Today is not the first day that I’ve woken up to realize that my name will not appear in Nature magazine. I send them my scientific breakthroughs quite regularly. One of them even broke through recently, and If you love me, you’ll go download it and cite it a few times. My experience with Nature’s publishing process is that first, a severely overworked Editor desperately tries to find a reason to reject your stuff, and then if he can’t, he sends it out to a few more guys who close ranks and tell you it’s shit. Then you write a long measured response explaining patiently that they’re all wrong, and finally the Editor has to come down on one side or another, usually not yours. I don’t have any evidence that this process doesn’t work exactly the same way for every poor bastard that submits a scientific report to Nature, regardless of creed or calling.
So today I learned that the publishing process at Nature is actually very different from the above. I am now convinced that there’s a rat that runs across the keyboards late at night, accidentally hitting “command-P” here and there and producing content. I’ve concluded this because apparently no one is responsible for what’s in the correspondence section of Volume 505, which looks like this (click it):
Above I see two things that I don’t want to read about, one of them being Genital Itching. I also see the Nature masthead, and a Nature volume number and doi assigned to a letter arguing that journalistic adherence to scientific quality will logically and inevitably result in my invisibility. Well, that’s my summary, but I encourage you to read it and formulate your own. This whole thing is a big old steaming déjà vu of Womanspace from a few years ago, which I also wrote about. Anyway, it hurts to read that crap and so I’m all pissed off. On Twitter, journalists have splained and splained to me that Nature-Jobs, Nature-Comments, Nature-Letters, Nature-TooManyIDK are totally f*cking separate and each is populated by Editors that positively abhor the values of the others. It seems that Nature is always really concerned that I fully appreciate this after they publish something offensive. At other times they’re more comfortable with the lines being blurry. Like when I’m paying my subscription bill, for example.
I try hard to avoid having principles because they inevitably lead me to hypocrisy, and aside from that, very little else is accomplished. Today was particularly illustrative: I used to have this policy that I never, ever declined to talk to a reporter. Because I hold my practice of self-promotion sacred, it was an easy policy to follow. Well, today I violated my own policy. I told a very professional, smart and sincerely motivated freelance journalist that I wasn’t going to do the Q&A we’d planned for Nature Jobs. I felt like shit for declining. I told her again and again that I don’t want to make her job harder. Just like Nature doesn’t want to make my job harder. But it does. At least I can take comfort in the fact that if readers wonder why my name is not in their issue of Nature, they can just flip over to the section with a letter that explains why you shouldn’t expect to see names like mine in Nature. This will be handy for everyone, and yet I still feel the need to formally revise my principles in light of today’s events. Below is my new working model:
THINGS HOPE JAHREN IS NOT WILLING TO DO (a complete list):
I will not serve as the poster child du jour for Nature’s version of GirlsRule! I don’t want to be Nature‘s counterpoint. I am my own point.
I will not wear pantyhose ever, for any reason.
THINGS HOPE JAHREN IS WILLING TO DO (an incomplete list):
I will do the exact same Q&A interview — with the same or a different reporter — for any other publication under the sun. This includes Science, PNAS, Guideposts, Playboy, Hustler and Dog Fancy.
I will allow Nature to officially link to this blog post. They could call it, “Here’s What Hope Jahren Thinks!” After all, their wish to interview me proves that they want their readers to know what I have to say, so this will make it easy. Watch for the link, everyone!
I will hold Nature responsible for choosing to print anything that it prints.
Oh, shucks, who am I kidding here? Criticizing Nature is like throwing a rock at a tank. C’mon, it’s Nature for Chrissakes. Nobody there gives a shit about my hurt little feelings and they can find hoards of men far more interesting than me to interview. It’s also not my place to tell Nature what to do about what just might be pernicious editorial problems somewhere within their chain-of-command. And furthermore, I’m sorry for what I wrote about rats. I feel bad for rats. It’s not their fault that they spread disease and just generally gross everyone out. And they clearly don’t understand the damage that they do.
Important point: The Itching-Genital information is not part of any Nature publication, it’s just a web ad. If my genitals itch, it is not Nature’s responsibility. Sort of like it’s not their responsibility if one of their editorial choices disempowers the shit out of me.Got a comment? hahaLOL, send it to Nature!
Still wondering what this is all about? You can read the whole story of the original dumbass letter on @rocza ‘s blog. In addition to the inspired passages above, I also wrote a measured and professional letter directly to Editor-in-Chief at Nature, mostly because I like to hear myself talk. They published a 300-word excerpt of it within their Correspondence section.
#HOPEJAHRENSURECANWRITE 