As one of the authors of the 'Nature' article in question, I am pleased to see it under discussion here.
Writing a 19-author paper requires a great deal of close coordination and numerous drafts over several months. This one is derived from many lifetimes of experience. Most of the authors are very well-known and individually have had active research careers longer than the entire history of invasion biology. None of us took the project lightly, because it would offer no advantage to do so. Please read the paper, not just the blogs reacting to it or comments reacting to the blogs. By editorial decree it is less than two pages long. I suggest that you also read the cited references. There are only 10, and they were chosen carefully because that's all we were allowed to use. Some are easier to access than others, but none are impossible to find. One is Mark Davis' 2009 Oxford University Press book 'Invasion Biology', which can probably be had in any University library. If other methods fail, the rest can be procured by contacting their authors. If you have access to 'Nature' online, all of our names have live email links. Some of you might be interested to learn that producing a 'comment' for 'Nature' involves an unimaginable amount of negotiation with the journal's editors, who begin by completely re-outlining it and then repeatedly re-title the paper and its sections, change photographs, and make insertions for their own purposes: getting eyes on the page and generating buzz. That's their job. 'Nature' didn't get to be the leading science journal by accident. By the way, 'comment' authors are paid; divided 19 ways it came to about US$6 each. Thanks Matthew K Chew Assistant Research Professor Arizona State University School of Life Sciences ASU Center for Biology & Society PO Box 873301 Tempe, AZ 85287-3301 USA Tel 480.965.8422 Fax 480.965.8330 mc...@asu.edu or anek...@gmail.com http://cbs.asu.edu/people/profiles/chew.php http://asu.academia.edu/MattChew
