Setting the Record Straight

Klaus Fiedler's Statement about the PoPS Fiasco

Jaochim Funke, a professor in Germany, recently posted this statement by Klaus Fiedler. It is reprinted here in its entirety, unedited, and with Klaus’s permission.

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Klaus Fiedler’s Statement

As a personalized target of a social-media attack on twitter, leading to a petition, I was accused as a racist, as a journal editor (of PPS), who abuses his editorial power and who violated alleged journal rules and diversity norms. I was not only forced to resign as Editor in Chief but also to tolerate insulting aggressions, threats to my scientific reputation and my personal dignity.

However, I also received reinforcing many affective support mails and reconfirmations from scholars all over the world, who expressed their appreciation of my ethical behavior and my editorial style, and started several counter movements in the social media. While I was always very grateful for what these colleagues have done for me, I only heard lately that some of them found I could have done more to rectify myself and to publicize my own perspective of the absurd accusations. I was told that I literally owe my friends such a rectifying statement, just because many important facts are simply unknown to many observers. 

Why I refrained so far from presenting my own perspective

The first and foremost reason why I never provided a counter-version or rectifying statement is that the entire episode was so absurd and surreal. I therefore expected that - in spite of, or exactly because of the wisdom of the social media crowd - it could only take a moment to recognize that there is virtually nothing to justify the accusation that I am a racist, or that I have abused editorial power and ignored existing journal rules.

The second, equally important reason was that APS, the organization who holds the PPS journal, never asked me for my version, and never engaged on what seems to be a self-evident rule of procedural justice, namely, to give the target of accusation a chance to reply and provide a counter statement – ​​to be circulated in the same widespread channel as the accusations. Up to now, nobody asked for my version.

The third reason was that, as a social psychologist, I did not want to play the role of a defendant, which presupposes that there are reasons to be defensive. Taking a defendant role might induce a hindsight effect, that is, a reconstructive memory illusion driven by the outcome scenario in which I am the defendant. In contrast, my understanding was always that I am the victim, not the potential perpetrator in a malicious play.

Fourth, I did assume, and I continue to assume, that there are ethical reasons not to blatantly reveal confidential details about editorial processes. Peer reviewing and the entire editorial correspondence strikes me as a matter of trust (and academic responsibility), preventing me from talking in public about my editorial strategy and my correspondence with other reviewers. In this particular case, though, after the entire editorial correspondence was publicized anyway, confidentiality constraints no longer prevent me from the following clarifying comments.

Finally, I have to admit that I missed an important point that motivates my supporters' claim. Not only many observers but also many "prosecutors" who signed the petition against me, may simply not know many crucial facts.

In an attempt to be as concise as possible in the remainder of this note, I first provide some background information about the editorial project that led to this serious conflict, before I point out that there can be no evidence whatsoever to justify the harsh sanctions postulated in the petition. In the end, I briefly comment on the typical misunderstandings fostered by an uploaded “preprint” by Roberts, which triggered the wide-spread social-media response.

• The editorial project was well-motivated: A recently published article by Hommel, arguing that diversity is a multidimensional concept, whereas a previous article by Roberts had interpreted diversity largely in terms of race discrimination, promised to open a fruitful discussion forum. To initiate this discussion forum, all three reviewers of the Hommel article were invited to submit a publishable version of their reviews, along with a comment by Roberts. The entire project lasted about half a year, during which no conflict could be anticipated. All contributions were accepted for publication, pending some editorial quality control of the finally submitted comment by Roberts – the only comment that could not be read by any other discussant before. The purpose of this quality control was to protect authors from detecting embarrassing inconsistencies only after print. Roberts was repeatedly assured that the "quality control" was not a review process; the acceptance of his comment did not depend on Hommels' evaluation.

• Roberts then uploaded his comment, preceded by a “case study” in which my name was dropped abundantly, although he never accused me explicitly of racism, abuse of editorial power or any other violation of specific editorial norms. The end of the uploaded article was a protocol of the editorial correspondence. It is noteworthy that his version of the editorial process is largely congruent with my own version, which only includes some comments on the editorial goals. Both versions clearly reveal that my editorial style was friendly, impartial, fair, and driven by the motive to trigger a fruitful discussion forum, leading to novel insights and implications on the scientific discourse on diversity. It is hard to see what aspect of my editorial action (ie, what verbal action) justifies any of the harsh accusations in the petition.

My commented version of the editorial correspondence can be found in https://heibox.uni-heidelberg.de/f/3541c5faa7ed44d487dc/?dl=1

Readers may alternatively refer to the appendix of the “preprint” uploaded by Roberts.

• As already mentioned, though, evidence against my editorial style or decisions can not even be found in the uploaded article. The malicious and highly personalized social-media attack mainly reflects an extremely low threshold for unwarranted constructive inferences of social-media users, probably facilitated by APS' premature tendency to accept the underlying protest … in the absence of any solid evidence and without asking the witch to provide her own version in an unbelievable witch hunt.

To undo but the most obvious mistakes and misinterpretations of the entire affair and to put the record straight, I append here a list of obvious facts that may not be common knowledge:

• The planned discussion forum was not a critique of Roberts' former article but the potential of Hommels' recent call for a broader perspective on diversity

• The three reviewers whose comments were published in the discussion forum were by no means the only ones whom I had asked to review the Hommel paper. Several others—Roberts included—declined.

• I nevertheless invited Roberts to participate as a further commentator in the discussion forum.

• I am neither personally related to the reviewers invited for the discussion forum nor did I ever do joint research with one of them. The unwarranted impression that I may personally like these scholars relies on emails I use to send out to all my reviewers, who are doing honorary work for me. Hundreds of scholars have received these personally committal and overly grateful mails, which go beyond superficial thank-you letters. I would have never expected that these mails - for which I received many compliments - could be misunderstood as reflecting a bias in favor of selected reviewers.

• It is simply not true that the journal's Editor in Chief cannot publish comments without additional peer reviewing. Immediately accepted articles are as wanted by the journal as immediate desk rejection.

• I never rejected any submission by Roberts. On the contrary, I always stressed that his comment is accepted. The final “quality control” was exclusively meant to protect authors from embarrassing inconsistencies when articles go to print without sufficient control.

• I intended the entire thread of publications to start a scientific discussion, not to end it in favor of one side or the other. This open-minded goal must have been evident from my announcements.

The critical question, to reiterate, is whether any of my editorial actions documented here and in the attached file, or in any other source of cogent evidence, justify any of the harsh claims propagated in the petition.