Comments on: Protesting Against and Sanctioning Bad Reviewers

By: Elaka granskare « Nonicoclolasos

Elaka granskare « Nonicoclolasos — Thu, 26 Feb 2009 10:47:07 +0000

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By: Michael E. Marotta

Michael E. Marotta — Mon, 06 Oct 2008 13:31:45 +0000

The assumption is that science is dispassionate. We address ideas, facts and theories, not the people who assert them. Yet, therein lies a fallacy: the stolen concept. The word “assert” is strong. It is in and of our nature to be emotional. The request for goodwill is a request for a ppsitive emotional response — whether it is deserved or not.

Surfing for sociology blogs, I came across one that derided the packaging of food products for reinforcing the white male chauvinist underpinnings of our exploitative commercial society. There is nothing surpirsing in that in a forum for sociologists. But does it exhibit goodwill? The writers did not offer their own, better, classless, sexless, genderless, ethnicitiless packaging. We are supposed to accept this as “critical sociology.” They only gave off bad will — and expected to get away with it.

In accounting, “goodwill” is the difference between the market value of the outstanding common stock and the book value of a company’s assets. Goodwill must be earned.

By: James

James — Sun, 05 Oct 2008 15:16:34 +0000

This makes me think about error rates and the balance of false positives and false negatives. The author’s perspective is that a false positive still yields a publication (hooray!), but false negatives are costly and wounding, as described above.

The editor’s take is the opposite: false positives are costly to the reputation of the journal, and false negatives, perhaps b/c they don’t have to live with the consequences of the error, have less obvious sorts of impacts.

Add in reviewers seeking to be *efficient* and assumptions about the distribution of submissions (lots of good papers vying for a home) and you get the current mess. Also, conditioning people to complain might be burdensome, as at least some complaints will have no merit.

In short, perhaps sanctioning reviewers only gets at part of the (systemic) current problem.