
An open letter to Nature editor Philip Campbell - icoder
http://tenureshewrote.wordpress.com/2014/01/24/an-open-letter-to-nature-editor-philip-campbell/
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patrickmay
Gee has written what can best be described as a "notpology" here:
[http://occamstypewriter.org/cromercrox/2014/01/23/reflection...](http://occamstypewriter.org/cromercrox/2014/01/23/reflections-
on-this-weekends-events/)

He seems particularly thin-skinned, to me.

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minako
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.

~~~
kaitai
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.

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elag
'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.

~~~
PeterWhittaker
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?

~~~
elag
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.

~~~
PeterWhittaker
Embarrassing to read? Nope, I still don't get it.

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.

~~~
elag
Relevance.

The dick outed the writer on his Twitter acoount.

The writer wrote pseudonymously because of their belief that frank discussion
requires freedom from professional retaliation.

The outed writer then wrote not to the dick but to his employer, Phillip
Campbell.

That's as much as I can do to explain why I think both parties have acted to
their own discredit.

~~~
camelite
That's 9 dicks I've counted now. Serious question - how comfortable would you
all be with the casual use of 'cunt' or 'whore' in hackernews comments on
gender issues? Really what I'm asking is, are you hypocrites or bigots?

~~~
elag
What the Nature employee did on Twitter was a dick move. The pseudonymous
blogger's addressing their complaint to the Nature editor was a dick move. I
haven't been discussing a gender issue. 11.

