A while after I wrote that post on Jared Diamond and the Easter island research that was published in Yoffee and McAnany’s Questioning Collapse, Rhonda Shearer of Stinkyjournalism.org commented on it with some links to new posts on that site. Jared Diamond had a book review of Questioning collapse published in the February 18th edition of Nature. Although the book itself is practically dedicated to discrediting much of Diamond’s research, there wasn’t any sort of disclosure in nature about his position in regards to the book. Needless to say, the review is heavily critical. At the very least, the editors of Nature were not giving McAnany and Yoffee a fair shake without letting the readers know about the potential biases that Diamond may have brought into his review. So, this is an interesting example of a science media ethics debate.
Stinky journalism has been regularly updated with new information on all this. I’ve got some links for you.
first report on Diamond’s review
Later update with Nature‘s response
Comments section of my post.
