For followers of the climate change debate and the IPCC process, the fact that IPCC reviews are conducted by the same people who wrote the papers in the first place is not news - Michael Mann was of course famously a lead author on the paleoclimate chapter of the IPCC 3rd assessment report, which, if I recall correctly, managed to include a picture of the Hockey Stick no less than six times.
There is an interesting post up today at Peer-to-Peer, a blog run by the Nature group, and authored by Maxine Clark, the executive editor of that organ.
Nature's 27 November issue (456, 432; 2008) carries a News story about the planned retirement of the editor of a theoretical-physics journal, who was facing growing criticism that he used its pages to publish numerous papers written by himself.
According to Nature, 5 of the 36 papers in the December issue of Chaos, Solitons and Fractals alone were written by its editor-in-chief, Mohamed El Naschie, making nearly 60 papers written or coauthored by him in the journal this year. Most scientists contacted by Nature said that El Naschie's papers tend to be of poor quality, although a few find his ideas original and interesting.
Nature has played a less than stellar part in the global warming debate, refusing to adhere to their own policies on data availability, and suppressing views that do not adhere to the required view. Here is a chance for them to redeem themselves though - I wait, in hope rather than any great expectation - for an article from them demanding resolution to the similar problems that beset the world of climatology.