eLife's Suppression of Science
eLife's Suppression of Science A case study of peer review enabling academic abuse ALEX WASHBURNE Science was a beautiful thing before people got involved. As a child, the son of a molecular biologist, I envisioned Science as a magical community of scholars all committed to truth, a Vulcan-esque species of minds for whom evidence and logic reigned supreme over the malign influences of emotion and ego. In pursuit of this ideal, I strove for excellence, graduating summa cum laude with degrees in mathematics and biology, finishing a PhD from Princeton in 4.5 years, and waiting to publish results until I could overcome my own attempts at objective self-criticism. I would wait to speak until I felt I truly had something novel and significant to say. When I spoke up in the form of papers, however, I began to realize that Science is nowhere close to the idealized system I dreamt about. My first paper, written as an undergrad, sat on someone’s desk for 6 months during which time other