A colleague of one the two European EICs of Synthese writes in the comments of Professor Contessa's post about a subscription boycott the following:
I know one of the EiCs fairly well on a professional level, and suspect that at least one of the other EiCs has a similar personality, and my guess is: threats and pressure are simply not likely to make them adopt a different attitude. This is one of the things I think has worsened the situation: these are people who won't give in to this kind of pressure. If the goal is to make them reconsider their (public) position, this approach is just not likely to succeed. (I won't go into the merits of their attitude, just stating my suspicion here.)
This leads another commenter to remark:
Catarina's comments on the EiCs worries about losing face confirm what I've long suspected - they are now acting only out of concern for their egos, and not Synthese or the profession....
I do hope this interpretation is mistaken, but I guess it is, now, a real worry that vanity may have become an obstacle to remedying the mistakes that have been made.
UPDATE: Catarina Dutilh, author of the original comment, writes to correct the record as to her point:
I just came across your post highlighting a comment I had made at It's Only a Theory. I'm afraid that, without the overall context, the quotation doesn't convey the point I was actually making. I was remarking that the idea of the EiC having caved to pressure of the ID lobby seems highly unlikely to me, NOT that they EiCs are not coming forward with apologies because they are "now acting only out of concern for their egos, and not Synthese or the profession". I would much appreciate it if you could qualify that the inference drawn does not in any way follow straightforwardly from my comment. It would be a true distortion of my comment if it was read as supporting the view that the EiCs are acting out of vanity. This is absolutely NOT what I was saying: who am I to infer anything about the EiC's states of mind? For the record, I haven't even spoken to J. van Benthem since this affair started, as he spends Spring term at Stanford.
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