A neuroscientist once dubbed the “prince of panspermia” has lost a 2019 paper claiming that Venus may hold life seeded from Earth.
The paper, titled “Life on Venus and the interplanetary transfer of biota from Earth,” was written by Rhawn Gabriel Joseph, whose affiliations have included outfits called Astrobiology Associates of Northern California San Francisco and the Brain Research Neuroscience Laboratory.
A once-avid YouTuber, Joseph also has a consulting business, charging $500 for a 30-minute phone call, $500 an hour to review documents and $250 per page for his writing services. He’ll also sit with you face-to-face (six feet away and fully masked, we trust) for three hours if you have $5,000 for the privilege.
That’s high-priced lawyer money. Speaking of which, according to Vice, Joseph in 2014 tried to use the courts to force NASA to investigate what he believed was evidence of life on Mars.
And earlier this year, he sued Springer Nature over its handling of his now-retracted article. In an email we received in June, Joseph accused the editors of Astrophysics and Space Science of:
fraud and malicious retaliatory libelous/defamatory conduct; such that, it is reasonable to suspect that what Springer Nature publishes is not trustworthy and their review/publication process is tainted by fraud and gross misconduct by their editors.
Joseph stated that he had demanded that the journal remove his article from its “fake” website and “issue me a refund” of any publication costs:
In June of 2020, I received retaliatory threats from Nature Springer, warning that because I demanded they remove my article, they will retaliate, slander, defame and destroy my reputation and deface the Life on Venus article by changing the title to make it personally derogatory and defamatory
In June, the journal issued the following note for the paper:
Editor’s Note: Readers are alerted that the conclusions of this article are subject to criticisms that are being considered by the editors. Editorial action will be taken as appropriate once the investigation of the concerns is complete and all parties have been given an opportunity to respond in full.
Now it has acted:
The Editors and the Publisher are retracting this article [1] because, upon further review, in their judgment the article proffers insufficient critical assessment of the material presented and literature cited, and fails to provide a solid underpinning for the speculative statements made in the article which, in their view, invalidates the conclusions drawn. The author does not agree to this retraction.
The co-editor-in-chief of the journal, Elias Brinks, said he was referring our queries to Springer Nature officials.
Meanwhile, we asked Joseph why, if he was willing to sue the editors and the publisher to remove his paper, he now objects to the retraction. He told us:
They pretended it was their decision and lied about the reasons. Their entire purpose was to retaliate against me and destroy my reputation. And they have succeeded
Joseph, who is demanding a jury trial, is representing himself in the complaint, which he filed in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York. According to the court filings, he was:
profoundly injured, emotionally, psychologically, and physically, by the aggregate acts of the Defendants
He claims that his research on extraterrestrial life:
has been widely read within the scientific community and has drawn the attention of members of Nobel Prize committee and the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences. Naturally, Plaintiff is viewed with jealousy, envy, and hatred by mediocrities; because, its human nature.
As for the defendants:
Brinks and Mould are mediocrities. Springer Nature is a major publisher which acts as a “gate keeper” on behalf of the status quo, and which predominantly publishes minutia which is repackaged and sold to libraries including those in New York. These Defendants have maliciously conspired to destroy this Plaintiff’s reputation and discredit his lifetime of scientific achievements and have caused Plaintiff profound injury and damages because he sent a “take down” notice to their fake ASS journal.
A spokesperson for Springer Nature said the company would not comment on the litigation. The company’s attorneys have until October 9 to respond to the complaint.
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Further entertainment is provided by Rhawn Joseph’s dealings with PZ Myers. Myers collected them here:
https://freethoughtblogs.com/pharyngula/2019/03/25/rhawn-joseph-and-a-new-silly-claim-about-extraterrestrial-life/
That link at brainmind.com is a real hoot. Rhawn’s carefully curated online image suggests that he is allergic to the top buttons on all his shirts.
It’s interesting that this kind of hyper masculine image consciousness is often associated with delusions of intellectual grandeur and litigious aggression. Case in point: the photo in that 2017 NYTimes article of Carlo Croce in black tie pretending to look at something in a microscope that has no specimen on the microscope stage (https://www.nytimes.com/2017/03/08/science/cancer-carlo-croce.html).
#sciencepeacocks
Somehow I’d think that when an editor gets an article titled “Life on Venus and the interplanetary transfer of biota from Earth,” it might trigger some skeptical scrutiny. in the front side. I’m often flabbergasted how journals get themselves in these pickles. It’s not like this guy snuck in some subtle, coded homeopathy or intelligent design conclusion. That’s a pretty clear title.