Portal de Periódicos da CAPES

Darwin’s Favorite Journal

2016; Cell Press; Volume: 164; Issue: 4 Linguagem: Inglês

10.1016/j.cell.2016.01.041

1097-4172

Jan Witkowski,

Evolution and Science Education

The Gardener’s Chronicle had been Darwin’s publication of choice, but beginning with a note on “The fertilization of winter-flowering plants” in Nature’s third issue (November 18, 1869), over the next ten years 41 out of 71 of Darwin’s publications appeared in Nature. Melinda Baldwin tells the story of Nature’s origin and its rise to prominence. Hers is not a wholly chronological account, and Baldwin focuses on some major themes in Nature’s history, in particular how over almost 150 years, it has helped define the role of science in society. This is an intriguing account and will surprise those who take it for granted that Nature has always looked and functioned as it does today. The Victorian era was a period when science and technology were highly esteemed and the educated public was eager for the information provided by periodicals such as the Edinburgh Review and the Westminster Review. For example, the April 1860 edition of the latter contained a 14,000-word review of the Origin of Species written by T.H. Huxley. He and other scientists such as Arthur Wallace and Norman Lockyer wrote articles for these periodicals to supplement their income and because they saw them as a means to promote the status of scientists in society. Norman Lockyer was a rather remarkable self-trained astronomer whose study of solar spectra was sufficient for his admission to the Royal Society. In addition to writing articles for magazines, Lockyer published books with Macmillan and Company, and in 1869 he persuaded Macmillan to start a new weekly called Nature the first issue appearing on November 4, 1869. Early contributors included many eminent scientists, but quickly younger scientists realized the advantages of publishing their research in a weekly journal, not least for establishing priority. As a consequence, the magazine became less accessible to the non-scientist, and in 1872 Charles Kingsley, author of The Water Babies, wrote to Lockyer “…I wish I were wise enough to understand more of it.” Nature was on its way to becoming a journal for the professional scientist. The late 19th century was a time of vituperative public arguments, and Lockyer did not shy away from involving Nature in controversies, an example followed by later editors. Take, for example, the war of words waged by John Tyndall and Peter Tait in the pages of Nature on the formation of glaciers. Tyndall wrote of Tait: “It is this man whose blunders and whose injustice have been so often reduced to nakedness, without once showing that he possessed the manhood to acknowledge a committed wrong, who now puts himself forward as the corrector of my errors and the definer of my scientific position.” Even at this early stage in Nature’s life there were complaints that continue to the present day. Baldwin reports that an Oxford mathematician complained that Lockyer had forgotten “…the difference between the Editor of Nature and the Author of Nature,” a reference to the god-like power of the editor. The development of science as a profession raised some difficulties in 1918 when Lockyer retired. His chosen successor was his assistant Richard Gregory, but Gregory had minimal scientific qualifications and was not a Fellow of the Royal Society (FRS). However, Gregory did succeed to the editorship and established his (and Nature’s) position as a spokesman for science. He was so effective that in 1931 he was made a Knight Commander of the British Empire (KBE) for his contributions to science, and in 1933 he was made FRS under Statute 12 for those who have “rendered conspicuous service to the cause of science.” I imagine that for Gregory FRS was a greater honor than KBE. The question of succession rose again in 1939 when Gregory retired. He recommended that his editorial assistants, Arthur Gale and Jack Brimble, become joint editors. Baldwin characterizes their tenure as worthy but dull. The editorials were symptomatic of the dullness. For 27 years these were written by Rainald Brightman, chief librarian at ICI, and were generally low-key reporting rather than incisive or controversial opinion pieces. Papers were published without peer review, and by the 1950s Nature had a reputation as a journal that would publish anything provided it came from a British laboratory. Gale and Brimble seem not have rejected any manuscript, and when Brimble died in 1965 (Gale had retired in 1961), the backlog of manuscripts stretched back 14 months! The man who inherited that backlog of over 2,000 manuscripts was John Maddox. Maddox was a theoretical physicist who left research to become the science correspondent for the Manchester Guardian, a left-leaning national newspaper and became Nature’s editor in 1966. His most significant changes were to the front of the journal. As Brenda Maddox, John’s wife, put it, “he wanted the news pages at Nature to be as newsy as the science