Fiedler on the Roof 2.0

His Reply to APS's "Justifications"

Art courtesy of The Apollonic, who can be found on Twitter at @the_Apollonic

On 1/26, APS sent this email to its members, one which attempts to “justify” its summary judgment of Fiedler. If you are, say, new to this controversy, start here to get the big picture. My response to their letter will appear in a subsequent Substack entry.

In short, paraphrasing, they state:

• We took this very seriously

• We had good reasons (the specifics of which they declined to state) for firing Fiedler.

For more, read their full email.

Below, I present Klaus Fiedler’s response to the APS email, sent to Robert Gropp, Chief Executive Officer of The Association for Psychological Science (APS) on 1/28, and it is reprinted here, as written, with his permission.

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Klaus Fiedler’s Response to Robert Gropp’s email of January 26, 2023

Immediately after I read the new APS email that promised “further clarifications”, I wrote the following text to the email’s sender, APS Chief Executive Officer Robert Gropp. Just as in several previous emails I have sent to APS, I did not receive any response to my question. Indeed, I have never been given a chance to respond to APS’ accusations, nor have I been told what specific behavior justifies the harsh consequences. My pertinent questions to APS have always remained unanswered.

Dear Robert:

I would like to respond to these "further clarifications". Would you publish my responses using the same email circular, so that this time at least APS members get a chance to also provide my perspective on the alleged editorial malpractices?

Please respond in due time ... to enable temporal contiguity

Thanks and best regards, Klaus 

Regarding the most recent letter distributed to all APS members, I deliberately contest that several statements conveyed by Robert Gropp are misleading, unwarranted, or fully uninformative.

The statement “We learned about additional questionable editorial decisions and practices at the journal under the previous Editor-in-Chief (EIC)” remains as vague and uninformative as all former accusations. To interpret the validity of this message, it would be necessary to know: (a) what is the relative rate of negative versus positive evaluations of the EIC’s practices; (b) the operational definition of “questionable editorial decisions and practices”; (c) what judgment prompt was used by for the assessment? Critical readers may want to see the raw data (i.e., the verbatim evaluations in a repository) and evidence that these raw data are not selective. Do the devaluations that Robert Gropp alludes to merely reflect frustrated remarks by authors of rejected submissions to a journal with an extremely high rejection rate? Why does APS’ assessment not reflect the overly positive feedback I received from so many other sources concerning the quality of my editorial work? (I could easily provide a no-name version thereof). Whatever the case, the present statement hardly qualifies as “further clarification” as the circular letter consists of generalities and no specific points.

Let us be honest. The point that “concerns from many individuals about the editorial practices” gave rise to the APS action is a giveaway. The APS action was prompted by widespread disquiet about ‘racism’, not editorial practices. A disquiet was triggered by a misconceived and unfounded accusation, as the unreported evidence shows.  

Another paragraph is highly misleading: “Before any action was taken, the EIC was contacted regarding the complaints and provided with a list of questions regarding his editorial actions. His response did not dispute the factual basis of any of the details included in the complaints.”

This sounds like the EIC was given a chance to provide his counter-version of the entire episode by established procedural justice rules. This criterion of fair treatment was never met because (a) APS selected the list of (interrogation-type) questions provided; they did not constitute the EIC’s perspective. Many reverse questions raised by the EIC remained unanswered, despite his explicit request. (b) The EIC was given less than 24 hours to resign, much too fast to allow for a fair discussion of divergent perspectives. (c) The EIC was not offered the same widespread email distribution list to present his counter-arguments to the same broad audience to which APS had already sent out its accusations. His remarks would have gone unnoticed. (d) APS had already admitted the journal’s mistake and created social realities before the EIC could respond.

Finally, Robert Gropp writes, “The Board reviewed the EIC’s actions and concluded that the EIC demonstrated poor editorial judgment and bias,” again without specification of what “poor editorial judgment and bias” was found based on what criteria and diagnostic methods. To repeat, this negative evaluation is at variance with a plethora of positive feedback I received in countless emails. The discrepancy strikes me as conspicuous and calling for transparent cross-validation. So far, I have never received an evidence-based report on what exactly APS classified as poor editorial work. And, the present email circular falls short of what it promises, namely “further clarifications”.

With best regards, Klaus Fiedler (former EIC)

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