That seems to be the policy of Willis Eschenbach, who wrote An Open Letter to Dr. Marcia McNutt, new Editor-In-Chief, Science Magazine. He found a picture of her, too, which confirmed that she is indeed a woman, just as her name would suggest.
Eschenbach’s open letter is about the tragic decline of Science mag due to its move from science to advocacy, specifically on climate change. Nothing to do with the fact that McNutt is a woman, one would think, yet Eschenbach drags that in anyway, for the sake of gratuitously insulting and patronizing her, as if that really were written down in a real book of rules.
He patronizes her from the outset, patronizingly congratulating her and including the picture of her for no apparent reason. Then later he gets down to the real thing.
With a new Editor-In-Chief, I’ve been hoping that might all be in the past. Unfortunately, after taking over at the helm, you’ve chosen to reveal your … umm … well, let me describe it as your newness to the concept of “scientific journal editor” by following in the foolishly activist footsteps of your immediate predecessors. I’d hoped you might be smarter than they were, and indeed you might still show yourself to be. But to jump into the middle of the climate debate and stake out a position for Science magazine? Why? That’s suicide for the magazine. Science magazine should never have an editorial stance on the science it is discussing and overseeing. Leave that to Mother Jones magazine, or to National Geographic, or Popular Science. Your magazine taking a strong activist position on climate science is just evidence that you have abandoned all pretense of being concerned with climate science itself. When the science is strong it doesn’t need defenders … and if the Editor-In-Chief of Science feels it’s necessary to defend some part of science, that simply proves that the “science” involved must be of the weakest.
And regarding you personally taking a position? Well, that’s interesting. The problem is that you are extremely well educated, strong, strikingly good looking, and a wickedly-smart woman by all accounts … and while those are all good things, that’s a scary combination. One downside of that particular melange is that as a result, it’s very possible that people, particularly men, haven’t told you the unvarnished truth in years. So some of what I have to say may be a surprise to you.
Persuasive? You be the judge.