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Anonymous Peer-review Comments May Spark Legal Battle
sciencehabit writes: The power of anonymous comments — and the liability of those who make them — is at the heart of a possible legal battle embroiling PubPeer, an online forum launched in October 2012 for anonymous, postpublication peer review. A researcher who claims that comments on PubPeer caused him to lose a tenured faculty job offer now intends to press legal charges against the person or people behind these posts — provided he can uncover their identities, his lawyer says.
There are two possibilities: He lost his tenure because there was an anonymous, incorrect peer review negative towards him. His work was actually good. In that case he should sue the university to make decisions based on anonymous, incorrect peer reviews.
Or he lost his tenure because there was an anonymous, but correct peer review negative towards him. His work wasn't up to scratch. In that case, his loss is deserved. If faults in his work were not detected in a normal review but only in further review by an anonymous person, these faults are still there and due to him. Suing would be like a criminal who got caught due to an anonymous tip suing the tipster.
I have a real problem with the concept of anonymous peer review without editorial oversight or not included in a due peer review process. That said, I do recognize the interest for post-publication peer review due to lacks in the commonly used review processes, although I do not believe this should be allowed to be done anonymously.
Anonymous review is usual in the peer-review processes of most journals, but these comments are in general non-public or at least reviewed by an editor before publication. Some reviewers choose to do their peer-review work without the cover of anonymity and I encourage this. If you have constructive criticism on the work of an other and can this criticism is well founded, you can very well do it openly.
I believe that the best why to process with peer-review is with a two steps process, where first the submitted paper is published in an open discussion paper. Comments from the official reviewers are public and any one can comment on the papers. Following the peer review process, the paper is published in the official paper which may be with or without open access (I prefer those with open access). Such a process encourages quality and brings the whole community in the peer-review process, but under the oversight of editors.
Something like PubPeer is extremely tricky. It's an open door to abuse and for commenter to wash their dirty linen in public. I don't know if such a platform is a good idea, especially with anonymity. I'd rather have a good review of the peer-review processes commonly used.
People should not be able to hide behind the mask of anonymity! If I correctly accuse someone of being a charlatan, I should be willing to have my mask removed so that the charlatan can attack me and/or my family. It is only right.
Besides, is it fair for someone to be able to snitch on another person, even if that other person is doing something wrong? I say NO!
A person should be able to commit crimes without fearing the possibility that some anonymous coward could expose them for being a criminal.
The scientist and his lawyer suspect foul play by anonymous person(s) who allegedly defamed him by posting ad hominem attacks in their pubpeer comments and then distributed those comment pages to both universities associated with him.
So shouldn't these universities have figured out that there were anonymous person(s) involved defaming him by posting ad hominem attacks?
Tenure is competitive enough that simple accusations or slurs can be enough to sink a person. While it would be nice if solid research and objectivity were the only elements involved, there is a huge human factor which is distressingly easy to swing.
Is losing a $350,000 job offer something you consider trivial? The scientist and his lawyer suspect foul play by anonymous person(s) who allegedly defamed him by posting ad hominem attacks in their pubpeer comments and then distributed those comment pages to both universities associated with him.
Any criticism of his work should be valid and fact based and that should be enforced by the site's moderators. Still, anonymity is important when criticizing someone and they should not use this as an excuse to force critics to reveal their identities.
Not being familiar with the subject, does his work hold up? If so any comments should be discarded, especially a place such as a university should be intellectually above paying attention to ad homien. If not then that's what you get for putting sub par or wrong things on line. It's just going to get ripped apart, especially on a site that invites it.
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His role on most of the papers was probably just to write the grant request.
Geez, you could probably hire an assistant vollyball coach for that much money.
Sheesh, evil *and* a jerk. -- Jade
Isn't science all about trolling other scientists, really?
Eh I guess you can sue anyone for anything in 'merica
And the great thing about suing someone in the US of A is that even if you lose, there is no penalty. The guy you sue is out a ton of legal bills and time defending himself, and if you lose, you can just walk away. That's why so many companies and individuals in the U.S. will just settle even if they know the person has a bogus suit.
Fuck all those silly European countries with their "loser pays the winner's legal bills" socialist shit! USA! USA! USA!
SJW's don't eliminate discrimination. They just expropriate it for themselves.
As the other reply pointed out, tenure is not quite that iron clad. However this issue is about getting tenure, a process that takes a decade or more where often at every step you are on a knife's edge of being let go. There is really no analogy in the business world, in non academic jobs you either advance or stay where you are, in academic ones things are barely tolerable where you are and there are enough people trying to get there that if you do not advance you leave the field. It is a surprisingly harsh system, much worse then what you see in corporate america.
I have always found the old 'those who can, do, those who can not, teach' rather ironic since for people who want to go into academia, private industry is where you go if you fail.
Yes, criminals also say the police is on a campaign against them. if this author is continually putting out crap, then someone who knows it should continually point it out. that is not wrong at all (assuming it is justfied, which as you admit, you think it could be - how else does peer-review work than to voice your concerns?).
Not being familiar with the subject, does his work hold up?
I'm not an expert in the field but what I saw of the comments were very specific about reuse of figures and data without citation. They did not appear to be ad hominem at all but evidence based with image comparisons of figures from different papers. I expect that this is why he got into trouble - a relevant expert from the hiring university would be able to easily evaluate the merits of the comments.