Update on Aeron Haworth and Ed Yong: An apology, accepted

As most Embargo Watch readers will probably know, a post describing a tussle between blogger Ed Yong and press information officer (PIO) Aeron Haworth has garnered a lot of attention this week.

Because the comment thread on that post has become a bit, well, umanageable, and is also constrained by a design problem that is making old comments appear to have been in response to new ones, I wanted to call readers’ attention to two comments from the protagonists.

Yong posted this morning:

I’ve just had a very nice apology email from Mr Haworth, which I’ve accepted. I’m drawing a line under this affair and I hope others will too. Many thanks for the kind comments and support – it means a lot.

And then Haworth:

I’ve been encouraged by Ivan, the site owner, to update everyone. This morning, I apologised to Ed Yong, which he graciously accepted. I have been somewhat mortified by the comments above but, I guess, this is to be expected when you post knee-jerk, overly defensive comments on a blog site after a few glasses of wine. Never a good idea!

I work hard to promote science to the public and, you may have seen today, another story in the papers about the north-south health divide, which I have been dealing with for the past few days.

I’m a fairly private person, so this episode has upset me quite a lot. My own silly fault.

Anyway, if you don’t mind, I’d like to get back to my day job. Thanks for all your comments. I’ve taken them on board.

Kind regards,
Aeron

My strong sense is that both Yong and Haworth would like these to be their last comments on this subject, certainly at least for a while.

So while I’ll still allow comments on this post and that one, I’m going to take a very heavy hand in moderating, and apply a very low bar to my definition of ad hominem or personal attacks. Be warned, and thanks for all of the participation.

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