The Second-Most Disturbing Thing I Have Seen in an Application (Recently)

Dear applicant:

I just read the supplementary statement that you attached to your application. I am sorry that there are some aspects of your application that fell short of your (and possibly our) expectations. I am completely sympathetic to your concern that your hard work over many years may not lead to certain opportunities because of these possible shortcomings.

Nevertheless, I think you should know that many reviewers of your application do not want to hear a detailed account of your episode of acute gastrointestinal distress at a critical moment in your academic life. It's not just that we are squeamish and cranky (although some of us are indeed both of those), but we have a dislike of excuses such as this one, even if it seems (unfortunately) quite authentic in its detail. I wish I could unread your statement.

The Most Disturbing Thing I Have Seen in an Application (Recently)

Memo to applicants for any job, position, whatever:

Do not try to convince the reviewers of your application of your tenacity and determination by describing how you obsessively pursued a young woman who repeatedly turned down your advances and invitations. This is disturbing. The fact that you did not give up in the face of obstacles is not an admirable quality. Leave her alone, if you have not already done so.

Now They Want To Talk?

Let's say there is a US University that has a long history of (1) not hiring many women faculty, particularly in some fields; (2) not tenuring many women; and (3) not retaining many women, even those who have or would have been awarded tenure. Owing to an environment that is so toxic for women in some departments, even some of those who might have been (or were) tenured will leave if they can. 

Now imagine that a female faculty member who is extremely accomplished gets another offer and decides to leave. This woman spent years at the famous place being bullied and disrespected, and is looking forward to moving to a department and university where she will be valued and respected.

Upon announcing her resignation, suddenly people at her (soon to be ex-) university want to talk to her -- senior faculty, administrators, others in positions of power. People who were not interested in helping her when she needed help. She doesn't yet know exactly what they want to talk to her about, so she is thinking a lot about what she might say. Presumably they want to know why she is leaving.

Should she be completely open and name names of those whose behavior is the reason she is leaving? If she has documentation of abuses, should she distribute this?

How likely is it that these administrators etc. will do anything constructive with any information she gives them?

Can one departing person do anything to change a persistent negative environment for other women?

These administrators must know there is a problem, so if they were going to do anything substantive, wouldn't they already be working for change? And if they aren't doing that already, why do they want to know more details about why one woman is leaving?

Or can it really be that one departing woman could be the 'tipping point', even if that should have occurred many years ago?

Does anyone have any advice for this woman, who is in fact a real person at a real place considering this very real situation? 

Fake Review Contest : A Summary

Today's post refers to recent posts involving the so-called Fake Review Contest, even though most of the reviews ended up being not-so-fake; they were, or were based on, real reviews that their contributors had received. Alas.

A possibly-interesting exercise, though not necessarily an uplifting one, is to see how many of the 21 submitted reviews resemble real reviews you have received. I estimate that I have received reviews similar to about half of the contest entries. I hasten to mention that this is over the course of more than 20 years of publishing papers and writing proposals; such reviews are rare, in my own experience. They do tend to be the memorable ones though.

Anyway, in the Fake Review Contest, every entry got at least one vote. Yay, everyone wins, but some more than others. Late-entry #21 (This work disagrees with several unpublished results and is unsuitable for publication in this journal or ANY OTHER ONE [sic] on the planet) is the vote leader. 

It is clear, however, that #9 (Dear Editor, In the future please waste your own time) also resonated with voters, as did #14 (These authors would be well advised to wait until my paper is published, and then they can cite it) and #17 (vague review Sent from my iPhone).

And at least 5 other entries have so far received double-digit numbers of votes.

I recently found myself writing a review and striving semi-valiantly to avoid being one of Those reviewers -- the kind who object to how their own published work is presented, who appear to be quashing an attempt by others to publish competing ideas, and who come across as patronizing and hyper-critical snobs about technical aspects of writing. I am not sure if I succeeded in avoiding those things, but perhaps one positive effect of compiling a list with so many examples of mean and unhelpful reviews was to remind me to be constructive, detailed, and as objective as possible in my own reviewing. I recommended that the paper be rejected, but at least I explained carefully and (I think) politely why I came to that conclusion. Now it is up to the editor.. a friend of the authors.

