I was just on Twitter and saw that Henry Gee, a senior editor at Nature Magazine (and sci-fi writer) tweeted the real name of science blogger Isis the Scientist, calling her "inconsequential." I have only occasionally looked at her blog and know that she has criticized Nature in the past, but WTF was he thinking? It makes him look like a creeper who couldn't rest until he told the world who the mouthy woman was.

She seems to be handling it pretty well and it seems credible that he did this to intimidate her:

Henry Gee's actions were meant to intimidate me into silence. He took this approach likely with the thought that it was the most powerful way he could hurt me. Nothing more. Although I am ok, there are some recent victims of outing behavior that are not. That's frightening. To think that the editor of a journal would respond to criticism of his professional conduct regarding the fair treatment of women by attempting to personally injure and damage..


She quotes a tweet from a supporter which asks a terrific question: "Should a magazine that still does anonymous peer-reviews be in the business of revealing people's identities?"

I speak only for myself and I have no personal feelings about Henry. My only concern has been in his conduct as an editor of a journal that very publicly represents my profession. When Henry Gee said, in reference to my self-professed boycott of Nature (until they get their act together regarding the treatment of women), "Nature boycotted by [an] inconsequential sports physio… Nature quakes in its boots", he spoke as a high level representative of that publication, making a statement as to how that publication regards me.


I think a response from readers of Nature concerned about his behavior must be complicated. While he does not identify his Nature affiliation in his twitter profile, he refers to her criticism of Nature in the tweet that outs her. So can people ask Nature to take any punitive actions against him?

I honestly think people's blog identities should not be revealed unless they are committing a crime and then only to the appropriate authorities (police, service provider, twitter). I don't know all the facts here (and hope Sciency-type GT-ers will chime in), but between this and the insulting behavior towards DNLee earlier this year, science journals and blogs need to take a good hard look at how they are dealing with diversity and handling social media.


ETA2: Thanks Magister for the tip on embedding tweets. I agree with this guy that her response seems totally classy.


ETA3: If you want to tell me what specifically DrIsis did that in your opinion warrants doxxing, happy hear it. Gee says in his twitter feed is that he was "insulted" and experienced "unpleasantness," which surely he must be used to given that he is also a columnist for the Guardian (and, well, a professional scientist). I read some of her posts about Nature, which don't seem to warrant this behavior at all. Perhaps there is more to this story, but if there was, I imagine Nature could have addressed this as a publication. Gee's twitter comments and weird veiled threats to people criticizing him are not helping his case.

IRONY UPDATE: Henry Gee evidently has deleted his Twitter account, but HIS Wikipedia page (that he created & edited himself) documents the whole mess.

Not that consequential, I guess. RT @dgmacarthur: Huh. @HenryGeeBooks appears to have deleted his Twitter account.


Waiting for accusations that he was "bullied off the internet" to begin in 3 . . . 2 . . . 1"