Police may investigate under cover, but once the facts are there and clear, you get before the justice in an open system, where you confront your accuser and defend your position. A unbiased judge then makes a decision based on the facts. True peer review also follows a similar principle, or at least aims to. (I am the first to say that it doesn't work well and needs to be reviewed - I already said that - but the idea is nevertheless one if impartial review of scientific work).

What you are suggesting has nothing to do with policing, justice or peer reviewing. It's pure street justice and I'll have none of that with my science. Thank you.

Statement of fact, although correct, can very well have an editorial nature depending on the context in which they are made.

As for the evidence, look closer and a bit more. you'll see the pattern.

I wasn't commenting this specific case, but my comment was rather to read in a more broader context.

I do not use double negatives when I am not certain I use them correctly. In other words, I am convinced that someone will abuse the system at some point.

Sorry, but I won't hesitate to openly criticize a bigwig if I believe I have the basis to do so. I won't sell my integrity for a tenured position. But I will not do it on A platform like PubPeer.

Not sure if to "wash dirty linen" exactly convey what I meant, but regardless I did not suggest this was the case or that is done. I said it is an open door to such action. As I am not a user of the PubPeer platform, I cannot judge if comments meant to attack the reputation of an other due to private disputes commonly occur. Furthermore, such attacks with other motive as pure improvement of scientific publication quality are difficult to spot, because this is what anonymous commenting enables to do.

Tenure track are extremely competitive, especially in fields like biomedical research. Knowing the human nature and with some of the dirty stuff I saw in my career, I can't imaging nobody would abuse this system to wrongfully block someone's progress at some point.

Even if some comments are clearly justified, from many comments one can discern a pattern of an active campaign against the other. For example, one commenter posts :

Most of the image reviews have also been made by the same person, indicating an active campaign against the author.

As well as this may be justified, this is not the proper way to address critical review of already published papers. Assuming that the issues are that important (I can't judge as it is quite far from my field of expertise), letters should be sent to the editors highlighting the issues. Also, review or comment paper could be submitted to the journals.

I'd like to add, that most journals have a post-publishing commenting processes. Open letters, comments and critics may be addressed regarding published articles. Following those errata and replies may be published. This process is, in my opinion, underestimated and under-used.

Also, editors should be contacted if obvious ethical problem should arise with already published articles.

(OT: and sorry for the few typos in the above post.)

I have a real problem with the concept of anonymous peer review without editorial oversight or not included in a due peer review process. That said, I do recognize the interest for post-publication peer review due to lacks in the commonly used review processes, although I do not believe this should be allowed to be done anonymously.

Anonymous review is usual in the peer-review processes of most journals, but these comments are in general non-public or at least reviewed by an editor before publication. Some reviewers choose to do their peer-review work without the cover of anonymity and I encourage this. If you have constructive criticism on the work of an other and can this criticism is well founded, you can very well do it openly.

I believe that the best why to process with peer-review is with a two steps process, where first the submitted paper is published in an open discussion paper. Comments from the official reviewers are public and any one can comment on the papers. Following the peer review process, the paper is published in the official paper which may be with or without open access (I prefer those with open access). Such a process encourages quality and brings the whole community in the peer-review process, but under the oversight of editors.

Something like PubPeer is extremely tricky. It's an open door to abuse and for commenter to wash their dirty linen in public. I don't know if such a platform is a good idea, especially with anonymity. I'd rather have a good review of the peer-review processes commonly used.

The triangular path is only the approach path. The goal is to reach a stable orbit around the comet,.

The probe is in orbit around the comet, and a quite peculiar orbit too. So regardless of what the comet does, from the reference point of the probe, it is "rotating".

Perhaps doing both would actually be the right course, but I initially meant "pressing charges". sorry for the confusion.

I understand that in most states, no proof of damage must be given. In many states, the statement itself suffices. An audience is not necessary.

But hey, IANAL. And especially defamation legislation is tricky in the US. Regardless I would press charges (which is more accurately said than "sue them").

I guess the (other) neighbours will be back from vacation any day know.

I use a car every they. I guess that makes me a bank robber. You know, could use it as a get away car.

My neighbor also suspect me of murder an cannibalism. He saw me through the kitchen window with a butcher knife and used the BBQ the whole summer. Furthermore, the other neighbors haven't been seen since beginning of the vacation period. All hard evidence...

Seriously, I don't know if you were trying to be funny or sarcastic... but I hope it was either one of those.

I would sue them for defamation, if I were one of their Tor-using customer.

It's a grave offence to imply someone is engaged in criminal activity, without actually having evidence of such activity.