Interesting to think of this now in 2013, although OT to the thread.

In regard to Steve’s 3 questions,

Try to discuss whether you think (1) that I’ve demonstrated that Jones was the added reviewer (2) whether Nature intentionally added a reviewer with a known conflict of interest; (3) whether Jones’ adverse conflict of interest interfered with an objective review.

I say yes, yes, and yes. I’m not an academic. Such blatant conflicts of interest need to be openly declared and understood. In the clashes of ideas and argument, of course it is healthy to examine critical views, but it is also crucial to take account of how intellectual cliques and alliances can operate. I see nothing wrong with an editor wanting to understand the different sides more fully before a decision to publish, but using a highly interested (conflicted) party to derail a process that had previously seemed likely to result in publication (based upon Joliffe and Zorita reviews) seems abusive of sound process. Sound judgment includes knowing how to weigh evidence and arguments from a highly interested party such as Jones. Nature editors did not display sound judgment.

One more thought on point (2)
This maybe a hair-brained (OT?) hypothesis but could Nature/Heike be acting funny (more stringent/more?) because of the recent rejection of a Santer paper?

“> >Dear Phil,
> >
> >I just don’t have much luck with the Heikes of this world. Heike L.
> >rejected our
> >Nature paper on the analysis of changes in tropopause height and
> >equivalent MSU
> >temperatures in ERA-40. She took six weeks to make this decision, and didn’t
> >even send the paper out for review! Very disappointing. I doubt whether
> >I’ll be
> >submitting any papers to Nature in the next few years.”

Maybe not but standard policies can help with ‘tough’ decisions. Sometimes people just get fed-up and rationalize themselves out of controversies.

“I am not defending nature…I was never here”

There’s a huge difference between conflicting ideas and conflict of interest.

Any vigorous discussion involves conflicting ideas.

When a party on one side of a disagreement can take advantage of their position of influence to their personal or corporate (group) benefit… then they are in a COI position that should be revealed, recused, etc.

It is difficult: knowledgeable parties to an active area of disagreement will obviously benefit to some extent if their position prevails.

What’s clear in this case is that one Team of players is overly familiar, overly influential, with the editorial staff of these journals. To properly deal with a situation like this, in the business world:
a) We’d seek diligently for reviewers who are more disinterested;
b) We’d require disclosure of these potential/real COI’s;
c) We’d seriously question why such a vitally-interested party did not recuse themselves.

Seems to me that network-relationship analysis such as done by Wegman could become an ongoing database maintained for the purpose of identifying and making use of knowledgeable reviewers who are least-involved already in any given contentious issue.

It is the Editor’s responsibility but mere discretion seems to be part of the problem. The idea of having policies in place as a check can make things less difficult. “Acrimonious debate” is a good description for the way a policy might be finalized. When applied to “through the literature”, the phrase is too bitter for me.

if your duty is to the truth then you will be eternally at conflict

Exactly.

the whole idea of asking a person adverse in interest to act as a reviewer was very odd

Not at all. To resolve a conflict of ideas there must be a dialogue involving some kind of conflict. The Editor may choose to set up a very lively, clashing, short-lived discussion that gets settled quickly, or a muted, lingering, back and forth that seems to never resolve. The Editor exercises this right and responsibility through their choice of reviewers and style of oversight in the review process. Editors are powerful people.