I think @tage_rai has made good points here about money and bias in the open science movement, and got a lot of hostile pile on this weekend. But in fairness I think it's also important to not lose some of the more principled concerns I saw some people raise. https://twitter.com/tage_rai/status/1305487539470503936

A great thing about a powerful editor speaking freely on Twitter is that it creates some transparency. And many (like me) are happy to see some changes: openness to accepting papers that have already circulated/gotten media coverage, and plain speaking on bias in the profession.

On the open science question, looming in the background (for me) is that for a long time (before @tage_rai, before Gilbert) top journals (Science included) have had a reputation for sensation-seeking.

I'd love to be pointed to the hard numbers, but my guess is that null results are rare in these outlets, and significance hunting and rewarding remains rampant. I see an ongoing problem of incentives in the profession, and my hope is that journals play a leadership role fixing it

Whatever the money or bias problems the open science movement might have (I didn't know about these before this weekend) there's also a glaring and blatant problem of publication bias and significance hunting that people perceive as top science journals helping to perpetuate.

I know that I for one would feel more optimistic if there was evident passion for, and a plan, for tackling these problems in the world's flagship scientific journal. Maybe this is out there, and maybe it got mentioned in the flurry this weekend, but it did not come to the fore.

Like ending the press release fetish, and reducing bias in the profession, I think tackling publication bias is key. I don't say this because I'm an open science person. I'm not really. I've fallen on both sides of the transparency debates over the years.

Rather, if you asked me at any time in the last 15y what I thought about Science as a journal, I would have said that it has a reputation for publishing what's sexy not what's most important or correct. That's a big problem, and I think it underlies some of the Twitter anxiety.

Anyways--I hope no one reads this thread as being accusatory or judgmental of anyone in this debate. I have surely gotten many things wrong above. I just wanted to start a thread on the constructive bits of the discussion.