My weekly blog is back. And my first essay is about the fallout at eLife, the scientific journal. Two years ago, Michael Eisen was fired from his job as editor-in-chief after retweeting a satirical article (from The Onion) about the war in Gaza. Except... that's not really why he was fired. Tensions had already been growing between eLife’s leadership team and its editors and readers. The journal had spent years reforming scientific publishing, and many people were upset about it. First, eLife required authors to publish preprints before submitting to the journal. Then, they got rid of accept-reject decisions entirely. But Eisen increasingly found these policies to be at odds with the norms of the scientific community he was trying to reform. So when Eisen sent out his tweet, the board had an excuse to get rid of him. This is that story. I hope you'll read it. P.S. This story is actually not about eLife or Eisen or his firing or free speech or anything else. It is about what happens to those who try to change the incentive structures of science. eLife is just a journal — one journal of thousands — in a sea of other journals. Its rise, fall, and continued existence is arbitrary, as is so much else about the way we do science. Blog: