Postpublication "Cyberbullying" and the Professional Self

An article in Science has been getting a lot of attention this week: Nano-Imaging Feud Sets Online Sites Sizzling It's about the 'stripey nanoparticles' debate, which I covered a few weeks back. Back in 2004, Francesco Stellacci and his colleagues published a paper claiming to have observed stripes on the surface of certain very small objects. In the years since they have expanded on this claim in numerous more papers. However, a number of scientists argue that the stripes aren't real - these critics have published their arguments mainly on blogs (e.g.). The Science piece describes two controversies. Controversy #1 is the scientific question of the reality of those stripes. That is not the topic of this post. Controversy #2 surrounds the way that Controversy #1 has been conducted. Stellacci's critics say that they're engaging in post-publication peer review of Stellacci et al's claims. Stellacci, however, has described their criticisms as 'cyberbullying':