The leader of an international team of genetics researchers is seething after a journal responded to critical tweets about their paper by issuing an expression of concern.

The article, “Exome sequencing in multiple sclerosis families identifies 12 candidate genes and nominates biological pathways for the genesis of disease,” was published in PLOS Genetics in early June 2019 by a group led by Carles Vilariño-Güell, of the Department of Medical Genetics at the University of British Columbia in Vancouver.
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Less than a week after publication, according to Vilariño-Güell, the journal notified him that:

There are 93 tweets in the conversation about the paper started by Daniel MacArthur. It is overwhelmingly negative towards the journal and paper. In addition to MacArthur (32.9k followers) weighing in, other names and influencers including Jeffrey Ross-Ibarrra (UC Davis, 6.2k followers), Heidi Rehm (Mass General, 4.4k followers), Manuel Rivas (Stanford, 2.2k followers), etc. One positive tweet appears responding to PLOS Genetics’ own coverage of this paper.

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