The troll Leonid Schneider & ‘For Better Science’: crank or cure?

I’ve been aware of Leonid Schneider’s expose blog ever since the piece on the supposed fraud of Nobel prize-winner Gregg Semenza appeared on my Twitter feed. Schneider portrays himself as an under-dog; the self-styled “failed scientist” has taken a liking to pillaring the hypocrisies of the scientific establishment. To be honest, although criticisms of the undertakings of science are always needed, especially when it concerns matters of data integrity, publishing practices, and perverse incentives in academia, I am a bit weary of uncritically listening to someone who appears to have no established career in either science or science journalism (the only pieces published under his own name appear only on the blog he runs). And his pieces do come off with a bit of crankiness.

 

It’s all too easy to make baseless accusations, especially with a medium like Twitter, which Schneider seems to do happily even going as far as calling respected publishing journals he doesn’t like “predatory”. Yes, science needs to be more open and transparent, especially with regards to sharing data and materials used in publications to facilitate reproducibility. But it doesn’t need more cowboys on the internet with a slight bent towards a view of science that verges towards conspiracy mongering. Scientists are people too – the majority are honest individuals working under an imperfect system. There will be those who don’t care about integrity and are only interested in amassing accolades at the expense of the truth – but they will ultimately be discarded by future generations.

https://thiscomplexlife.wordpress.com/2021/01/10/leonid-schneider-for-better-science-crank-or-cure/

Trolls are characterised by the ‘Dark Tetrad’ of personality traits, including psychopathy, Machiavellianism, Narcissism and sadism.

https://thewire.in/communalism/internet-trolls-psychology

https://www.researchgate.net/publication/339631024_Comment_moderation_and_freedom_of_speech_at_PubPeer_challenges_and_issues#pf4

https://forbetterscience.files.wordpress.com/2021/05/for-better-science-40forbetterscien1-_-twitter.pdf

The disgruntled troll Leonid Schneider had previously described himself on Twitter as a “certified Troll with slanderous website”, but it's rare even for Twitter to suspend trolls. What happened? Was the twitter suspension related to the defamation lawsuits that he has been losing?