Scientific publisher Nature Publishing Group, UK, has announced that it has won a case brought against it by theoretical physicist Mohamed El Naschie. In 2008, Nature published an article by journalist Quirin Schiermeier, questioning the lack of peer review at the journal Chaos, Solitons and Fractals, which at the time was edited by El Naschie and published many of his own papers.
El Naschie sued Schiermeier and Nature Publishing Group for damaging his reputation, representing himself in court. The judgement was handed down at Bristol Crown Court on July 6 by Judge Victoria Sharp. The judge dismissed the claim, calling Schiermeier's article ‘the product of responsible journalism’ and ‘a public interest story’. She agreed that although El Naschie's papers had been informally discussed with his colleagues before their publication, they were not subject to ‘any proper peer review at all’ and would not have been published by any reputable peer reviewed journal.
Judge Sharp also found ‘reasonable and serious grounds’ for suspecting that El Naschie used a range of false names to defend his editorial practice in communications with Nature, calling it the most curious and bizarre aspect of the case.
