There Will Always be an England: Nature Magazine's Attributions

"Tell me what a man does and I'll tell you what he is," is an old English saying.

Nature magazine takes it one step further. Their attributions read, e.g.

"Virginia Trimble is at the University of California, Irvine..."

"At?" Yes, one assumes Ms. Trimble is a professor rather than a custodian "at" Cal-Irvine but it is a curious English circumlocution to accredit their contributors in that manner.

It can be a little jarring too. At the end of an article "The power of natural selection," Nature tells us that the author,

"Andrew P. Hendry is IN the Redpath Museum and Department of Biology, McGill University..." (emphasis added), which if literally true would indeed be a remarkable instantiation of the power of natural selection.

Their own staff writers do not always suffer the same vague description. "Heike Langenberg is a physical sciences editor at Nature," is one. "Allison Abbott is Nature's senior European correspondent" is another. But another article is authored by an outside scholar, Russell G. Foster, who the magazine alarmingly tells its readers, "is in the Division of Neuroscience and Mental Health, Charing Cross Hospital..."

Indeed.

-Benjamin Harris