Scientific American Restores Blog Post

Good for Scientific American for restoring DNLee's blog post. The insult she is responding to is egregious. It is more than just a personal attack - and most personal attacks are probably best ignored. This is about taking a stand against sexism and racism. Such reprehensible behavior should not be tolerated. I think it was brave of DNLee to respond publicly and applaud her for doing so.

When DNLee's blog post was taken down (within an hour of being posted), it was looking like Popular Science turning off comments on their site due to Trolls. Now that the post is back, I see this as empowering science, and a show of support for women and minorities in science.

There is a lot of science controversy lately. Ultimately, I think it is good for science to get this level of scrutiny. It gives the public the opportunity to dig into the issues facing science and make it better. We should not have blind faith in science, and we should not be asked to. We should always be critical.

On the same day as DNLee's post, NPR covered the rise of "cheating" in science (e.g., faked experiment results), and the efforts to crack down on cheating. This is another example of science policing itself, like I mentioned in a recent post about shady scientific journals.

While the Popular Science actions were disheartening - like science was losing the war against trolls - cracking down on cheating and bad science journals is very encouraging. The scientific community is cleaning house