"the hardest thing in this world is to live in it"
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As is inevitable in a situation like this, the dialog around Bora Zivkovic’s harassment of women has moved beyond his actions and resignations, and is now looking at the larger community and what sort of operational changes need to be made. This is clearly a more opaque process at Scientific American, since they have remained mostly silent—one presumes on the advice of lawyers. For Science Online, it’s a debate that’s happening out in public, on blogs and Twitter. Over the weekend, Chad Orzel saw comments I made on Twitter, and it motivated him to put forth his own specific take on the core issue affecting Science Online right now. Orzel’s post is well worth the read, both for the history of this particular blogging group and the Science Online conference. Orzel’s summary of the problem is this:
Science Online has been trying to split the difference between functioning as a kind of professional society for science communicators and a party of a bunch of like-minded friends.
It was in talking to someone over the weekend—and my apologies, there were a lot of conversations and they’ve gotten more than a bit blurry—where I realized that for me (and I want to stress, as always, that this is my, and only my, opinion), the difference that Orzel points out, and that I was commenting about on Twitter, boils down to this: does Science Online want to be a con or a conference?
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There has been a lot of talk this year about supporting women in science and related tech fields, about how it’s not okay to sexually harass a graduate student or colleague, about how rape jokes aren’t okay, and in general, how hostile academia, science, and technology can still be for women.
Yesterday, a Biology Online editor gave a pretty stunning example of this: he called biologist DNLee an urban whore for refusing to write for the Biology Online for free. We know about this because she blogged about it over at her Scientific American blogs column, Urban Scientist. And this was important for several reasons. First, many other biologists had casually agreed to work with Biology Online without being aware of the sexism of at least one of their editors (and many have now pulled posts due to it). Secondly, and perhaps more importantly, DNLee’s experience is a data point that shows why the on-going discussion of sexism and harassment of women in science needs to happen. It’s an insight into what women in science face—and why science has a woman problem.
Naturally, Scientific American was proud to be a part of the on-going conversation about how women in science are treated, and the importance of shining a light on the ways women are harassed in science, in order to help prevent such a thing from happening again, right?
Oh. No. Instead, Scientific American pulled DNLee’s blog post without comment. Other people stayed calm, saying it must be a technical error, and I admire them for their ability to give the benefit of the doubt.
My cynicism was rewarded this morning. Mariette DiChristina, the EIC and Senior VP of Scientific American, confirmed that DNLee’s post was removed on purpose. For apparently not being “about science.” Even though that was not the Scientific American blogs editor’s position (as seen here). In fact, Bora (said blog editor) and I have actually had some very specific arguments about the role of the Scientific American blogs, recounted by Nicholas over here. In short, Bora has explained that his view of the blogs is that people can and should write what they are interested in and about, even if they are not experts in the topic, and that it’s okay if they’re wrong, because the commenters can come in and correct them. As you can probably imagine, I don’t agree with this, and in fact had a several hours–long Twitter argument with Bora about it. I do think that if you are blogging under the Scientific American banner, you are being extended authority and thus should write responsibly about what you know.
But in this case, I am 100% convinced that DNLee knows about the sexism women face in science, just as I am 100% positive that this is an important—necessary—conversation to be having. And I would like to think that even were she wrong, Bora’s policy, as outlined in his argument with me and his comments about Christie Wilcox’s blog being “her space,” would support an on-going discussion in her blog rather than outright removal.
Right now, to paraphrase what Crip Dyke so eloquently noted on Dr. Isis’s blog, DiChristina has made it very clear, through her actions, that Scientific American finds “fighting racism & sexism is unscientific.” Especially if it involves someone in their partner network. As such, and until such a time that DiChristina and the rest of those involved with this decision at Scientific American apologize to DNLee for their actions, as well as to those fighting to end sexism in academia, I will be joining Dr. Isis in her boycott of Scientific American.
You can read DNLee’s account of what happened at many blogs, at this point; Rebecca Watson reposted the blog, with permission, at Skepchick.
edited to add
DiChristina released a statement to Buzzfeed after they picked up the story, saying
I’d like to elaborate on the original brief statement on Twitter that this blog fell outside Scientific American’s mission to communicate science. While we interpret that mission with a lot of latitude, Dr. Lee’s post went beyond and verged into the personal, and that’s why it was taken down. Dr. Lee’s post is out extensively in the blogosphere, which is appropriate. Dr. Lee is a valued member of the Scientific American blog network. In a related matter, Biology Online has an ad network relationship, and not an editorial one. Obviously, Scientific American does not want to be associated with activities that are detrimental to the productive communication of science. We are pursuing next steps.
Of course, as Kate Clancy, Janet D. Stemwedel, Christie Wilcox and Melanie Tannenbaum note, science and science blogging is personal. People–women–discuss their bodies, their rapes, sexual assaults, and miscarriages, all topics I have seen covered on the SciAm Blogs.
By supporting, via their lack of removal, these personal blog posts (for example, Drs Clancy and Stemwedel both highlight several of their own “non-discovering science” blog posts within the SciAm blogs network) by other women and men, DiChristina is making it hard to excuse SciAm from the single thing that it seemed they had going for them that Biology Online didn’t: racism. Because what seems to separate Dr. Lee from the other bloggers, in the “verging in to the personal”, is that Dr. Lee is a woman of colour.
The implications here are incredibly ugly, and bear examination by everyone who write for or reads anything within the Scientific American publication sphere. (Personally, I have a digital membership which I will be canceling posthaste.) It’s not a significant sum of money, but it’s money I don’t want supporting sexism or racism.
