Privacy Policy
Effective August 14, 2026.
Who We Are
Science Scandal™ is operated by Sawyer Consulting, Ltd. d/b/a Sawyer Education. Contact us through the Contact page or at nikki@sciencescandal.com.
Information You Give Us
You may voluntarily provide newsletter subscription information or Contact-form information: name, email, inquiry type, subject, and message.
Newsletter Subscriptions
An email address is required and first name is optional. MailerLite processes subscription information, and double opt-in confirms subscriptions. Google reCAPTCHA is necessary security and anti-abuse functionality on newsletter forms. It loads independently of analytics consent and may process browser or device information for spam prevention. You may unsubscribe using newsletter controls.
Contact Messages
Contact submissions are stored in the Science Scandal database to respond to inquiries and operate newsroom workflow. They are retained indefinitely unless manually deleted. A notification delivery failure does not delete the stored message.
Reader Reactions
No reader account is required. A random first-party browser identifier helps enforce one active reaction of each type per story and browser. Only a one-way server-side hash is retained; raw browser IDs are not stored server-side. Ordinary reaction storage does not routinely associate Contact-form information with reactions.
Analytics and Consent
Google Analytics is optional and is used for broad readership and usage analysis. Analytics consent defaults to denied, and the Analytics tag is not loaded until you accept. Advertising storage and advertising-related consent signals remain denied. You may accept or decline and later change the preference through Privacy Choices. Privacy Choices controls only optional Google Analytics, not necessary security and anti-abuse functionality such as reCAPTCHA. Contact-form names, emails, subjects, and message content are not sent to Analytics.
Cookies and Local Storage
We use essential session and security storage where applicable, a time-limited analytics-consent preference, a browser reaction identifier and state, storage used by necessary security and anti-abuse functionality where applicable, and analytics storage only when consented. See our Cookie Policy.
Service Providers
AWS provides site infrastructure, MailerLite processes newsletter subscriptions, Google reCAPTCHA and, where configured, Cloudflare Turnstile provide necessary form-security and anti-abuse functionality, and Google Analytics provides optional, consented readership analysis.
Your Choices
You may decline optional analytics, change your Analytics preference, unsubscribe, or request access to or deletion of information submitted through Contact.
External Links
External sites control their own privacy practices.
Contact
Use our Contact page or email nikki@sciencescandal.com.