Sir

Your News story “Medical journal under attack as dissenters seize AIDS platform” (Nature 426, 215; 2003) was a fair report of researchers' objections to rapid responses being posted on the website of the British Medical Journal (BMJ) by people who are sceptical about a link between AIDS and HIV. As editor of the BMJ, however, I find it disturbing to see scientists arguing for restrictions on free speech. Surely open communication and argument is a fundamental value of science?

John Milton put the argument better than anybody in 1643, in his pamphlet Areopagitica. “Give me,” he wrote, “the liberty to know, to utter, and to argue freely according to conscience, above all liberties. ... [W]ho ever knew Truth put to the worse, in a free and open encounter? ...Yet is it not impossible that she [truth] may have more shapes than one ... [I]f it come to prohibiting, there is not aught more likely to be prohibited than truth itself; whose first appearance to our eyes, bleared and dimmed with prejudice and custom, is more unsightly and unplausible than many errors ... Where there is much desire to learn there of necessity will be much arguing, much writing, many opinions; for opinion in good men is but knowledge in the making.”

We should never forget Galileo being put before the inquisition. It would be even worse if we allowed scientific orthodoxy to become the inquisition.

I'm not arguing that those who doubt the link between HIV and AIDS are right, but I want to keep our threshold for posting rapid responses as low as possible.

How, I'm legitimately asked, does this fit with an editorial code I have drafted saying: “Editors should take all reasonable steps to ensure the accuracy of the material they publish.” My first reaction is that perhaps “accuracy” is the wrong word to use. As editors we receive thousands of manuscripts containing millions of assertions. We can't possibly check every “fact”, and distinguishing fact from opinion is not as straightforward as it sounds.

The answer, I think, lies in transparency. Our rapid responses are clearly unfettered debate full of crazy ideas, false logic, and unreadable, mis-spelt prose as well as some literary and scientific gems. What you see is what you get. In contrast, original articles have been as rigorously peer-reviewed as we can manage, with the recognition that peer review itself is a deeply flawed process.

Your News story states: “The dispute crystallizes the conflict in the Internet era between a journal's desire to experiment with open electronic debate, and its fundamental obligation to its readers to provide them with authentic information.” I don't agree that there is a conflict. The beauty of the electronic world is that we can have no-holds-barred debate alongside greater selectivity. On our website you can do a search that includes or excludes rapid responses. I suggest that those who want to see the world as it is — rather than how they would like it to be — include rapid responses in their search.