pages of the Guardian….” The “News & Views” section now featured commentaries on interesting papers published in other journals, although these were anonymous and rather quaintly attributed to, for example, “A Correspondent in Molecular Biology.” Maddox continued the autocratic review process, sending some papers out for review but rejecting and accepting others on his own authority. One paper that might not have survived peer review and is regrettably not mentioned by Baldwin is the anonymous “The effects of sexual activity on beard growth in man,” published in the May 30, 1970 issue. Maddox’ most radical step was to begin two new journals, Nature Physical Sciences and Nature New Biology but these were a short-lived experiment. They were expensive to produce and authors submitting manuscripts to Nature were miffed when their papers were shunted to the spinoffs. Unfortunately for Maddox, at the time he also fell out with the Macmillan executives and resigned in 1973. The readers of Cell owe a debt of gratitude to those Macmillan editors who pulled the plug on New Biology. Maddox had appointed Ben Lewin as a biology editor, and it was Lewin who oversaw Nature New Biology. With the writing on the wall for New Biology, Lewin left Nature and founded Cell, the first issue appearing in January 1974. His timing could not have been better—the recombinant DNA revolution was transforming biology and his office in Cambridge, Massachusetts, was within walking distance of laboratories pioneering these techniques. Baldwin writes that Physical Sciences and New Biology were not allowed to develop their own identity and had little or no editorial commentary. One wonders what might have become of Nature New Biology had Lewin been given a free hand in 1971. David Davies took over from Maddox, and his most obvious change was to the journal’s cover–he dropped the advertisements and substituted scientific images. Davies also did away with the anonymity of the “News & Views” authors and more importantly, subjected all submissions to peer review. In general, Davies brought organization and procedure to the Nature operation. He also continued the Nature tradition of publishing controversial papers, such as papers by Russell Targ and Harold Puthoff on extrasensory perception; by Sir Peter Scott and Robert Rines proposing Nessiteras rhombopteryx as the taxonomic name for the Loch Ness monster; and on Uri Geller, self-proclaimed psychic. The Nature staff must have felt a distinct sense of déjà vu when, on Davies retirement in 1979, Maddox again became editor. His second tenure was not marked by any significant changes but it was notable for Nature’s position on several very high profile controversies. The most notorious example was the claim by Jacques Benveniste that solutions of anti-igE antibody diluted (10−12) to the point where the solution contained no antibody molecules but nevertheless still degranulated basophils. The facts were controversial, lending support as some saw it to homeopathy, but it was the manner of Maddox’s handling of the paper that aroused the greatest consternation. Maddox took a team of investigators—himself; Walter Stewart, already notorious for investigation of David Baltimore; and the magician, James “the Amazing” Randi—to Benveniste’s laboratory. On their return Maddox wrote an article denouncing Benveniste as a fraud. This escapade was not well received and it is not surprising that Nature has not repeated such an escapade. Baldwin finishes her account in the 1990s with Maddox still in the editor’s chair but it would have been useful to have even a thumbnail sketch of the years of Phil Campbell’s editorship. Also missing is a discussion of Nature in the broader context of science publishing, including its response to its new rivals—Cell, Science, and other journals, such as EMBO Journal and Genes & Development, for biology papers. Nor does Baldwin cover Nature as a commercial venture. Is the ever-increasing family of Nature offspring fulfilling the needs of scientists or merely a commercial enterprise? (I await the Nature grandchildren as when Nature Cell Biology spawns Nature Nucleus, Nature Membrane, Nature Lysosome and so on.) Nevertheless, Baldwin has written an interesting account of the journal and of the broader roles Nature has played over the years—helping to define science in the late 19th century, fostering internationalism in science in the early years of the 20th century, and promoting intellectual freedom during the period of Lysenko and the Cold War. The book ends with a discussion of the challenges facing contemporary scientific journal publishing: the role of peer review, online publishing, and open access. It is not clear that any publisher, whether a society or a company, has solved these, and Baldwin concludes that Nature may not be able to dictate what the solutions might be. Scientists as producers and consumers of the content of journals are in a powerful position. Providing what scientists want will “shape Nature’s future” and that of Cell, and other journals.