Nature recently replied to my complaint regarding citations in the paper Ancient DNA reveals pervasive directional selection across West Eurasia by Akbari et al.
Since it is standard practice to cite prior work, or at least the most significant prior work on the one or more central questions in the current work - in general, in patents and especially in peer-reviewed scientific journal articles - an article which does not cite some or all of the significant pieces of prior work will, quite reasonably, be interpreted by most readers as evidence that there was no such work. To the extent that this was a deliberate choice of all those concerned, this is a fraudulent omission.
A complete peer-reviewed journal article will cite such work. It is reasonable to assume that the author(s) of any article published in a Nature journal is fully familiar with the prior work, and that the reviewers should be familiar with this work even if they had never heard of it before (as part of their checking the veracity of the new article's evidence and arguments).
Editors of Nature know all this. These are simple, important, aspects of the scientific publishing - and they are paid handsomely as leaders of this field.
The logic is inexorable.
The only way all this makes sense must be along these lines: You, or at least your work in the field, are regarded by the authors and the editors as unworthy of acknowledgement. The authors simply ignore your work and the reviewers go along with it. The editors are covering up for these two sets of failings, which indicates they too think your work is unworthy of acknowledgement.
Perhaps the editors weren't initially in on this. Perhaps they chose to close ranks with their authors and reviewers rather than follow proper principles, and admit that their system failed in this instance - and that it was really the reviewers' fault for not insisting the author include proper references to 100% pertinent prior work.
This is the house of cards they build for themselves when, to them - the editors and all those other puffed up seat warmers who pretend to be upholding the highest principles, but are craven, clueless, backstabbing, petty etc. - it is more important to be seen to be right than to be right. It is all downhill from there regarding adherence to proper principles, and all higher in the sky for the tower of cards they build for themselves to perch upon.
One day it will all come tumbling down. However, this can take decades because there are legions of these people in many fields, including scientific publishing - and they tend to stick together in a hard-to-dislodge, pseudo-respectable, established System[1] which makes me think of a slimy but firmly affixed matte of symbiotic pernicious organisms fouling what would ideally be an uncontaminated surface.
I can't help but deploy an arresting figurative expression I heard for the first time last night. Col. Douglas Macgregor (ret) is a former high-ranking U.S. military commander much in demand on the You Tube interview circuit hosted by Judge Napolitano, Nima R. Alkhorshid et al. He uses it with respect to President Trump: https://youtu.be/R5SqHyCkQ3s?si=aTLSJU-sMi7b9E8O&t=758. A quick Google search indicates Col. Macgregor has used this expression multiple times in the last few years. Then - without doing an exhaustive search - I found the expression in a 2004 blog post: https://faroutliers.com/2004/06/09/faubion-bowers-intoxicated-by-macarthur/, which is apparently a three paragraph quote from U.S. academic Faubion Bowers https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Faubion_Bowers who during WW2 was a Japanese translator to, and aide-de-camp of, General Douglas MacArthur. (Photo of the two: https://digital.library.manoa.hawaii.edu/items/show/40532.) In the quoted text, Bowers uses the expression with respect to General MacArthur's pride.
The blog post cites the source as a no-longer existent web page http://www.javadc.org/building_a_new_japan_introductio.htm. A 2001-02-04 snapshot is: https://web.archive.org/web/20010205160000/http://www.javadc.org/building_a_new_japan_introductio.htm. At this time, the domain was registered to the Japanese American Veterans Association, in Washington D.C. These are evidently excerpts from chapters of a publication called "Building a New Japan", with Faubion Bower's chapter being the last. However, I could not easily find such a publication. I am tempted to think that the expression was originated by Faubion Bowers - but who knows where he might have got it from?
Here's my well referenced deployment:
I think you have been stiffed by a noxious collection of individuals who are using their power and status to deny proper attribution of some of your work, and so of you, when by every principle and reasonable expectation in Science they should have gladly cited your work. In the absence of evidence to the contrary - and you tried in vain to imagine a legitimate reason why the editors should be so avoidant of your question - and especially because they tried to prevent you from communicating their avoidant rejection of your request to other people, I think that these individuals exhibit behaviour which is undistinguishable from that which results from having all their proper principles, as Faubion Bowers appears to have written about General Douglas MacArthur, mortgaged to vanity. Perhaps not personal vanity, but to their roles as protectors and purveyors of a faulty intellectual and moral framework which is to your work as a blister is to a lance.
