Publishing and publicity

If you are a journal publisher or editor, it's pretty much impossible to avoid controversy. There's the good kind: a well-argued disagreement on an important subject, or astounding new evidence that overturns an established theory, for example. But then there's the bad kind: an author who doesn't stick to your rules, a paper that doesn't hold up, or worse.The real test of a journal's mettle is not whether it manages to avoid the second type of controversy but rather, how well it copes with the fallout. A couple of recent examples of such coping mechanisms have made interesting viewing.First, the Biological Society of Washington (BSW) stepped in a big heap of controversy when it published a paper on intelligent design (S.C. Meyer, "The origin of biological information and the higher taxonomic categories," Proc Biol Soc Wash, 117:213–39, Sept. 15, 2004). The article thrust the BSW's sleepy Proceedings (ISI impact factor of 0.284) blinking into the glare of the international media for all the wrong reasons. The story that The Scientist Daily News posted on the subject on Sept. 3 is already one of its top-ten most-viewed ever http://www.the-scientist.com/news/20040903/04.The Society's official statement on the kafuffle, more than a week after the publication of the paper, stressed that the paper represented a significant departure from the wall-to-wall taxonomic content the journal has published for 124 years, and that if BSW's officers had known about the paper they never would have allowed its publication. Further, intelligent design "will not be addressed in future issues of the Proceedings. We are reviewing editorial policies to ensure that the goals of the Society, as reflected in its journal, are clearly understood by all," the BSW grandees said.It would appear that the BSW did what the International Committee of Medical Journal Editors refers to as an "expression of concern" in its Uniform Requirements for Manuscripts Submitted to Biomedical Journals: "As an alternative to retraction, the editor may choose to publish an expression of concern about aspects of the conduct or integrity of the work. The retraction or expression of concern, so labeled, should appear on a numbered page in a prominent section of the print journal as well as in the online version, be listed in the contents page, and include in its heading the title of the original article. It should not simply be a letter to the editor." But the BSW official statement didn't specify what would happen next, and neither they nor the editors responded to requests for comment by The Scientist's deadline.Either retracting the paper or publishing a rebuttal would bog the Society down in further hullabaloo, says Eugenie Scott of the National Center for Science Education, which defends evolution education. "Everybody involved in this wishes it would just go away," she says. "This is a nightmare for academics who would rather walk over hot coals than be involved in a controversy like this," she adds. What the BSW should have done, in her view, was admit that the article never should have been published, not just because it discussed intelligent design, but also because it contained bad science.While the BSW was trying to dampen controversy in the United States, over in the United Kingdom, fertility expert Panos Zavos was, as usual, stirring up debate on a different issue. At a press conference, he told reporters that he'd created embryos by inserting the DNA of dead people into cow oocytes. In the course of his talk, he mentioned an in-press article at the Journal of Assisted Reproduction and Genetics (impact factor: 0.735).Zavos tells The Scientist he absolutely did not suggest that the article included data from the postmortem cloning endeavor. Journalists with that impression though were soon phoning up the editor in chief of the journal, Norbert Gleicher, asking about the truth of the "statements" Zavos supposedly made.Gleicher reacted by shooting an E-mail to the paper's lead author, Karl Illmensee, seeking assurances that Zavos hadn't indulged in unauthorized prepublication publicity, or worse, misrepresented the contents of the article. If he didn't hear back in two days, the paper was out on its ear. Gleicher also told these facts to several news outlets.It wasn't until more than a week later that Illmensee got back to the editor, saying both he and his secretary had been on vacation. But by this point, it was too late, Gleicher told him. Zavos said he had video proof of his innocence; Gleicher said Zavos could appeal the decision.From this perspective it seems that Gleicher had found himself in a media trap. The journalists had prompted his action in the first place, and when he finally heard from Illmensee, he'd told too many reporters about his decision to reverse it.- Stephen Pincock

Publishing and publicity

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