John Maddox, former Nature editor, died

[Questioninggeller]

PZ Myers reports:

John Maddox dead at 84
April 12, 2009 8:28 PM, by PZ Myers

I'm sad to report that John Maddox, former editor of Nature, has died. He was one of those fellows who shaped the direction of science for quite a long period of time with the power of one of the most influential science journals in the world.

I suspect every scientist of my generation read his editorials in our weekly perusal of the journal. The one I remember most vividly, and probably the one that got the most attention in general, was his ferocious denunciation of Rupert Sheldrake's work — he went so far as to say that if ever there was a book suitable for burning, it was that one. So of course, I had to read it (that's one of the pitfalls of calling for the destruction of books). And then, also of course, I discovered that Maddox was right on the money — that book was an astonishing pile of B.S. masquerading as science, and it's true that Sheldrake is still peddling his nonsense.

We've lost a vigorous skeptic and humanist.

James Randi spoke about Maddox at the Amazing Meeting two years ago, but youtube.com/AmazingMeetingVideos hasn't posted that video. The BBC reported on the event, which Randi spoke of:

...
In an attempt to explain his results, Benveniste suggested a startling new theory. He proposed that water had the power to 'remember' substances that had been dissolved in it. This startling new idea would force scientists to rethink many fundamental ideas about how liquids behave.

Unsurprisingly, the scientific community greeted this idea with scepticism. The then editor of Nature, Sir John Maddox, agreed to publish Benveniste's paper - but on one condition. Benveniste must open his laboratory to a team of independent referees, who would evaluate his techniques.

Enter James Randi

When Maddox named his team, he took everyone by surprise. Included on the team was a man who was not a professional scientist: magician and paranormal investigator James Randi.

Randi and the team watched Benveniste's team repeat the experiment. They went to extraordinary lengths to ensure that none of the scientists involved knew which samples were the homeopathic solutions, and which ones were the controls - even taping the sample codes to the ceiling for the duration of the experiment. This time, Benveniste's results were inconclusive, and the scientific community remained unconvinced by Benveniste's memory of water theory.
...

John Maddox on Rupert Sheldrake's work:

 

[Questioninggeller]

Scientific American just published this:

Longtime Nature editor John Maddox dead at 83
Scientific American
Apr 13, 2009
By John Matson

John Maddox, who in two stints as Nature's editor helped transform the influential journal, died yesterday in Abergavenny, Wales, at the age of 83. The cause of death was cumulative heart and lung problems following a broken hip, according to his daughter, Bronwen Maddox, a columnist for the Times of London.
...

Full article: Scientific American

Obituary from The Times:

Sir John Maddox: Editor of Nature (Royal Society)
April 14, 2009
The Times

Sir John Maddox combined a comprehensive knowledge of science with a fluent pen; talents that made him the foremost scientific journalist and editor of his era. As Editor of Nature, he restored the journal to an unchallenged position as the place to publish interesting research quickly, and did so at a time when Britain’s influence in world science was otherwise declining. His judgments, sometimes quirky but never dull, were always backed by persuasive argument and a sense of humour.

John Royden Maddox was born in Penllergaer, near Swansea, in 1925, the son of Arthur Jack Maddox, a furnaceman at an aluminium plant. He was educated at Gowerton Boys’ County School. From there, aged 15, he won a rare state scholarship to Christ Church, Oxford, where he read chemistry, and King’s College London, where he became a physicist.
...
His most creative innovation was to record when each manuscript arrived and include that information when it was published. Scientists could see that really interesting work could hope to appear in Nature in weeks, rather than months. Maddox had correctly identified that Nature’s role was to be, if not the most authoritative of journals, certainly the quickest.

His technique for writing editorials was unusual but effective. He would sit in an armchair and dictate at some speed, while his long-serving secretary, Mary Sheehan, kept up on an electric IBM typewriter. This occasionally produced rather wordy leading articles, but such was his knowledge that they always contained much wisdom as well. He opened an office in Washington, recognising that the centre of gravity of science had crossed the Atlantic and unless Nature could attract US research from under the noses of its closest rival, Science, it would not flourish.
...
Though aware of his own abilities and remarkably wideranging in his knowledge, Maddox was totally unstuffy. He brought to the editing of the world’s foremost scientific publication the fun of journalism and the enjoyment of taking sides.

He once spent a week, with the magician James Randi and Walter Stewart, of the US National Institutes of Health, in the laboratory of a French scientist who claimed — in an article published in Nature — to have proved the truth of homeopathy. The resulting row was probably the highest-profile controversy of his time at Nature, and the team eventually concluded that the report was a delusion based on unreliable experiments.
...