"authors have a reasonable degree of flexibility in choosing to cite papers they feel are the most relevant to their study."
As in, authors have the flexibility to not cite the meanie racists and, by doing so, give them exposure. Authors can make the choice to keep the meanie racists out of their sights "if that's what they individually want to do," but since the entire academic culture is ideologically captured, everyone wants to do that, and the meanie racists are effectively kept in embargo.
Well the email wasn’t that long, I reported the important sentences in my post. I guess this is the best way to go about it. Disclose their full message, without literally publishing their email. Everyone can see them for what they are.
Aren't you in danger of just sounding a bit like one of the "whiners" as described on this generous blog from John Hawks? Perhaps you should just move on. Expect you will anyway!
I posted this more than a week after I received their email. I didn't do it to whine but because I felt like I had a duty to inform people about the outcome of the decision. Saying I had submitted a formal complaint but not letting people know about the negative outcome would have not been transparent to say the least.
Fair enough. But do read his blog. Plenty of people in your position having down unacknowledged prior work it would seem. Would be genuinely interested in your take on his post.
Yes plenty of people had their work not acknowledged but in no way comparable to my case. The overlap with my work was so large that not citing it is not a mere omission.
Since it is standard practice to cite prior work, or at least the most significant prior work on the one or more central questions in the current work - in general, in patents and especially in peer-reviewed scientific journal articles - an article which does not cite some or all of the significant pieces of prior work will, quite reasonably, be interpreted by most readers as evidence that there was no such work. To the extent that this was a deliberate choice of all those concerned, this is a fraudulent omission.
A complete peer-reviewed journal article will cite such work. It is reasonable to assume that the author(s) of any article published in a Nature journal is fully familiar with the prior work, and that the reviewers should be familiar with this work even if they had never heard of it before (as part of their checking the veracity of the new article's evidence and arguments).
Editors of Nature know all this. These are simple, important, aspects of the scientific publishing - and they are paid handsomely as leaders of this field.
The logic is inexorable.
The only way all this makes sense must be along these lines: You, or at least your work in the field, are regarded by the authors and the editors as unworthy of acknowledgement. The authors simply ignore your work and the reviewers go along with it. The editors are covering up for these two sets of failings, which indicates they too think your work is unworthy of acknowledgement.
Perhaps the editors weren't initially in on this. Perhaps they chose to close ranks with their authors and reviewers rather than follow proper principles, and admit that their system failed in this instance - and that it was really the reviewers' fault for not insisting the author include proper references to 100% pertinent prior work.
This is the house of cards they build for themselves when, to them - the editors and all those other puffed up seat warmers who pretend to be upholding the highest principles, but are craven, clueless, backstabbing, petty etc. - it is more important to be seen to be right than to be right. It is all downhill from there regarding adherence to proper principles, and all higher in the sky for the tower of cards they build for themselves to perch upon.
One day it will all come tumbling down. However, this can take decades because there are legions of these people in many fields, including scientific publishing - and they tend to stick together in a hard-to-dislodge, pseudo-respectable, established System[1] which makes me think of a slimy but firmly affixed matte of symbiotic pernicious organisms fouling what would ideally be an uncontaminated surface.
I can't help but deploy an arresting figurative expression I heard for the first time last night. Col. Douglas Macgregor (ret) is a former high-ranking U.S. military commander much in demand on the You Tube interview circuit hosted by Judge Napolitano, Nima R. Alkhorshid et al. He uses it with respect to President Trump: https://youtu.be/R5SqHyCkQ3s?si=aTLSJU-sMi7b9E8O&t=758. A quick Google search indicates Col. Macgregor has used this expression multiple times in the last few years. Then - without doing an exhaustive search - I found the expression in a 2004 blog post: https://faroutliers.com/2004/06/09/faubion-bowers-intoxicated-by-macarthur/, which is apparently a three paragraph quote from U.S. academic Faubion Bowers https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Faubion_Bowers who during WW2 was a Japanese translator to, and aide-de-camp of, General Douglas MacArthur. (Photo of the two: https://digital.library.manoa.hawaii.edu/items/show/40532.) In the quoted text, Bowers uses the expression with respect to General MacArthur's pride.
