What is it about?
Nature published a proposal suggesting that peer reviewers should follow a formal code of conduct to ensure more constructive feedback. I wrote this letter disagreeing with that proposal. The argument: a reviewer's primary obligation is to the scientific record, not to the author's feelings. A code of conduct that pressures reviewers to soften their criticism risks letting flawed work through. Rigorous, even blunt, peer review catches errors that politeness might let pass. The letter acknowledged that abusive reviews are a real problem but argued that the solution is editorial oversight (editors should filter truly abusive language) rather than rules that constrain all reviewers. The distinction between harsh-but-substantive criticism and personal attacks matters, and a code of conduct risks conflating them.
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Why is it important?
Peer review norms directly affect what gets published. If reviewers feel pressure to be "constructive" at the expense of being thorough, the filtering function of peer review weakens. This letter made the case that the current system, where editors mediate between reviewers and authors, already provides the necessary check on abusive behavior. Adding a formal code of conduct shifts the balance toward author comfort at the potential cost of scientific rigor. The argument resonated with many researchers who felt that the push for "nicer" reviews was well-intentioned but risked real consequences for quality control in science.
Perspectives
I wrote this as an early-career researcher who was already doing substantial peer review work. I had seen reviews that were harsh but correct, and reviews that were polite but useless. The two failure modes are not symmetric: a harsh review that catches a real error serves science; a polite review that misses one does not. Writing a letter to Nature as a recent graduate felt presumptuous, but the proposal struck me as fundamentally misguided. The response from other researchers confirmed that the concern was widely shared. I still believe the core argument holds: editorial judgment, not formal rules, is the right mechanism for managing review tone.
Rohit Goswami
University of Iceland
Read the Original
This page is a summary of: Don’t pull punches in peer review, Nature, October 2019, Springer Science + Business Media,
DOI: 10.1038/d41586-019-03024-2.
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