utterly ridiculous spat: in tabloid headline style (“neuroscientist accused of going on date !!”), nature reports on a dispute over the interpretation of data between nikos logothetis at the MPI in tubingen and two of his former postdocs (amir shmuel and david leopold) now running independent labs at u.toronto and the NIMH. the article is written by alison abbott and entitled “Neuroscientist: my data published without authorization are ‘misleading’ “. just to provide context, alison previously authored a hagiographic article on logothetis a few years back.. my own take ? it is easy to argue that it is not logothetis’ data. while the exact contributions are not clear, it is likely that the data were collected in a lab in which he is the research director, by the two former postdocs who wrote the paper. and the situation is simple: one data set, two interpretations. both of which could have appeared in print. it seems that this spat has mostly blown up because Human Brain Mapping declined to publish logothetis’ alternative interpretation side-by-side with that of the authors’ own interpretation. whether that was because HBM considered logothetis’ objections unworthy of publication, is not clear… but the simplest option would have been for logothetis to write a review or opinion piece in some other journal discussing this issue. but commercial journals care for the bottom line and what is better than some tabloid drama to push copies ?