After Gaza tweet, firing of life sciences journal editor sparks freedom of speech concerns

Pioneering life sciences journal eLife finds itself at the center of a white-hot furor after its governing board fired editor-in-chief Michael Eisen following his endorsement on social media of a satirical article expressing sympathy for Palestinians caught in the escalating violence in Gaza between Israel and Hamas. The decision, which was called for by some corners of the scientific community, and ignited a subsequent backlash in others, highlights disagreements among researchers about institutions’ restrictions on free speech when science and politics collide.

At least seven editors at eLife and advisers to the journal have resigned in protest of his dismissal, including Elisabeth Bik, the celebrated spotter of scientific data manipulation. Other researchers have pledged to boycott the publication until its leaders provide a transparent explanation for Eisen’s removal and demonstrate a commitment to academic freedom of expression. Many declined to speak to STAT due to how heated the discourse has become in recent days.

On Monday, Eisen, a biologist at the University of California, Berkeley who is Jewish, posted on X (formerly Twitter) that he was being replaced “for retweeting a @TheOnion piece that calls out indifference to the lives of Palestinian civilians.”

In a statement posted to its website and emailed to eLife editors Tuesday, the journal confirmed the firing by the board, which is made up of representatives of eLife’s founding funders — the Howard Hughes Medical Institute, the Max Planck Society in Germany, and the London-based Wellcome Trust. But it suggested that the tweet in question was not the sole reason for Eisen’s ouster.

“Mike has been given clear feedback from the board that his approach to leadership, communication and social media has at key times been detrimental to the cohesion of the community we are trying to build and hence to eLife’s mission,” the statement said. “It is against this background that a further incidence of this behaviour has contributed to the board’s decision.”

Eisen did not respond to STAT’s requests for comment.

A longtime critic of traditional publishing and outspoken advocate for open science, he has a history of being unafraid to take on powerful institutions in the name of bettering the research enterprise. While many scientists describe him as amiable in person, his online persona has a more caustic edge, especially on X, where he has amassed more than 73,000 followers and posted nearly as many tweets. More than a few of those have sparked controversy in the past, including 2016’s #landergate and 2020’s wormageddon.

The turmoil this time began on October 13 when Eisen, with his trademark playful yet provocative ire, applauded a story posted by the news parody website The Onion, headlined “Dying Gazans Criticized for Not Using Last Words to Condemn Hamas.” Eisen wrote on X: “The Onion speaks with more courage, insight and moral clarity than the leaders of every academic institution put together. I wish there were a @TheOnion university.”

But unlike in the past, most people did not take Eisen’s comments — which were aimed at vague university statements regarding the conflict — in stride. Instead, his post ignited a fusillade of criticism that his statements were offensive and lacked empathy for Israeli civilians killed and taken hostage by Hamas.

“Is this a joke to you?” tweeted Meital Oren-Suissa, a senior scientist at the Weizmann Institute in Israel. “Your comment and this article are very hurtful.”

“Absolutely disgusted by these heartless & callous remark,” tweeted Derya Unutmaz, a cell biologist at the Jackson Laboratory. “This isn’t just insensitivity, it’s a cruel mockery of one of the worst tragedies, which deepens the pain of those who lost loved ones. It’s also shocking such a malevolent comment is from a scientist and @eLife editor…”

Alleging an anti-Israel bias that would compromise the integrity of the journal, some Israeli researchers called for Eisen to resign and urged colleagues to withhold manuscript submissions until the demand was met. Others called on HHMI to cut funding to Eisen’s lab, which has received support through its individual investigator program since 2008.

The outpouring of antagonism and Eisen’s subsequent dismissal have troubled many researchers who feel that the ability to freely express one’s opinions in the public square, whether that’s on a university campus or on social media, is foundational to the scientific enterprise.

“No scientist should be fired over something like this because it really affects the freedom of speech within the scientific community, especially for early career and minority researchers,” said Lara Urban, a biodiversity researcher at Helmholtz Munich who held several eLife positions before stepping down this week. “People need to be able to voice controversial opinions.”

For the past three years, Urban has been a member of eLife’s early career advisory group, which met weekly with the journal’s leadership team to discuss how the journal could use its growing prestige to further its goals of transforming the traditional publishing system to increase access, equity, and inclusivity.

