rheinghold’s Smart Mobs of 2003 to Andrew Keen’s Cult of the Amateur of 2007, to the recent The Shallows: What the Internet is doing to Our Brains , 2010, by Nicholas Carr we have seen a progression towards broadening of web content, blurring the line between traditional journalism and layperson opinion and now corporate messaging. A publishing environment where as Nicholas Carr states we are smothered in information and facts, with little wisdom to be found. See a NYT Book Review of The Shallows: What the Internet is doing to Our Brains . Other recent research and books talk about the impact short snippets rather than deep books is having on our learning neurology.

When corporate messaging, advertising, enters what is perceived as a publishing environment all credibility, distinction, or discernment are gone. In a leaked letter to Science Blog contributors, Adam Bly editor from Seed Media sets to explain the decision. The letter warrants being read in its entirety as it seeks to present rationale for including as he puts it “both scientists from academia and industry.”

See Letter from Seed Editor Adam Bly:(excerpt)
As you know, we recently expanded the SB platform to include blogs from the world’s foremost research organizations like CERN and Howard Hughes Medical Institute and hope that this new area of our site will grow meaningfully over the coming years. We’ve started to partner with top science festivals like the USA Science & Engineering Festival and the World Science Festival to host their official blogs. We have also hosted blogs on SB from research-based companies like Shell, Dow, Schering-Plough, GE, Invitrogen, L’Oreal (in Germany), and now PepsiCo. I want to address the logic and strategy behind this.

While he is eloquent, ultimately what is significant will be presentation and follow up on ideas like a different brand than Science Blog, so the reader can distinguish ‘sponsorship’ (advertising) from science.

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