An open letter to Nature editor Philip Campbell

Did I err in my original comment? Yup, fact is he tweeted the out - and the ad hominem diss - and did not use his employer's publication as his platform.

That was quite wrong of me.

And really not quite relevant either.

The relevant thread is this: A senior editor with considerable power to influence if not actually establish or derail reputations and careers by a) selecting or rejecting their articles for publication, b) commenting for or against those articles, and, most importantly in this context, c) enlarging his domain beyond its rightful bounds, the work, to focus instead on the personalities and characteristics of the people behind the work, has in fact gone directly to personally directed insult and invective.

I don't give a rat's ass and neither does anyone else if a scientist is a complete dick, provided that he or she confines their being a dick to mere social dickwaddedness whilst doing good work and promoting the careers and training of their students and peers. I've met a few like that, arrogant as fuck, not really nice people, but really, really good at nurturing and developing their students. Odd mix, really.

But a journal editor being a dick and attacking people, setting his or her own agenda that has nothing to do with competence and everything to do with personal politics and one's personal view of the rightness or wrongness of social psychology, that's going over the line.

His tweet may not have been widely read, but the fact of its existence must be, because his influence over his audience and customers is significant, and if his influence is or even appears to be significantly moderated by his opinions of personality and politics and psychology, then he has NO place in his current role and everyone affected by his being in that role deserves to know it.

Frank discussion of scientific ideas, methods and conclusions requires a focus on those subjects, and an absolute ignorance of the personalities behind those subjects.

Where either a scientist or a party whose opinion can significantly influence a scientist's career steps over that bound and focuses on persons and politics, frank discussion of that breach may require anonymity or pseudonymity to prevent further retaliation, etc., by the influencing party or by any of their allies who may be given to the same violation of boundaries.

An influencer of some significance violated those boundaries in a public forum, though one that may not widely followed (twitter may be widely used, but individual accounts vary, of course).

A scientist wrote pseudonymously to the influencer's employer to a) ensure the employer was aware of the breach and b) to ensure that other scientists were aware of the breach, given how that influencer may affect their reputations without their knowing, since the influencer has at least once strayed across the boundary in a most public way.

Might the scientist also have written c) out of petulance? Perhaps. But that ain't relevant, because the scientist's motivation can be explained entirely and reasonably by A and B, and C is neither relevant nor necessary, because other scientists whose careers may be affected by influencer deserve to know that this person has strayed beyond their bounds, and making this known in a letter to the employer is the most effective of achieving this.