Here. It is, perhaps, instructive to see how these matters look to scholars in other fields. A brief excerpt:
The guest editors say they’re “shocked and chagrined” at the editors-in-chiefs’ “insults.” Reasonably so. Having read the article in question [Barbara Forrest's], Beckwith’s reply, and the exchanges among the editors, I’m appalled too to learn that the tender sensibilities of ID supporters have been permitted to deform scholarly circles.
If such interventions had taken place in a journal of the humanities and social sciences, everyone in the academy would be, ought to be, up in arms. Same here. Sauce, goose, gander, QED.
ADDENDUM: Hilary Kornblith (U Mass/Amherst) also makes some extremely perceptive remarks in the comments here in reply to what seemed to me a rather feeble partial defense of the Synthese EICs by John Turri (Waterloo); here is Kornblith:
If I submit an article to a journal for publication, there are all sorts of reasons why they might decide either to reject it or to ask for revisions. Let’s focus on the issue of tone, since that is what’s at issue at Synthese. Suppose I submit an article which an editor wishes to publish, but the tone is somehow found wanting. There’s a wide range of reasonable views, I believe, about what tone is appropriate, and it’s a good thing that different journal editors have different views about this. And if, for some reason, the tone of a submitted piece doesn’t meet the standards a journal editor finds appropriate, then he or she might ask that the paper be revised in accordance with his or her concerns. Once that is done—assuming the author is willing to make revisions—the editor must decide whether to publish the paper. And if the journal editor’s standards fit into that wide range of reasonable views, then whatever decision the editor makes would be fine. What would not be fine, I believe, is to publish the paper and then include an editorial remark commenting that the tone is inappropriate. Authors have a reasonable expectation that their work, if accepted for publication, will not be accompanied by an editorial statement indicating deficiencies of any sort. Editors who believe that there are deficiencies which make publication inappropriate should fail to publish the paper. But if they decide that the paper meets their standards for publication, any remaining doubts they may have should be kept to themselves. Publishing editorial criticism of a paper which has been accepted falls very far outside the bounds of acceptable editorial conduct.
It does not help if the editorial remarks are of a more general sort, indicating only that there are problems somewhere in a particular issue of the journal, without naming names.... [B]y making very general remarks about problems with the issue, the editors do thereby call into question the appropriateness of the various contributions. If the editors thought that some of the contributors were guilt-free, why would they want to do this? And wouldn’t each of the contributors rightly feel aggrieved? This is not what authors sign up for when they contribute to a journal. Accept a paper or reject it. Bring whatever standards to bear that you think appropriate as an editor. But don’t accept a paper and then call its credentials, of whatever sort, into question. I have no trouble understanding why someone would think that when editors behave in this sort of way, their journal should be subject to very severe consequences....
Finally, there is the very serious issue about the pressures which the editors were subjected to and the extent to which their response was a product of those pressures. You bend over backwards to explain how there might be no problems here. I certainly believe that, in general, one ought to give people the benefit of the doubt. But the problem here was directly raised with the editors, and their response merely sidesteps all of the important issues. When this sort of thing happens, it does seem to me that one is no longer deserving of the benefit of the doubt. Indeed, it does seem to me that it is no longer reasonable to believe, under these circumstances, that all is well. I don’t understand why, given all that has happened here, you aren’t more upset by what has gone on.
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