Case Study - what to do when there are disagreements about whether a paper has problems

In light of the ongoing PLOSOne #Creationgate controversy (e.g. see this write up here), I thought I would share a story I have been working on about a case where there are disagreements about whether a paper has problems or not.So I got this email the other day. It was from an author of a paper who I know who was upset about a paper that was published a while back for which I was the editor. This person wrote to me and the authors of the new paper somewhat angrily critiquing them for some aspects of their paper that related to this person's work. The authors responded to the critique and, well, did not agree with the points of the letter writer. The letter writer wrote again to all of us and again somewhat angrily critiqued the authors.Then the letter writer wrote just to me asking what I thought should be done - detailing further what they viewed as mistakes of the paper.  The letter writer was quite clear, clearly upset, and had some good points. And the letter writer wanted advice about what should be done here.  I thought about this for some time and wrote and rewrote an email to the letter writer.  The challenge with this case was that this really seemed to be more of a disagreement than a case where an Editor could say "This is right and this is wrong."  So this is what I wroteLetter WriterI appreciate your comments and your intent here.  I think the best course of action is for you to publish more public, formal or informal, comments about...
Source: The Tree of Life - Category: Microbiology Authors: Source Type: blogs