I just did an interview with a journalist who is trying to answer that question. I was not very helpful. I knew Adam Bly as a publisher and promoter of science popularizers — he’s the guy who created Seed Magazine and Scienceblogs, once upon a time, and I met him several times, and he paid me extravagant sums to write Pharyngula and stories for Seed. Good times.

But today I learned that Jeffrey Epstein owned a 26% stake in Seed Media.

I knew that Bly was a kind of wunderkind in cancer research, but I didn’t know much else about him. I didn’t even know what specific research he was known for.

In 2007, he was named a Young Global Leader by the World Economic Forum. He is a recipient of the Queen Elizabeth II Golden Jubilee Medal.

He began his career at the age of 16 as the youngest researcher at the National Research Council of Canada, where he spent three years studying the biochemistry of cancer, specifically the role of cell adhesion in metastasis. Out of the lab, he founded Seed – tag-lined “Science is Culture™” – and served as its Editor-in-Chief. “

What I did know was that he abruptly erupted out of Canada, moved to New York City, and was somehow shuffling millions of dollars around in various scientific enterprises. None of us sciencebloggers had any idea where all his money was coming from, but we accepted it. We should have known it was too good to be true.

Anyway, Scienceblogs and Seed Media folded in 2010-2011, but we’d seen presentiments in 2009, when the company was showing financial strain, and the ads were becoming increasingly obnoxious, culminating in the notorious PepsiGate disaster, in which Bly sold out to PepsiCo and revealed himself as a corporate shill. The diaspora followed, with bloggers (including myself and Ed Brayton, who generated most of the traffic to Scienceblogs) abandoning it to move to other sites.

Looking back, I can see a suggestive correlation. Seed Media was getting desperate for new financial backing in 2009; Jeffrey Epstein was locked up (under the cushiest of conditions) in 2008-2009. Another person who was suffering Epstein withdrawal at that time was John Brockman:

Although Epstein was evidently no intellectual (physicist Sean Caroll described him as “a standard, fast-talking charlatan who trotted out big words with no real understanding”), he had a knack for Machiavellian manipulations tied to gifts and favors. In a travesty of potlatch ceremonies, the gifts that the academics brought to the parties were not intended just for Epstein but also for his clan of billionaires and celebrities. The ceremonies were held at opulent intellectual ‘salons’ funded by Epstein. A literary agent by the name of John Brockman was responsible for organizing many of these salons under the guise of a club called the Edge, which facilitated the gathering of billionaires and academics at “glittering events.” Some of these events were apparently secretive safe spaces for participants to praise “race science, rape culture and genetic engineering.” It was through Brockman’s bragging about his association with Epstein to a former client (tech writer Evgeny Morozov) that details of former Prince Andrew’s alleged foot massage emerged.

The so-called Billionaire’s Dinners and various ‘salons’ seem to have faded away as Epstein’s reputation began to poison the events. I was not involved in any of that, I’m relieved to say; I was on Brockman’s mailing list and was invited to contribute to some of his books of essays, but I was not insider enough to be invited to any of his salons with Pinker. Edge is now described as “cult-like”, so fortunately I did not fall into it. I was only on his list for about a year before I was dropped without fanfare.

Would you believe those dinners were almost entirely funded by Epstein”? Or that Brockman attended a party at Epstein’s mansion to celebrate his release from prison?

Now what about Adam Bly? I heard Brockman describe him as his protege, but have no idea how the Bly-Brockman-Epstein axis formed. There’s a big story lurking here.