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I used a Globe column to make a modest proposal. “I’m not a scientist,” I wrote. “The high school teacher who failed me in physics would do physically improbable things in his grave if he knew I was nosing about in his old domain. Nonetheless, I think the NRC should appoint a special committee made up of respected scientists to determine what happened at CJP and to make recommendations for dealing with the Freeman article (and Freeman) and for restoring confidence in the journal. Too much time has probably gone by for reprinting the issue. (Many libraries have already had it bound. Tying an appropriate erratum to the numerous secondary sources that now include abstracts of the article in their data bases may be difficult.) Perhaps a sticker could be placed on the offending article--a Good Physicists’ Seal of Disapproval.”
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It was only when a brief article on the Freeman affair appeared in the February 28, 1992 issue of Science, the official organ of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, that the NRC realized that no amount of wishing was going to make the Freeman affair go away. It had now become an international story. The author of the article, Robert Crease, quoted Selma Zimmerman, who was then Advisor On the Status of Women at York University, saying that the Freeman piece represented “a backlash against gains women have made in recent years. The fact that the article was in CJP, an eminent peer reviewed journal, appears to give that backlash some credibility.” Crease pointed out that although the NRC’s apology had clearly stated that Freeman’s article wasn’t science, it had stopped there. It hadn’t gone on to repudiate the contents of the article. It didn’t help that no adequate explanation had yet been given as to how the article “sneaked into” CJP in the first place.” Freeman and Nicholls, Crease reported, continued to insist they’d done nothing wrong. He quoted Nicholls saying that the fuss represented an “interesting and complex mixture of scientific publishing, political correctness, [the]vulgar politics of protest, poor journalism, media manipulation, and government agency [i.e. NRC] damage control.”
The Science article made it obvious to the NRC that it had to act. In late March 1992, Selma Zimmerman of York University, and Rose Sheinin, chair of the Women in Science Committee of the Royal Society of Canada (and then, vice-rector academic at Concordia University), were invited by Clive Willis, the NRC’s Vice-President, Science, to meet with Bruce Dancik and himself in Ottawa. Zimmerman and Sheinin were not only both distinguished scientists themselves--Zimmerman in cell biology and Sheinin in microbiology--but both had been tireless promoters of women in science.
Willis’s letter informed the two women that the NRC had decided not to reprint the offending issue of CJP. It “was published and is in the public domain; this fact cannot be undone,” he said. “Therefore, while a serious error in judgement was made in approving it for publication and other errors occurred in the publication process to allow it to be printed, withdrawal and replacement of this issue does not appear to be the solution.” Instead, the NRC had decided to publish a special commentary issue on the Freeman affair. It “would include a review of the responsibilities of editors, authors and reviewers, a complete overview of the process involved in the publication of this article, commentaries solicited from experts in the social sciences, as well as a number of other unsolicited but eloquent comments. The issue would be widely disseminated to all subscribers of the NRC Research Journals, to the Canadian scientific and social science societies, and to all who have written to express their concerns.” The NRC had already begun the process of consulting leading social scientists, Willis said. “A series of mistakes in judgement occurred to allow the publication of this article,” he wrote in conclusion. “I think the proposed action would answer everyone’s concerns and would provide an opportunity for a scholarly rebuttal of Dr. Freeman’s views.” He made no mention of errors in judgement that had been made following the publication of the article--the assumption of the NRC, for example, that the issue would just go away.
Shortly after the NRC’s meeting with the two women in mid-April, Willis wrote them, summarizing their discussion, and for the first time, acknowledging that what had occurred wasn’t merely an aberration. “Women scientists such as yourself,” he wrote, “recognize immediately how the publication of this article came about and how it reflects entrenched attitudes and outdated networks that perpetuate impediments against women in science and engineering.” In short, systemic discrimination. “I think that this episode has shaken us from our complacency as Canada’s preeminent scientific publisher.” In his summary of their meeting, Willis stated that CJP had now republished its apology on a numbered page; that the NRC would publish a special supplement to CJP; that, as Sheinin and Zimmerman had suggested, the NRC was considering hosting a symposium on ethics in scholarly publishing; that the editor-in-chief of the NRC’s journals, Bruce Dancik, would make greater efforts to ensure that women scientists were well represented on the editorial boards of the NRC’s thirteen journals; and that the NRC would review and formalize its editorial policies. (Meanwhile, the new editor of CJP, Donald Betts, had published a statement of editorial policy. Among other things, he said that henceforth CJP would follow the example of most other journals and employ two referees. And the journal would no longer publish articles that dealt with human or animal subjects.)
The Sexist Science of Gordon Freeman, continued >
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