John Maddox Offers Surprising Insights Into His

In 1955, a puckish, 30-year-old Weishman resigned as lecturer in theoretical physics at the University of Manchester to become science correspondent of the Manchester Guardian. Unwittingly, the energetically eclectic John Maddox thus took his first step toward the editorial chair of Nature, which he has occupied with distinction on two occasions—between 1966 and 1973, and from 1980 until the present. A robust defender of what he calls “the scientific enterprise,” Maddox has played many other roles in science and public affairs He was an affiliate of New York’s Rockefeller Institute in 1962-63, director of London’s Nuffield Found ation from 1975 to 1980, and a public interest representative on the UK Genetic Manipulation Advisory Group from 1976 to 1980. Maddox was also managing director of Macmillan Journal’s Ltd., a publishing house from 1970 to 1972 and chairman of Maddox Editorial Ltd. (whose publications included the European Gazette) from 1972 to 1974. His books include The Spread of Nuclear Weapons (written with Leonard Beaton and published in 1962), The Doomsday Syndrome (1972) and Beyond the Energy Crisis (1975). During the reign of John Maddox, Nature has greatly extended its news coverage, doubled in circulation, and now sells 33,530 copies each week (14,887 of them in the United States). The editor of what publisher Macmillan calls “the world’s leading weekly journal of science” was interviewed in London on May 11 by Bernard Dixon, European editor of The Scientist. “the scientific enterprise” What do you mean by this, and how do you see Nature’s role? A The phrase seems to me a good description of the essentially communal activity of science, which has the quality of adventure and which now involves many millions of people, who are trying to understand how the world ticks, and who are doing so on the whole with an unusual degree of camaraderie. Nature is, or certainly should be, a vehicle which both helps that process to work and influences how it works. Nature have? A If my colleagues and I were seeking to affect the direction of research, we would not be sitting in an office but working in a laboratory somewhere. What we can do is to influence the ways in which the rules of good conduct are kept by scientists. On a wider front we can, for example, try to do something about the general meanness of government towards scientific research. you could affect is scientists’ willingness to make research materials available to others. Yet when this question arose two years ago, in relation to a gene pro be that might be used to diagnose Huntington’s chorea, you diverged from other journals by not making the researchers provide such materials as a condition of publication. A Anyone who claims credit for a significant advance in research certainly ought to make the relevant data generally available, so that people here can see exactly bow the experiment was performed and, if they wish, try to repeat it. I regret that this convention is not followed as widely as it should be, but we at Nature do try to ensure that the papers we publish allow people to reconstruct experiments. On the question of research materials, I believe scientists who are in the process of making a series of discoveries with a particular cell-line, for example, have a right to stay on an inside track. They can report their work, using cells which they will later deposit in a culture collection. In practice, many researchers are more generous than this, but it’s fair that someone in that position can enjoy a little bit of advantage if they wish to. conduct is the use of animals in research. Would you decline a paper that, although reporting good science, described work carried out under inhumane conditions? A Our policy here mays seem to be disreputable, though I believe it is not. When someone working in, say, Mexico or Brazil, sends in a report of work that would not be permitted in Europe or the USA, where regulations governing animal experimentation are more stringent, we are likely to say that if the results are sufficiently important we will indeed publish them. A Because the pain or discomfort has already been caused to the animals, and nothing we do can prevent it afterwards. I believe that inhumane experiments should not be conducted—but if by good chance valuable data have emerged-from such work, then scientists here ought not be denied that information simply because they could not or would not have done the work themselves. isn’t this surely an issue upon which you could seek to enforce good conduct? A Yes. But that is part of a wider question, embracing much less severe cases, such as the provision of data, which we’ve already discussed. We ought not to be too prescriptive. People get into all kinds of trouble that way. merit of science, that affect your decision about a particular submission? What about someone who sent in a paper including experiments carried out in a Nazi concentration camp? A As a matter of fact, an attempt was made recently to persuade us to publish something of this sort. Luckily, whenever that sort of question has arisen, the experiments were clearly so badly designed that they would not meet our criterion of being of exceptional interest. But the moral dilemma could arise, and in certain circumstances we might have to abandon our policy of being tolerant of what scientists have done. We are also conscious of another lesser but still significant offense, when a scientist has made unfair use of someone s data, perhaps getting hold of information from a meeting before publication of a full paper. Again, we would not decline such a paper. We would, however, reserve the right to point out to readers what had happened, and to allow the aggrieved party to comment. A Every paper published as original science goes to at least two referees, not both of whom are in Britain. their advice? A We pay close attention to what they say, but can override them in either direction. Nearly twice as many papers are approved by both referees as we can possibly accommodate. between submission and publication? A At the end of last year, it stood at five months, which is far too long. Since then, we have managed to bring the interval down to three months for biological papers. told what’s happening to their papers? A I’m conscious that many authors feel this is as important