Have you ever wondered what it is like to be a scientific editor on Twitter? (thread)

Almost every day, you scroll down to find someone criticizing you, indirectly if you are lucky, directly if not. It usually starts from someone bringing up a problematic paper, a controversial opinion, or an issue with the review process.

And ends with a wholesale outcry and condemnation of editors and journals. We're inept, biased, greedy, lazy, evil, or a combination of the above. This is an frequent outcome for a Science twitter controversy, but seems to apply only to editors.

Take for instance a paper with wrong conclusions, or manipulated data. Twitter will flag it and discuss it, which is great. The opinions about the scientists involved can get quite incensed.

But they don’t (and rightfully so) spiral into saying “all the scientists in that lab must be frauds”. Much less “all the researchers in that institution are not trustworthy”. And never into “all scientists are bad so we should shut down academia all together”.

For editors, not so much. The arguments rapidly and consistently devolve into “what was the editor thinking” to "all editors are bad" to “this journal is trash” to “all the journals are trash”. This frequently gets cheered on and echoed, unchallenged.

So as an editor, you read daily about how you are incompetent. Or lazy. Or have shady motivations. Or worse. How you should be boycotted, or lose your job. Or worse. You see your colleagues in your own and other journals dragged through the mud.

You see scientists you work with and try to help “like” and “retweet” how much editors suck. Or post one-sided accounts of their interactions with you. You can’t reply, almost ever. Not even when someone is lying about a paper YOU handled. Not even when you have the receipts.

Because there is an expectation of confidentiality, and an unspoken ethos of being above the fray. Of wanting to keep your independence and equanimity of opinion and judgement, which are crucial values for your job.

These are agreed-upon norms of the publishing process. So you wonder if the people that take advantage of them do it knowingly, or without sparing a thought about it and the people they are targeting.

What do you do? You keep scrolling. You keep evaluating the science objectively and fairly. Because you cannot ever take into account what people say about you on Twitter. That would indeed be the kind of failing at your job people assume of you by default.

You accept that on Twitter, just like on email or phone, sometimes the most basic rules of professionalism and courtesy that are mutually agreed in science and life interactions don’t seem to extend to you, the editor.

Vilifying scientific editors and journals is a long-standing tradition, predating social media. It’s an expected and accepted part of the job. We make the choice to be above it. That choice is always there for everyone to make as well.

A sad corollary to all this is that personal attacks and ad hominem journal criticisms don't help valid discussions about science integrity and how to improve the publishing process. It's hard to engage constructively when your integrity and motivations are being challenged.

After more than a decade on this job, I feel honored to have met and worked with so many kind, caring, smart, dedicated editors, in my teams, my sister journals and our competitors. I think of them when doomscrolling Science Twitter. I hope other people do too.