Bik told STAT she resigned from the eLife Ethics Committee because as a scientific journal that considers ethics and equity as core values, it shouldn’t get involved in personal opinions, “in particular those on geopolitical situations, provided those opinions are not denigrating or hurtful.” Bik understands why some have interpreted Eisen’s comments as hurtful, but she saw them as emphasizing the loss of civilian lives on both sides of this conflict. “Pointing attention to civilian death in a war situation should not result in someone losing their position at a scientific journal,” she said.

Legal experts who have followed the case said the journal was within its rights in firing Eisen, because eLife is a private nonprofit organization. “It’s a simple fact of employment law in the United States that people in the private sector have essentially no protection from their employers if the employers don’t like their opinions,” said Brian Leiter, a professor of law and philosophy at the University of Chicago.

But the role of academic journal editor is rarely a full-time job. Like Eisen, most people take on those positions in addition to their university work — running research labs and teaching classes — which come with constitutionally and contractually protected rights to academic freedom of expression. The eLife case highlights fears over how that freedom can get whittled away if other parts of the research ecosystem, like funders and publishers, don’t support the same values.

“It’s always been the case that we have no guarantee that the people reviewing our grants, or reviewing our papers, or reviewing us for promotion aren’t influenced by other things they know about us,” Leiter said. “All social media does is to make it easier to advertise what your views are.”

eLife was launched in 2012 with a commitment to open access and a collaborative system of peer review that attracted hundreds of top scientists, making it quickly rise to the ranks of big-name publications like Science, Nature, and Cell. In 2019, when eLife hired Eisen, it was seen widely as a doubling down on its mission of ensuring that everyone has access to the infrastructure needed to openly disseminate, review, and curate the scientific literature.

Eisen championed bold moves for the journal that were often divisive. In 2020, the journal announced a new policy requiring that all authors who wanted to publish in eLife first post their submissions online as preprints. In 2022, it introduced an even bigger change — the decision to publish every paper it sent out for peer review, alongside reviewers’ assessments of the work’s significance and rigor — a change that was effectively “relinquishing the traditional journal role of gatekeeper,” Eisen said in a press release at the time.

That particular experiment proved too much for a number of eLife editors, who worried about its impact on the prestige of the platform and threatened to resign if the policy was implemented. When Eisen pushed forward anyway, a few followed through, though not the mass resignation that was feared.

But for Urban, who became an editor at eLife a few months ago, it was precisely these kinds of policies that attracted her to the journal. “Mike’s eLife is the eLife I joined,” she said. He elevated the early career advisory group and gave researchers like her a voice within the organization. When she and others in the group saw people organizing online against him, they reached out individually to eLife leadership with their concerns that censuring Eisen would set a dangerous precedent. When those concerns weren’t addressed, they submitted a formal letter to the board on October 19, to be considered at its meeting that day.

According to Urban, they never received a response. She learned of Eisen’s ouster on Twitter Monday. After seeing the journal’s statement Tuesday, she reluctantly resigned her positions at eLife.

“The statement implies that because of tweets in the past he wasn’t able to unite people behind him,” Urban said. It was an explanation she found unsatisfactory, and out of alignment with eLife’s mission. It’s easy to unite people when you’re playing to majority, entrenched interests, she said.

“If you make those people mad, maybe that’s a good thing for the future we imagine — a scientific community that is more diverse and more equitable than it is now.”

It was a difficult decision, she emphasized, because eLife is such a promising organization striving to change structural shortcomings of the scientific publishing system. Now she worries that the innovative policies Eisen pushed may disappear along with his name from the masthead.

At the same Oct. 19 meeting, the eLife board met with Eisen to discuss his tweets, and later that day it asked him to resign or face termination, Eisen told Science. “The board doesn’t want eLife embroiled in controversies and they look at me, I guess, as someone who makes things controversial,” he said.

After this story was published, eLife emailed STAT confirming that the board met with Eisen on Oct. 19. “He was notified on Tuesday, Oct 24, that he would be replaced as eLife Editor-in-Chief and relieved of duties immediately,” eLife said in the email, adding it was for the reasons explained in the public statement on its website. “We regret that a number of editors have made the decision to resign as a result of both Mike’s tweets and our decision on the matter but firmly believe this decision is best to safeguard eLife’s future and reputation.”

At least online, Eisen seems to be embracing this latest kerfuffle as the price to pay for speaking his mind, perhaps even a badge of honor. “Mama always said I’d be the first person to be cancelled,” he tweeted late Tuesday night.

This story was updated with comments from eLife.