From Evolution to Immunology: Nature’s Contributors and the Development of a Scientific Journal, 1869-1990″

AbstractThe British scientific journal Nature, founded in 1869, is now one of the world’s most prestigious scientific publications. This talk examines the ways that contributor interests have influenced Nature’s, development using two episodes from different points in Nature’s history: a debate about evolutionary theory in the 1880s, and a controversy about a provocative immunology paper in the 1980s. A lively 1886 discussion about George J. Romanes’s theory of “physiological selection” illustrates Victorian naturalists’ attachment to Nature as a venue for scientific debates—an attachment that transformed Nature, from a publication aimed at laymen to one written by and for scientific researchers. In 1988, editor John Maddox sought to increase Nature’s, scope by personally visiting the laboratory of Jacques Benveniste, author of a controversial immunology paper, to evaluate the quality of Benveniste’s scientific work. Nature’s, contributors pushed back; they strongly criticized Maddox’s actions and these criticisms influenced Maddox’s future editorial conduct. These episodes illustrate that, far from being a passive or static feature of modern science, scientific journals such as Nature, are dynamic institutions whose development is influenced by the needs and goals of scientific practitioners.