The blog post cites the source as a no-longer existent web page http://www.javadc.org/building_a_new_japan_introductio.htm. A 2001-02-04 snapshot is: https://web.archive.org/web/20010205160000/http://www.javadc.org/building_a_new_japan_introductio.htm. At this time, the domain was registered to the Japanese American Veterans Association, in Washington D.C. These are evidently excerpts from chapters of a publication called "Building a New Japan", with Faubion Bower's chapter being the last. However, I could not easily find such a publication. I am tempted to think that the expression was originated by Faubion Bowers - but who knows where he might have got it from?
Here's my well referenced deployment:
I think you have been stiffed by a noxious collection of individuals who are using their power and status to deny proper attribution of some of your work, and so of you, when by every principle and reasonable expectation in Science they should have gladly cited your work. In the absence of evidence to the contrary - and you tried in vain to imagine a legitimate reason why the editors should be so avoidant of your question - and especially because they tried to prevent you from communicating their avoidant rejection of your request to other people, I think that these individuals exhibit behaviour which is undistinguishable from that which results from having all their proper principles, as Faubion Bowers appears to have written about General Douglas MacArthur, mortgaged to vanity. Perhaps not personal vanity, but to their roles as protectors and purveyors of a faulty intellectual and moral framework which is to your work as a blister is to a lance.
[1] See Haruki Murakami's description of The System in his acceptance speech for the 2009 Jerusalem Prize, "Always on the Side of the Egg": https://www.haaretz.com/israel-news/culture/2009-02-17/ty-article/always-on-the-side-of-the-egg/0000017f-db26-d3ff-a7ff-fba694020000.
Fully agree! And thanks for your support! Their intimation not to publish their email shows that they know how bad it would make them look!
To expect an unethical, narrative-driven rag like Nature to acknowledge or even understand your point of contention is more than they are capable of.
"authors have a reasonable degree of flexibility in choosing to cite papers they feel are the most relevant to their study."
As in, authors have the flexibility to not cite the meanie racists and, by doing so, give them exposure. Authors can make the choice to keep the meanie racists out of their sights "if that's what they individually want to do," but since the entire academic culture is ideologically captured, everyone wants to do that, and the meanie racists are effectively kept in embargo.
We all know what this is really about.
If I read you right, you are mimicking Nature in defense of Piffer.
Yes, that was my intent. I'm pretty sure that if I were still unironically using the term
"meanie" at my age, I would ban myself from the internet.
The use of the word meanie was the giveaway for me. Unfortunately, not everyone was insightful. Thanks
Perhaps I should use the word "mocking" instead of "mimicking".
Pass along, we don't need thought police here.
They know their decision is ridiculous so they don't want to be exposed, right?
Yes!
Well the email wasn’t that long, I reported the important sentences in my post. I guess this is the best way to go about it. Disclose their full message, without literally publishing their email. Everyone can see them for what they are.
I wonder if I am legally obliged not to publish it. I don’t think so, but perhaps I should consult with a lawyer.
They'd probably ban me from publishing in Nature lol what a loss
Not about truth, that much is clear.
It is amusing to learn that the quality of the arguments dropping by 20 IQ points whenever race and IQ comes up is not just a feature of ChatGPT.
Aren't you in danger of just sounding a bit like one of the "whiners" as described on this generous blog from John Hawks? Perhaps you should just move on. Expect you will anyway!
https://substack.com/@johnhawks/note/p-194196340?r=gaql6
I posted this more than a week after I received their email. I didn't do it to whine but because I felt like I had a duty to inform people about the outcome of the decision. Saying I had submitted a formal complaint but not letting people know about the negative outcome would have not been transparent to say the least.
Fair enough. But do read his blog. Plenty of people in your position having down unacknowledged prior work it would seem. Would be genuinely interested in your take on his post.
Yes plenty of people had their work not acknowledged but in no way comparable to my case. The overlap with my work was so large that not citing it is not a mere omission.