At the risk of drifting off-topic, I’d like to respond to some of the points made in recent posts.
I’m occasionally criticised for the tone of my responses, and Etudiant compared the language in some of the exchanges on the thread to the UEA Climategate emails from Phil Jones and others. Elsewhere there are regular palpitations whenever I dare to suggest that the motives of the RSPB or BTO are less pure than the driven snow.
Such reactions betray a failure to understand that events like Climategate provide a glimpse of the quotidian reality of academic life. Scientists in particular have been supremely successful in promoting themselves as noble seekers after truth, but what they really do is push their own interest and point of view by any underhand means necessary. Slander and vilification of rivals is a stock in trade, and those that have the power to obstruct potential competitors miss no opportunity to do so. As the saying goes, ‘academic disputes are vicious because the stakes are so low’.
The choice of the Auk as an outlet for the article is heuristic. Initially we submitted to the Journal of Animal Ecology, but after six months had gone by found that they hadn’t even sent the paper out for peer review. The idea of submitting to the Auk came from Dan Chamberlain, then of the BTO, as a means of ‘avoiding the politics’ in the UK/Europe, the signature of which is not too hard to discern.
Kicking the issue into the long grass is a popular ruse. Apart from the JAE incident, I’m still waiting for a response from British Birds to a sparrow manuscript I submitted in December 2009. Another trick is to write a review that ignores the submitted article completely, as in the case of a review of the sparrow literature that I sent to Journal of Avian Biology, which responded with two hostile reviews of the already published Auk article.
The truth is that science and academic pursuits in general, far from being pure and noble, are probably a good deal more sordid, nasty and malevolent than most other areas of life, and this is all the more unfortunate given the smiling image they present to the wider world. It’s for this reason I’d like to offer a word of advice for anyone planning a career as a professional scientist. Despite the general dog eat dog atmosphere, you’ll sometimes come across people who cultivate impeccably good manners, are unfailingly polite, and who are careful to wear their deprecation of discourtesy on their sleeve. Watch out for them – they are the biggest snakes of all.
http://www.cpbell.co.uk
http://www.youtube.com/CultoftheAmateur