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November 1st, 2025 (Permalink)
The End of Nature
Anna Krylov, "Why I no longer engage with Nature publishing group", Heterodox STEM, 10/24/2025
…Scientific publishers play a key role in the production of knowledge…. The role of the publisher is to be an epistemic funnel: it accepts claims to truth at one end, but permits only those that withstand organized scrutiny to emerge from the other, a function traditionally performed by a rigorous peer-review and editorial process. This process should be guided by scientific rigor and a commitment to finding objective truth.Unfortunately, the Nature group has abandoned its mission in favor of advancing a social justice agenda. The group has institutionalized censorship, implemented policies that have sacrificed merit in favor of identity-based criteria, and injected social engineering into its author guidelines and publishing process. The result is that papers published in Nature journals can no longer be regarded as rigorous science. Three representative examples illustrate this decline:
- Institutionalized social engineering
The Springer Nature Diversity Commitment…openly pledges to "take action to improve diversity and inclusion in the conferences we organise, and in our commissioned content, the peer review population and editorial boards." Editors are "asked to intentionally and proactively reach out to women researchers" and authors are instructed to suggest reviewers "with diversity in mind." In other words, editorial choices and peer review are to be guided not solely by competence but by demographic attributes. …
- Ideological subversion of literature citations
Nature Reviews Psychology…now encourages authors to practice "citation justice"―that is, to social-engineer their manuscript's bibliography to promote members of favored identity groups, even if their works lack the requisite merit or relevance. "Citation justice" is particularly harmful because it undermines the rigor and reliability of published research. When references are chosen not for their scientific relevance or quality but to promote the work of preferred identity groups, the integrity of science itself is compromised….
- Institutionalized censorship
Nature Human Behavior has published a censorship manifesto…now widely criticized…in which they openly declare their intent to censor legitimate research findings that they deem potentially "harmful" to certain groups. Not only is it arrogant for editors to presume they have the expertise to make such judgments, the practice is antithetical to the production of knowledge.
Any of these policies, taken alone, would undermine the epistemic standards of scientific publishing as a pillar of the truth-seeking enterprise. Together they represent a profound corruption of purpose. The purpose of science is the pursuit of truth, not the advancement of diversity, equity, and inclusion. These examples disturbingly reveal that scientific publishing at Nature has become ideologically corrupt.
Disclaimer: I don't necessarily agree with everything in this article, but I think it's worth reading in its entirety. In editing the excerpt, I sometimes changed the paragraphing.