Reader Jon Gallant recently finished the essay collection compiled and edited by Lawrence Krauss, The War on Science: Thirty-Nine Renowed Scientists and Scholars speak Out About Current Threats to Free Speech, Open Inquiry, and the Scientific Process.” (Luana and I have a paper in it taken from our Skeptical Inquirer paper on the ideological subversion of biology).
Jon decided to leave a review of the book on its Amazon page (his review is shown below in the Amazon rejection). Yep, his submitted review was rejected. He sent the rejection to me and I reproduce it and his emailed speculations (with permission). I’ve put a red box around the submitted review:
At first I was puzzled, as I don’t follow Amazon reviews and know nothing about the ideology of the site or company. Can you guess why the review was returned with requests for changes? I suspect you’ve guessed correctly, though we can’t be sure. I asked Jon what he thought, and here’s some of his response:
Use of the term “woke” in a less than reverential tone is no doubt classified by Amazon’s editors as “hate speech”. After all, it makes wokies feel unsafe. My hunch is that the dopier Communications majors from the 2010s work as review editors at Amazon. The better-connected ones get into the editorial offices of some Nature publications we have encountered.
In truth, I can see no other explanation. The review was not worshipful enough of wokeness, and in fact made fun of it, even expressing a hope that it would disappear. If you have another explanation, by all means put it in the comments. I had no patience to read Amazon’s “community guidelines” to see if there were other infractions.
I don’t know if Jon will resubmit his review, but I thought that this was both sad and amusing. The other reviews (126 of them) are bimodal (70% five star, 18% one star), and it’s also amusing to look at the negative ones, most of them finding the book guilty of association with the wrong people, or not hard enough on Trump and right-wing assaults on science (not its purpose)