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Libel law forcing Nature to abandon core scientific principles?
This story would be almost comical in a Monty-Python sort of way, if it wasn't for a fairly serious backdrop.


In this thread on Nature Networks on science journalism, I left the following comment
the problem is not access to that one single paper the press release cites. The problem is access to the papers the one under embargo should have cited but didn't. The problem is access to the papers it cites, in order to be able to tell what they have done and if it was done the right way. The problem is access to all the literature from which a journalist can form his/her own opinion if what the authors claim is really novel or just something reproduced from 10 years ago, such as this Nature paper which unwillingly only reproduced this earlier article and didn't even cite it. In this particular case, the other, un-cited article was at least accessible, but the problem remains: reviewers have trouble getting access to all the relevant literature for them to competently review submitted manuscripts. If journalists are evolving into a science watch-dog, as James Randerson from the Guardian claims in the Nature podcast, how can that watch-dog grow teeth without full access?
Without open access, any journalistic watch-dog must remain toothless - and toothless watch-dogs certainly won't last long.
I find Randerson's argument fairly interesting (as the entire Guardian Science Weekly podcast is one of the best science podcasts out there), especially given the pressures to publish in certain journals, the closeness of some scientists to some editors in said journals (I'm speaking from personal experience in my circle of colleagues here) and especially the fact that peer-review isn't perfect. Post-publication review/scrutiny will become even more important than it already is and journalists are in a unique position to fill a critical niche in the checks and balances that have to arise in the crazy world science has become.
The bottom line is: if journalists don't have full access to the literature, they won't be more than amplifiers of press releases and that would definitely be the end of the line for science journalism.
A few days later, I received a note from Nature Network that my post had been taken down. I was rather surprised to learn that it was taken down because NN thought I had accused someone of plagiarism:
I’m sending you a response I made at Nature Network to your accusation that a Nature paper is plagiarised. This is an extremely serious accusation, not least as you provide no reasoning for it, and I suggest that a more appropriate and professional approach would be to contact the journal directly, according to the journal’s procedures in such matters.
Apparently, the problem was this clause in my comment: “such as this Nature paper which unwillingly only reproduced this earlier article” With ‘unwillingly’ I meant to say ‘inadvertently’, but that wasn’t the problem. The problem was ‘reproduced’. 'Reproduction', in the publishing business can mean to reproduce from a template, i.e. copying. However, scientifically, “Reproducibility is one of the main principles of the scientific method” (Wikipedia), which is what I was referring to, obviously. When I wrote back to Nature asking for a clarification, they replied:
any reasonable person inside or outside science, would construe [“reproduced”] to mean "copied" and yes, this is actionable in English law - but even if it were not, it is denigrating other scientists and is inappropriate on the normal grounds of courtesy and discourse.
At this point it needs to be mentioned that I have already blogged about this Nature paper and have pointed out how the new experiments in this paper show pretty much the same results as the somewhat different experiments from the earlier paper. A reproduction in the finest sense: different people, variation of experimental conditions, ten years apart, yet qualitatively same/similar results. Reproducibility is definitely a good thing in science! Reproducibility wasn't the reason I blogged about this paper. The problem with this Nature paper was that the authors claimed to have shown something else, but did not control for the effect shown in the earlier paper. Thus, the uncontrolled, known effect could be an alternative explanation for the novel effect the authors actually wanted to study. Not necessarily, but without the proper control experiment, it is impossible to tell. Apparently, neither the handling editor at Nature, nor the reviewers noticed this. One may speculate, since the older paper wasn’t cited, that the authors simply didn’t know about the earlier paper. In science, this sort of thing happens every day. Authors, editors and reviewers are humans and things slip through their radar. Not such a big deal, really. There are ~24,000 scholarly journals, so of course you can miss an important paper buried in there somewhere. Happens even at Nature, has happened before and will happen again. It's almost impossible to keep on top of everything that's going on. Future experiments will find out if indeed the alternative explanation can be ruled out or not, this is how science goes. This sort of thing is also where post-publication review comes in handy, which is why I posted my review on the blog and explained the shortcomings of the paper to undergraduate students after a lecture on temperature sensation. Online, informal post-publication review is a relatively recent and valuable addition to the scientific discourse, as it can instruct future experiments.
What is not new, of course, is to publicly criticize published research about technical or conceptual shortcomings. It’s how science progresses, by challenging our current state of knowledge. Criticism is vital to the scientific method. Konrad Lorenz famously once wrote: “It is a good morning exercise for a research scientist to discard a pet hypothesis every day before breakfast. It keeps him young. “ and WH Newton-Smith wrote that “no one disputes the importance of criticism in science” (Karl Popper: philosophy and problems, O’Hear, editor, Cambridge). Apparently, Nature disputes it: even if I had not accused the authors of plagiarism, but had criticized their paper for a lack of control experiments (which is what I did), according to Nature, I would be “denigrating other scientists and is inappropriate on the normal grounds of courtesy and discourse”.
Thus, given this very brief exchange, one could make the case that Nature appears to be giving up on two of the main principles of the scientific method: reproducibility and criticism. Clearly, one can only speculate about the motivations behind such actions, and I would never rule out misunderstandings on my part. However, if I did not misunderstand the messages from Nature, I'd hazard a guess that the Singh affair and the impact UK libel-law has on the scientific discourse may be to blame. There is precedence for censorship at Nature Network for precisely this reason. If UK libel-laws were indeed the motivation also in this case, this situation reminds us that the raison d'être of scientific publishers is not to facilitate the scientific discourse, this is merely one of their many services. Commercial publishers, like all private companies, exist to make a profit and libel suits reduce profit. To be fair, Nature has weighed in on the Singh-Affair in defense of Singh and has recorded an extra issue of its podcast on the story (which I have yet to listen to). Thus, I think it's fairly clear on what side Nature stands on in this affair. If only actions would follow Nature’s words. On the other hand, I can see the kind of trade-offs private companies have to make, especially in the critical state all traditional journalism is in these days.
Posted on Wednesday 08 July 2009 - 09:08:53 comment: 0
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