An open letter to Nature editor Philip Campbell

http://tenureshewrote.wordpress.com/2014/01/24/an-open-letter-to-nature-editor-philip-campbell/

by icoder • 12 years ago

46 16 12 years ago

tenureshewrote.wordpress.com

elag5• 12 years ago

'We must be pseudonymous to protect ourselves from professional retaliation so let's grass this dick to his employer'. Good to see that, yes, sometimes it is possible and both sides can lose.

PeterWhittaker3• 12 years ago

Not quite sure I follow.

The "dick" wrote publicly and under in own name in his employer's journal. No one is "grassing" him, no one is retaliating, no one is drawing attention to his gender or suggesting that he is, in fact, a dick.

They are instead commenting on unprofessional and unethical behaviour he has displayed in public, without apparent oversight or forethought or consideration for the likely harm that will arise from his actions.

The article was well thought out, well written, on the mark, and not all ad hominem.

So what's the issue?

elag5• 12 years ago

The dick outed her on Twitter. The champion of pseudonymity in the cause of professional freedom wrote an open letter to his employer. I hope this explanation is as embarrassing for you to read as it was for me to write.

kaitai2• 12 years ago

I don't understand the grumpiness. Gee did not say anything privately that is now being revealed, betraying his trust that his confidant wouldn't tell. He publicly outed, on Twitter, someone whom he has disliked for years.

If this was two private citizens simply squabbling about movie reviews, who would care? But Henry Gee is an editor at Nature -- the Nature -- the shiniest journal of all in the science world. He's a man who influences science careers, championing the publishing of some things and not others. He's in a position to know the identities of people on both sides of the (somewhat anonymous) peer-review table.

If you're Henry Gee you can't just out pseudonymous scientists on Twitter without a reaction, just as if you're governor you can't just have a donor pay for your daughter's wedding. (Yeah I know it's a poor analogy. Pre-coffee.) There is the appearance of impropriety because you are in a position of power. No one would give two figs about Gee or this situation if he wasn't a Nature editor.

minako• 12 years ago

I probably missed the whole point, but where does the sexism aspect occur in all of this? This is an argument where by chance a man and a woman are involved. This time a man is in a "theoretically" higher position(working as editor for nature) than the woman. Does this fact alone determine him to be sexist?

I realize he "outed" her and I see by her post that she is not handling that herself too well. In my eyes both of these people can learn a lot about professionalism.

sentenza• 12 years ago

Well, he seems to be lashing out after having been criticized within a longer, ongoing discussion about sexism. So the sexism was already there before this recent development.

kaitai2• 12 years ago

It's a years-long story; the crux of it is that the blogger Dr. Isis had been boycotting Nature for publishing "Womanspace," a short fiction piece about women and shopping, in 2011, as well as a more recent letter by some random non-scientist guy from Texas saying it's not surprising that women don't get published in Nature because they're just not that good. That's where the sexism thing originally comes in, not the current events per se.

There is some discussion of the fact that this senior editor at Nature is outing an early-career scientist, and maybe the fact that he feels free to do so is a sign of sexism ("she" might be easier to take down than a "he"). Draw your own conclusions on that one.

patrickmay• 12 years ago

Gee has written what can best be described as a "notpology" here: http://occamstypewriter.org/cromercrox/2014/01/23/reflection...

He seems particularly thin-skinned, to me.

An open letter to Nature editor Philip Campbell

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