Writing #5--Don't be this guy! And don't be me.
I recently witnessed a most unfortunate incident. An author misinterpreted the editor's letter, which had rejected the paper but invited resubmission. The author thought that two reviewers had colluded and submitted almost identical reviews. He documented what he (thought he) saw. And he wrote to the editor about it. So far so good. Was I that editor? No, and this is where things went badly awry. The author, who was definitely on his high horse, copied all the other editors of the journal. That's how I found out about it. I did a "reply all", stripping out all the recipients except the other editors, and indicated that I thought it did kind of look bad. I should not have done that, but the saving grace was that my comment only went to the other editors. Unfortunately, not all of the people who reacted to the author's email stripped out the authors. An investigation was launched. So far so good, sort of. Here's the...