Remember what Mariette DiChristina @mdichristina said a week ago about why Danielle Lee’s SciAm post was taken down?

Re blog inquiry: @sciam is a publication for discovering science. The post was not appropriate for this area & was therefore removed.

Kate Clancy, one of the SciAm bloggers, wrote a post the other day that was not about discovering science. You can tell this if you look closely.

This is not a post about discovering science. This is not a post about discovering science. This is not a post about discovering science. This is not a post about discovering science. This is not a post about discovering science. This is not a post about discovering science. This is not a post about discovering science. This is not a post about discovering science. This is not a post about discovering science. This is not a post about discovering science. This is not a post about discovering science.

Then she lists some posts of her own that were also not posts about discovering science.

• “I had no power to say ‘that’s not ok’”
• Numbness, vulnerability, oppression, privilege on the tenure track
• Survival, on the roller derby and tenure tracks
• Motherhood won and lost: one woman’s story of miscarriage
• Canopy Meg happy in her job, tra la la

Then she summed up.

I almost never write about discovering science, and in fact write frequently about oppression and privilege. But when a black woman writes about an oppressive experience, it is grounds for removal. Folks, this is Ally Work 101: it doesn’t matter your intent, what matters is the impact. Silencing a black woman who just got called an “urban whore” is sexist, racist, silencing behavior. It is wrong, and it is shameful.

That was a week ago though. Since then DiChristina has clarified that Lee’s post “veered into the personal.”

It’s been a personal kind of week at SciAm blogs. It’s been getting more personal every day – in ways that are relevant to blog post titles like “I had no power to say ‘that’s not ok’”. If you don’t already know, and want to catch up, you could start at the (current) end, with the latest no power to say no post. It’s about the blogs editor at Scientific American, Bora Zivkovic. Or you could start at the beginning with Monica Byrne’s post from a year ago, updated on Tuesday to name the man in the post as Bora Zivkovic. You could follow that up with Bora’s post confirming and apologizing.

This one is downright tragic, because Bora has done a lot to promote women bloggers and an egalitarian environment. I don’t know him, but I know a lot of people who do, and they were all crazy about him. And then there’s his wife.

First, do no harm.