Comments on: What Goes Around …

By: Dan Myers

Dan Myers — Mon, 08 Oct 2007 00:17:35 +0000

I’m too nice to respond to most of this. But I will say that I think the double-blind review is largely a myth these days due to a little tool we call “google.” If people want to find whose paper something is, it’s not usually too hard. And many important processes, like tenure reviews, NSF reviews, and fellowships aren’t double blind in the first place.

By: anonymous

anonymous — Sat, 06 Oct 2007 22:02:00 +0000

Probably a silly query, but did you confirm that the person you think wrote the snark actually did? Coz someone comments nastily using my name, and i act when I catch it but…

By: Jim Johnson

Jim Johnson — Sat, 06 Oct 2007 21:15:41 +0000

I always remind graduate students that ‘life is a repeated game …’; it is amazing, though, how often ‘colleagues’ forget that feature of life. I must say that it is difficult to be a nice as Dan seems to be.

By: bi

bi — Fri, 05 Oct 2007 07:29:51 +0000

aaron_m: God bless him. …oops.

By: marcel

marcel — Thu, 04 Oct 2007 18:40:41 +0000

Dan Myers sounds like a typical Democrat to me, the “certain person”, a gooper.

By: Crooked Timber » » Playing nice

Crooked Timber » » Playing nice — Thu, 04 Oct 2007 18:38:23 +0000

[...] Timber « What Goes Around … | Main [...]

By: aaron_m

aaron_m — Thu, 04 Oct 2007 18:26:30 +0000

“That’s why God invented double-blind peer review”

Richard Dawkins just got so irritated that he shit his pants.

By: bi

bi — Thu, 04 Oct 2007 18:14:17 +0000

amnik: That’s why God invented double-blind peer review……

By: c.l. ball

c.l. ball — Thu, 04 Oct 2007 18:12:07 +0000

So what should Myers have done( I’m assuming he filed straight reports)

1) wrote a letter or reviewed the NSF app. as he would have if the person had not insulted him or his student

2) declined to write/report without giving a reason

3) declined to write/report based on a conflict of interest

In the blog insult, I would do 1) In the case of the student, I would do 3)—those ASA “colleagues” sound like real assholes.

By: Rich Puchalsky

Rich Puchalsky — Thu, 04 Oct 2007 18:07:40 +0000

Cool. This verifies my assumption that nice people are suckers, and that you can be rude to them with impunity.

By: anmik

anmik — Thu, 04 Oct 2007 17:59:57 +0000

Sure, be nice on blogs, at meetings, and during chance encounters at airport bars (“Professor Berube, I’m a huge fan of your work.”). That’s common sense and good citizenship. But then, what about the very real, very reasonable impulse to softpedal book reviews, to write overly generous tenure evaluations, and on and on? I only ask because the whole idea of peer review, and the review process more broadly, has begun to feel a bit, how to say this, corrupt of late. I noted yesterday some very minor flap in which Chris Matthews, the political “journalist,” admitted that it’s hard to cover the people he sees at cocktail parties. The same is true for scholars, no? And blogs only compound the problem, I suppose.

Honestly, I have no idea where I’m going with this. It’s just something that’s been on my mind recently. And then, seeing this post, I was prompted to comment. By the way, love the blog, love your work, love all that you do. And you look great today. But I don’t mean that in a creepy way.

By: Alejandro

Alejandro — Thu, 04 Oct 2007 17:08:20 +0000

Er, that question should have been left at Dan Myers’ blog, not here.

By: Alejandro

Alejandro — Thu, 04 Oct 2007 17:06:51 +0000

Ah, but how do you know that the person didn’t insult you in purpose, knowing that your honorable nature and desire to regard yourself as fairminded would make you give a better evaluation of them that you would otherwise have done? There is a story by Borges with this premise.