The "research" is at times risible. Key experimental results appeared suddenly in a manuscript version upon which lab members were given a couple of hours to comment before submission to Nature.

"When the students asked Dias about the stunning new data, they say, he told them he had taken all the resistance and magnetic-susceptibility data before coming to Rochester."

Just nonchalantly sitting on proof of room-temperature superconductivity for a few years, as one does. /2

For the first paper, Nature engaged three referees and there were three rounds of review. One referee was strongly positive, the other two did not support publication. Nature went ahead anyway.

I can't think of a previous black on white example where Nature have admitted allowing impact to override quality, although that's always been the tacit implication of their editorial policy. And this is exactly the result they risk with that policy. /4

@BorisBarbour

For as long as I can remember, they've always made it quite explicit, that their editors reign supreme and reviewers only advise them - and that this goes in bnoth directions.

In the words of now infamous Declan Butler, "peer-review light": the non-peers are making the main decisions and the peers are relegated to the back-seats.

@brembs @BorisBarbour "For as long as I can remember, they've always made it quite explicit, that their editors reign supreme and reviewers only advise them - and that this goes in bnoth directions."

Isn't that how journals started, and how they're supposed to function? The role of reviewers is to advise the editor, not be the editor and make decisions for the journal.

If editors aren't supposed to make their own judgement calls, why have trained scientist experts be editors at all?

@MarkHanson @brembs

The experts they showed the reports to for this article shared your view and don't appear to have found the decision shocking.

Still, deciding to run with one positive report seems dangerous.

And your comment raises the interesting question of the level of expertise of the professional editors.

@BorisBarbour was in the middle of a 2nd post that maybe responds to that point :)

https://fediscience.org/@MarkHanson/112076157010161685

I've been thinking on this a lot recently... it's kinda messed up that many journals systemize the peer review recommendations in terms of "accept/reject." Like... reviewers are consulted for comments, not to do the editor's job. 1-2 whole generations of scientists has been raised with the idea that editors are just rubber stamps with little power. Is that really the way it should be?