Sir John Maddox,The nature of Nature

Sir John Maddox

The nature of Nature

Apr 23rd 2009
From The Economist print edition

The man who reinvented science journalism

Rex Features

WRITING any serious tribute to the science journalist and editor, Sir John Maddox, can only really start a long time after deadline, with the assistance of a cigarette and a glass of wine. Thus he famously began work on his editorials. Some were delivered so late that their first lines were being typeset before the last had been composed. But Sir John, who died on April 12th, was more than a hack with a little deadline difficulty. He was also a pioneer of modern science journalism.

In the course of transforming a parochial and withering publication called Nature into a globally influential scientific giant his instinct for publicity pushed science into British newspapers in a way that had not happened before. He also popularised the subject as a broadcaster on the BBC. And, perhaps most importantly, he trained a generation of writers who were seekers of scientific rationalism, but who never lost a sense of whimsy—and of whom several have sat in the science and technology office of The Economist.

When Sir John (as he then wasn’t) arrived at Nature in 1966, having worked for a decade at the Guardian, the doyen of British science journals was in the doldrums. Its offices were piled with several thousand yellowing manuscripts. That was quickly sorted out. He introduced a system of peer review (asking outside experts to assess a paper’s scientific worth), as well as the stamping on each manuscript of the date of its submission. He wanted Nature to be more like a newspaper and to be judged, among other things, by how fast it published scientific news. Manuscripts were also edited—shock!—for style and comprehensibility, as well as accuracy.

Anxious to put in something newsy, he started writing leaders—introducing opinion among the facts. He also hired a real reporter to sit alongside the manuscript editors, a beginner called Nigel Hawkes, who would go on to become science editor of the Times. Mr Hawkes was the first, but not the last, of the Maddox protégés.

Think global. Act local

One reason for all this activity was that it was clear to him when he arrived that Nature was losing ground to its competitor—an American publication called Science. During the 1950s and 1960s a shift in scientific power from Europe to America was benefiting Science. According to Alun Anderson, a Maddox protégé who went on to edit New Scientist, Sir John responded by globalising the magazine, opening offices in America, Japan and, in due course, many other parts of the world.

Globalisation, of course, requires global news. But Sir John was equal to that. Henry Gee, another protégé, recalls a trick that Sir John called the “Afghanistan Effect”. “You write a little news story that says that nothing much has happened in Afghanistan, and people think ‘Goodness! Nature has coverage of Afghanistan’.”

He was also keen on embargoes, by which newspapers are given advance warning of the publication of a piece of research if they agree to delay writing about it until a given date, and make sure they mention the journal in which it is published. John Gribbin, a popular science author and yet another Maddox protégé, remembers the editor was particularly fierce about the embargo if he had an exciting paper. Sir John wanted Nature to make a splash with the story, and this caused friction with Fleet Street editors who wanted the scoop for themselves.

But he raised Nature’s profile, and was not afraid to get his hands dirty with public relations. He also beat a path to the laboratory door in search of good material, a practice that continues to this day with Science, Nature, Cell and other top-rank journals competing to acquire papers from the world’s leading researchers.

Sir John’s scientific rationalism, recalls David Dickson, a former news editor of Nature, led him into many controversial areas that further served to raise the magazine’s profile. He led an assault on AIDS denialists and their supporters at the Sunday Times, and ended up in disputes over homeopathy, cold fusion and with Rupert Sheldrake, a parapsychologist. Another graduate of the Maddox school, Chris Anderson, the editor of Wired, remembers him as a “fearless” man, who would challenge anything and anyone whom he felt had left the principles of science behind in the pursuit of their own beliefs.

Although Sir John was a proponent of peer review, he could see how it might sometimes suffocate original thinking. It was for this reason that he never sent the manuscripts of Fred Hoyle, a controversial astrophysicist, for review. “It does not require a referee to tell whether it is a reasonable hypothesis that terrestrial life stems from interstellar bacteria,” he wrote in a valedictory essay. Fashion, and a nose for news, played an important role in Sir John’s universe, no matter that the man championed scientific rationalism.

The result is that Nature today is an outlet for the world’s best scientific news and gossip, and offers strident leadership on public issues. However, the craziest person in the building is no longer the editor, and staff need no longer feel obliged to restrain him, says Alun Anderson.

Although Nature is a more organised and professional place these days, there is still a trace of Maddox present. When your correspondent was a junior reporter at Nature several years after he had departed, she was advised that her first editorial was best written late in the evening with a glass of whisky to hand. Sir John may have left the building, but his spirit lingers on.