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The Toxic World of Anonymous Science Content Farmers

Inside Biology-Online, the science content farm where editors might call you a whore if you don't write for them for free
Image: Screengrab, Biology-Online

Last week, an editor at an obscure website called Biology-Online.org cold-emailed the biologist Danielle N. Lee, PhD, and asked her if she would write for his publication. He signed the email as "Ofek." Lee, who pens the Urban Scientist blog at Scientific American, inquired about compensation. There wouldn't be any, Ofek said. Lee thanked him and declined the offer. So Ofek called her a prostitute.

"Because we don't pay for blog entries?" Ofek wrote back. "Are you an urban scientist or an urban whore?"

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Lee posted the exchange to Scientific American, where thousands of outraged readers did a simultaneous spit-take. That is, until SciAm deleted the blog post, and the editor-in-chief loosed a tweet explaining that it was "not appropriate" for the publication's aim, which was solely for "discovering science." The august magazine drew a heap of outrage online, with critics charging it was silencing a minority voice.

With most of the controversy redirected towards Scientific American's poor editorial judgment, many of the most sordid elements of the story seemed to recede from view. For instance, "Ofek," a person vile and clueless enough to direct slurs at scientists who refuse to work for him for free, has remained anonymous. Biology-Online.org's owner, Alan Weisleder, did issue an apology along with the site's webmaster. He claims that Ofek has been fired, but there are a number of other editors and webmasters who work under anonymous profiles, and there's no hard evidence that indicates any employee has actually been dismissed.

Even if "Ofek" was fired, thanks to his relative anonymity, he'll be allowed to continue on with his business—receiving no stigma or professional setback despite his offensive, reprehensible behavior.  And that poses another valid question: What kind of science website—one which features articles written by respected researchers, no less—employs anonymous editors? A content farm, of course. But a pretty bizarre one, even by content farm standards.

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Biology-Online is owned by Keebali, which, according to its website, is an Israel-based company that describes its mission as "acquiring websites and growing these by bringing to bear the company’s expertise in SEO, Community Development, Monetization, Social Media and Web Development." Sure enough, Biology-Online is a poorly-designed mishmash of articles penned (for free) by actual biologists and researchers in the field, scattered user-generated content—often just spammy infographics—and clumsy forum threads. A blurb on Keebali.com claims that Biology Online reaches 80,000 viewers a day—that would be 2.4 million visitors per month. On Biology-Online.org, however, that stat is listed as 25,000 per day.

Like most content farms, Biology Online relies on getting people to write content for next to nothing. So, "editors" like Ofek reach out to scientists, writers, and doctors, asking them to contribute to the site. One of the top posts on the site on the day I visited was attributed to Dr. Michael Joyner, who does research for the prestigious Mayo Clinic.

"I was cold e-mailed about a contribution," he told me in an email. Unlike Dr. Lee, he accepted. "I had some tech/informatics savvy colleagues check things out and they reported that it looked legit. So, I contributed for free and adapted some stuff I have used in my talks and on posts for other sites."

Biology-Online's "editors" appeal to these researcher's sense of duty to the public, and of course, however indirectly, to their egos. And they're relying on the fact that a lot of busy doctors, scientists, and professors won't have time to investigate the quality of the publication, and will know little of the online ecosystem to which it belongs.

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"I try to be as media friendly as possible since the public both directly and indirectly supported my education and now supports my lab," Dr. Joyner says. "As you know the electronic environment is a great way to get ideas out there for discussion and discourse but it can be a bit of the wild west and the whole space is relatively 'uncurated'."

"Uncurated" is right. Biology-Online's staff then take a submission, hastily slap on a bad headline—in this case, "The Real Causes of Obesity?"—and publish away.

But exploitative editors and curators seeking out free content is nothing new—it's the weird anonymity of Biology Online's staff that's striking. The organization's 'About Us' page introduces us to the team, and only two of the seven members list their full names. Some write that they're pursuing doctorates or master's degrees in biology, others profess their fandom of the topic. Many go by nicknames like 'Jackbean' or 'Poison' or 'mith'. One of them might even be Ofek.

Weisleder won't confirm Ofek's true identity, however. In a number of emails, I asked him about the incident, and why he maintains a partly anonymous staff. He says 'Ofek' is the person's real name, but other online sleuths have evidence to the contrary. The site owner insists I take his word for it.

"Why do you think we would be interested in retaining/covering-for someone that behaved the way Ofek did?" he wrote. "Unfortunately, employeer-employee confidentiality prevents me from disclosing additional information about Ofek even though his employment with us was terminated yesterday."

I tried to ask about this peculiar policy that preserves the confidentiality of an editor for a public, traffic-seeking website, but further questions were unanswered. Which would be strange—if Biology Online were a legitimate publication that concerned itself in the slightest with things like ethics or transparency.

But by their very nature, content farms and their operators hide in the margins, aware that the content they produce and acquire is more of a pollutant to the information-gathering enterprise than a boon. They don't want to be publicly attached to the organization, even if they aren't emailing misogynist insults to people who won't do free work for them.

Numerous studies have shown that anonymity begets misbehavior, especially online. If we fear no consequences, we're more likely to act unethically. In a way, that principle applies wholesale to content farm operations like Biology-Online.org—as long as they believe no one really knows what they're doing, they're free to exploit SEO loopholes and educators' goodwill alike. If Google clamps down on one SEO-jamming strategy, they'll try another. If a content farmer offends one potential contributor, there are thousands more waiting in the vast digital wings. They're counting on their sites' sad anonymity.

Now, the individual staff members at Biology Online may even be well-intentioned folks who genuinely love biology. But the inevitable frustration of cold-calling educators for favors every day, the temptations that percolate under the veil of online anonymity, and the inherently interminable task of content farming itself is a toxic combination. It must be—there is no greater example of toxic professional behavior than Ofek's exchange with Dr. Lee.