Privacy Policy

This site is owned and operated by The Scientist, LLC. Because we gather certain types of information from our users, we feel you should understand our policy and the terms and conditions surrounding the capture, use, and sharing of that information. This privacy policy discloses what information The Scientist gathers at this site and how we use it.

INTENDED AUDIENCE

This site is not intended for children under the age of 13. We do not intend to collect individually identifiable information from such individuals.

INFORMATION THE SCIENTIST GATHERS AND TRACKS

The Scientist gathers two types of information about users:

  • Information that users provide through voluntary submissions, such as to receive our electronic newsletters, access topic-specific gateways, participate in our message boards or forums, and participate in polls and surveys.
  • Information The Scientist gathers through aggregated tracking information derived mainly by tallying page views throughout our sites. This information allows us to better tailor our content to readers' needs and to help our advertisers and sponsors better understand the demographics of our audience.

The Scientist gathers user information through the following processes:

Voluntary Information

We offer the following free services, which require some type of voluntary submission of personal information by users:

  1. Electronic newsletters policy
    We offer free electronic newsletters to users. The Scientist gathers the email addresses of users who voluntarily subscribe. Users may remove themselves from this mailing list by following the link provided in every newsletter that points users to the subscription management page. Users can also subscribe to the newsletters at the time of registration.
  2. Gateways policy
    We offer topic specific gateways as a resource to users.  Each gateway has been developed in collaboration with a sponsoring partner.  Users must register to access the information in these gateways, and this includes providing a password, which the user is responsible for safeguarding.  Users are required to provide their name, email address, and password and may submit optional demographic information about their area of work.  This information is shared with the gateway sponsor, which may use the information for marketing purposes.  Gateway users may also subscribe to the sponsoring partner’s electronic newsletters via a link to the sponsor’s website newsletter registration process.  The Scientist will send registration confirmation emails to gateway registrants and will store the registration information to authenticate users returning to gateways.  Gateway registrants also may be provided with an opportunity to opt-in to receive information from The Scientist.
  3. Message boards/comments posts policy
    Users of the site may post messages and comments in response to articles and blog topics.  Although registration is not required to contribute comments to articles or blogs, we do ask for your name and e-mail address.  Although your email address will not be visible to users of the site, members of The Scientist staff may use it to contact you to clarify any points of your post.
  4. Polling
    We may offer interactive polls to users so they can easily share their opinions with other users and see what our audience thinks about important issues. Opinions or other responses to polls are aggregated and are not identifiable with respect to any particular user. The Scientist may use a system to "tag" users after they have voted, so they can vote only once on a particular question. This tag is not correlated with information about individual users.
  5. Surveys
    The Scientist may occasionally conduct user surveys to better target our content to our audience. We sometimes share the aggregated demographic information in these surveys with our sponsors, advertisers and partners. We do not share survey information linked to specific individuals with any third party.

Usage tracking

The Scientist tracks user traffic patterns throughout all of our sites. However, we do not correlate this information with data about individual users. The Scientist does break down overall usage statistics according to a user's domain name, browser type, and MIME type by reading this information from the HTTP request (information sent from every user's browser).

The Scientist sometimes tracks and catalogs the search terms that users enter in our Search function, but this tracking is not associated with individual users. We use tracking information to determine which areas of our sites users like and don't like based on traffic to those areas. We do not track what individual users read, but rather how well each page performs overall. This helps us continue to build a better service for you.

Cookies

We may place a text file called a "cookie" in the browser files of your computer. The only personal information a cookie can capture is information you supply yourself. A cookie can't read data off your hard disk or read cookie files created by other sites. The Scientist uses cookies to track user traffic patterns (as described above). Our advertising system delivers a one-time cookie to better track ad impressions and click rates.
You can refuse cookies by turning them off in your browser. If you've set your browser to warn you before accepting cookies, you will receive the warning message with each cookie. You do not need to have cookies turned on to use this site. However, you do need cookies to participate actively in message boards, forums, gateways, polling and surveys.

USE AND SHARING OF INFORMATION

The Scientist uses any information voluntarily given by our users to enhance their experience in our network of sites, whether to provide interactive or personalized elements on the sites or to better prepare future content based on the interests of our users.
As stated above, we use information that users voluntarily provide in order to send out electronic newsletters and to enable users to participate in polls, surveys, message boards, gateways, and forums. We send out newsletters to subscribers on a regular schedule (depending on the newsletter), and occasionally send out special editions when we think subscribers might be particularly interested in something we are doing. The Scientist does not share newsletter mailing lists with any third parties, including advertisers, sponsors or partners.
When we use tracking information to determine which areas of our sites users like and don't like, we do not track what individual users read, but rather how well each page performs overall. This helps us continue to build a better service for you. We track search terms entered in Search functions as one of many measures of what interests our users. But we don't track which terms a particular user enters.
The Scientist creates aggregate reports on user demographics and traffic patterns for advertisers, sponsors and partners. This allows our advertisers, sponsors and partners to present their content more effectively, and allows our users to receive information that is pertinent to their needs. Because we don't track the usage patterns of individual users, an advertiser, sponsor or partner will not know that a specific user clicked on their content.

  • We reserve the right to disclose information about individual users in order to comply with applicable law or valid legal process, and to protect the personal safety of our users or the public

The Scientist uses the above-described information to tailor our content to suit your needs and help our advertisers, sponsors and partners better understand our audience's demographics.  Except as stated in this privacy policy, we will not share information about individual users (including our mailing lists) with third parties.

SECURITY

The Scientist operates secure data networks protected by firewall and password protection systems. Our security and privacy policies are periodically reviewed and enhanced as necessary, and only authorized individuals have access to the information provided by our site users.

OPT-OUT POLICY

We give users options wherever necessary and practical. Such choices include:

  • Opting not to register to receive our electronic newsletters.
  • Opting not to participate in certain interactive areas, which alleviates the need to gather personally identifiable information from our users.

If you have any questions about our privacy, site usage, or opt-out policies, you can contact us at customerservice@the-scientist.com.

YOUR CONSENT

By using this site, you agree to the terms of the privacy policy and consent to the collection, use and sharing of information that you provide via this site. If we decide to change our privacy policy, we will post those changes on this page so that you are always aware of what information we collect, how we use it, and under what circumstances we disclose it.  This privacy policy was last updated on March 1, 2007.