 

Fake Review Contest : The Vote

Is it time to vote on your favorite (define that however you want) entry in the Fake Review Contest, even though many of the entries turned out to be real (disturbing)? You can review the entries in their entirety by scrolling through recent posts, or you can refer to the handy list of excerpts that I have included in this post. The poll is below. You have to choose one.

1. if this paper had been better, I would have read it and loved it

2. [this paper] is filled with dangerous ideas crammed into a package with a mundane exterior

3. plagiarism example

4. Why didn’t the author [insert thing that is indicated clearly in the title]?

5. I don’t know anything about the topic of this paper but I’m going to review it anyway

6. Since the author is a woman, I had lowered my expectations accordingly, but the author did not even meet those.

7. something is wrong somewhere

8. There was no point in my reading the entire paper because .. the authors assert with no supporting evidence that the world is round.

9. Dear Editor, In the future please waste your own time.

10. The experiments seem to be toys

11. I couldn’t help but noticed that my work is not cited in this paper

12. If the authors had high-quality data, interesting ideas, and an understandable discussion and conclusions, I would write a positive review. In the absence of those items, I regret that I must hate this paper.

13. one of the authors is the nephew of [someone important to me and so] this is a definite accept

14. These authors would be well advised to wait until my paper is published, and then they can cite it.

15. Presumably you are doing something smarter than what you describe, so you should explain that.

16. Mad Libs review (The authors describe how they (phrase from abstract) etc.)

17. vague review Sent from my iPhone

18. However, I don't think the method is correct in principle. 

19. Although we made you do two revisions which cost you time .. we still will not accept your paper [for political reasons]

20. This paper is transformative and should be published immediately with only minor revisions.

21. This work disagrees with several unpublished results, and .. is unsuitable for publication in this journal or ANY OTHER ONE [sic] on the planet.

Which is your favorite?
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pollcode.com free polls<

Late Entry - Fake Review Contest

21.  PI (another real review, alas)

This work disagrees with several unpublished results, and in its current form, is unsuitable for publication in this journal or ANY OTHER ONE [sic] on the planet."

Fake Review Contest Entries #17-20

These may be the last ones(?). Voting to come soon.

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17. TC

The topic of this paper is not of critical importance to furthering knowledge.

Sent from my iPhone

18. DM (generalized from real review, with no further elaboration of what is not correct)

The authors proposed to study phenomenon A by using methodology XYZ. The calculated results were largely consistent with experimental results. However, I don't think the method is correct in principle. 

19 (formerly 21). FR (another mostly-real one)

Dear Authors -

We regret to inform you that we cannot accept your paper. Although we made you do two revisions which cost you time (4 months) and energy; we still will not accept your paper.

The reason we cannot accept your paper is because a "prestigious professor" [PP] (who I, the editor, wants to collaborate with in the future) at a famous university thinks that you should had done XX (minor technique) in the way that professor described. Although four other reviewers thought that the paper was sound and "accepted without revision" after the second revision; I am not foolish enough to piss off PP in any way. I will be kissing his ass for foreseeable future.

Your truly

Ass-kissing-associate-editor

20. IDL (this one is apparently entirely fictitious)

I am very pleased that I accepted to review this fascinating and compelling paper. Below are some constructive comments to help you make your significant paper a bit more clear for readers. Mostly, however, I found the paper to be extremely well written. I thoroughly checked all equations and found them not only flawless but also instructive. The discussion section should be essential reading for all of us in this field. This paper is transformative and should be published immediately with only minor revisions.

Fake Review Contest Entries #13-16

More entries below. It is not too late to submit your own!

13. EFSP (based on a real situation, alas)

Yes, I know that this paper is on a topic that isn't even closely related to the broad and sweeping topic of our conference. But it has some pretty pictures in it. And one of the authors is the nephew of the president of Obscure Foreign University and they are going to award me an honorary doctorate this coming summer. So this is a definite accept and darn the others who vote for definite reject on this! I'm the chair of this conference and the paper gets accepted because I say so!

14. DS

I am afraid I cannot support the publication of this paper. The authors present an idea that I myself have had for some time and just haven’t gotten around to writing it up yet. I think that when I write my paper, it will be better than this one. These authors would be well advised to wait until my paper is published, and then they can cite it.

15. FF1

Presumably you are doing something smarter than what you describe, so you should explain that.

16. FF2 (Mad Libs review)

The authors describe how they (phrase from abstract). It is on the relevant and timely topic of (paper keyword). However, they should really address (title of paper section) and (title of a different section).