Full obituary: The Times

 

[Questioninggeller]

John Maddox, Editor Who Enlivened Nature, Is Dead at 83

April 13, 2009
New York Times
by WILLIAM GRIMES

John Maddox, who turned the British journal Nature into an internationally influential showcase for the most recent developments in scientific research during his two stints as editor, while bringing a sense of fun and an appetite for spirited argument to its formerly staid pages, died Sunday in Abergavenny, Wales.

He was 83 and lived in London and Brecon, Wales. The cause of death was pneumonia associated with a chest infection, said his son Bruno.

Mr. Maddox, a chemist and physicist by training, drew on his experience as science correspondent for The Manchester Guardian (now The Guardian) to bring a new sense of competitiveness and timeliness to Nature in his 22 years as its editor. Rather than waiting for scientific papers to come to him, he beat the bushes in search of exciting material, a practice that, over time, guaranteed that the most interesting, provocative papers found their way to Nature first. Such was the competition to be published in its pages that one desperate physicist, after repeated rejections, threatened to set himself afire on the magazine’s doorsteps.

It was a mark of his skilled editorship that Nature could publish a paper on, say, the Loch Ness monster without sacrificing its authority.

“He took command of Nature in a big way,” the evolutionary biologist Richard Dawkins said. “He had a tremendous grasp of science in the full range, from physics to biology to public affairs as they affected the world of science.”

Martin Rees, the president of the Royal Society and Britain’s astronomer royal, called Mr. Maddox “a dominant figure,” adding that “he helped establish Nature’s status internationally and built it up by developing supplements to increase its coverage.” After retiring as editor in 1995, he assumed an influential elder statesman role, acting, Mr. Rees said, “as a general guru of science and scientific policy.”
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Full article: New York Times

 

[Questioninggeller]

Randi remembers

James Randi posted his thoughts and memories about Maddox here.

 

[Questioninggeller]

I came across these old articles, which might be of interest to some:

TITLE: Testing time for laboratory
PAPER: Manchester Guardian Weekly
DATE: August 7, 1988
BYLINE: By Franck Nouchi
SECTION: LE MONDE; Pg. 16
LENGTH: 662 words
DATELINE: July 27



"DON'T GO near the glass. Nobody must enter the laboratory. Keep away."

That was a fortnight ago, on July 6, in Dr Jacques Benveniste's laboratory at INSERM's Unit 200, Clamart. The "inquiry commission" led by John Maddox, director of the British scientific journal Nature, had been at work for 48 hours.

The premises had been taken over by the team which also included Walter Stewart, an expert in uncovering scientific frauds, and a professional magacian James Randi, famous in his day for having exposed Uri Geller (who claims to bend spoons with thought waves), and his assistant.

Nobody, except Walter Stewart was to touch anything in the laboratory, not even a pipette. Dr Benveniste kep an eye on them. The only condition he had made was that Randi was not to touch any of the apparatus either. "A fellow like that could make anything disappear and nobody'd be any the wiser," he said.

The mood was rather easy going that day. Stewart was as usual recording everything with a video camera. Before him was a number of sealed envelopes containing pipettes which had also been sealed by him.
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Full article in archive: Manchester Guardian Weekly

TITLE: Water That Has a Memory? Skeptics Win Second Round
PAPER: The New York Times
DATE: July 27, 1988, Wednesday, Late City Final Edition
BYLINE: By WALTER SULLIVAN
SECTION: Section A; Page 14, Column 1; National Desk
LENGTH: 896 words



A team of investigators has concluded that a report published in the journal Nature last month that seemed to the defy the rules of physics was based on scientifically unreliable experiments.

After spending a week in the French laboratory that astonished the scientific world with the assertion that water, no matter how diluted, seems to ''remember'' medicinal properties it once had, the investigators concluded that the report's hypothesis was ''as unnecessary as it is fanciful.''

The investigating team consisted of John Maddox, editor of the British journal, which published the original report June 30 along with expressions of skepticism; Walter Stewart of the National Institutes of Health in Bethesda, Md., an investigator of scientific fraud, and James Randi, the magician, who has also worked to expose scientific fraud.

The team concluded that the report was based ''chiefly on an extensive series of experiments which are statistically ill-controlled, from which no substantial effort has been made to exclude systematic error, including observer bias, and whose interpretation has been clouded by the exclusion of measurements in conflict with the claim.''
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Full article in archive: The New York Times

And from Nature's archive:

"High-dilution" experiments a delusion
By John Maddox, James Randi, Walter W. Stewart
Nature 334, 287-290 (28 July 1988)

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We conclude that the claims made by Davenas et al are not to be believed.
...

and

Dr Jacques Benveniste replies:
By J. Benveniste
Nature 334, 291-291 (28 July 1988)

and

Inquiry completed
Nature 334, 93-93 (14 July 1988)