as the period before publication, and we are taking steps to improve our communications accordingly. In future, authors should receive a letter telling them when a paper has gone out for refereeing, and a further letter two to six weeks later after the referees have replied. especially nowadays when everything carries a price tag? A We don’t do so, because people actually like refereeing and feel that their work may help them to have their papers published in Nature subsequently—which is not true. recently? A Yes. And we now have five paid consultants who help us in assessing papers. They work in fields where there is insufficient expertise in the office. But we would never buy referees’ advice by the page. in detecting more of the cheating that has come to light in recent years? A You cannot expect a referee to find out when someone has simply invented experimental data. But perhaps referees and editors could have been more vigilant in spotting implausibilities—as in the case of Mark Spector at Cornell University in 1981. The enzyme cascade The Somewhat Surprising Nature Of John Maddox that he claimed to have found in malignant cells was such a dramatic result, so quickly obtained us afield where others had been working hard but without success, that someone should have questioned it. The New England Journal of Medicine behaved over-pompously earlier this year in announcing that they were cutting off Reuters’ advance copies for six months because one of the agency’s journalists had put out a story about the possible protective value of daily aspirin against heart attack, before the relevant paper appeared in the journal. It was ridiculous of the NEJM'S editor to insist that patients should not hear about new treatments before their physicians had scrutinized the journals. I don’t believe physicians are that diligent, or the mails that efficient. of Physics for deciding that its journals would no longer follow the Inglejinger rule (refusing papers whose conclusions had been ventilated in the popular media). Yet earlier this year, you wrote of journals being “flexible and forgiving” in their embargo policy. Have you softened your line? A No, I’m just a little wiser. Our policy is that somebody who has submitted a paper must not discuss it with journalists before publication. But the rule cannot be applied simplemindedly. There’s no point. in asking people not to describe thier research at meetings, where journalists may be present and may then write up the work as appearing in Nature shortly. But we do not want people to hand out their papers, or even universities to issue press releases ahead of publication. We should be more vigilant about these things. A Absolutely. We try to keep the news to ourselves, to make Nature more interesting for our readers. Editors ought to be more willing to admit this sort of motive. Frankly, the New England Journal of Medicine behaved over-pompously earlier this year in announcing that they were cutting off Reuters’ advance copies for six months because one of the agency’s journalists had put out a story about the possible protective value of daily aspirin against heart attack, before the relevant paper appeared in the journal. It was ridiculous of the NEJM's editor to insist that patients should not hear about new treatments before their physicians had scrutinized the journals. I don’t believe physicians are that diligent, or the mails that efficient. A Not to any great extent. but this has undoubtedly become an increasing problem, because we are now much more involved in news, and because people are far more jealous of their reputations these days and dont like being criticized. We have only lost two libel actions, however. One was to the physicist and philosopher Herbert Dingle in 1973 over something we said about his one man crusade against the special theory of relativity. The other was when the Church Commissioners sued us over an editorial. Ihad said that to suggest a particular individual was guilty was as foolish as saying that the commissioners were evil because much of their property in Paddington, London, was used as brothels. I had intended to ridicule the idea of guilt by association, but they did not see it that way. Walter Stewart and Ned Feder on the frequency of errors in the biomedical literature, which finally appeared in January last year. A That was a particularly difficult case because the authors themselves had given a lot of publicity to their paper, the first five drafts of which were plainly libelous. Nature cannot afford to lose many libel cases—not for financial reasons, but because we do not want to acquire a reputation for muckraking. But we are not averse to making stxong comments where appropriate. Visiting Israel recently, I found that our leader [the lead editorial attacking the Israeli government for bombing the Iraqi nuclear mactor in 1982 is still taken as evidence of an anti-Israeli bias—which, of course, is quite untrue. Four years ago, we carried some highly critical material about Japanese psychiatry, and this week Mrs. Thatcher is under fire in our main leader for hounding the press and creating a climate of misinformation in Britain. increase their chances of being published in Nature? A Write briefly, clearly, and have a good tale to tell. We are particularly keen on topicality, on papers that will interest people outside a particular specialty, and on understandability. We don’t want to publish many papers that many of our readers cannot understand. There’s too much of that around already. A That’s a very timely question. Ever since I became editor, I have been asking, “When can we stop publishing all this molecular biology and get back to real science?” Each time, something like reverse transcriptase has come along to show that there’s plenty of mileage in the field yet. I now suspect that we really have got to a point of change. Much of molecular biology has become application, fine-tuning, or exceedingly technical. It’s no coincidence, therefore, that the physical sciences are now beginning to occupy a greater proportion of our pages. some time? What do you plan to do next? A You are the first person to bring that question up. I haven’t even had time to think about my next move. Editing Nature keeps me far too busy.

John Maddox Offers Surprising Insights Into His

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