Letter to the Editor as a mechanism of post-publication scientific discussion

The rather stimulating discussion that arose following Isis the Scientist’s critique of a recent study prompted additional blog posts from YHN, Coturnix and drdrA (so far). At the root of much of the bloviating is a comment the original article’s authors posted at Isis’ blog which appeared to recommend that the most appropriate venue for critical discussion of a scientific paper is the Letters-to-Editors section of the journal in question. Reading additional commentary from the original authors on various of the blogs I am not convinced they meant this point to be as absolute as it came across but it does get me thinking about such discussions.
And I thought I would overview one such prior discussion that bears on some of my posts on MDMA.