Connectionists: If you believe in your work ...

[Richard Loosemore]

On 7/17/22 11:52 AM, Grossberg, Stephen wrote:

 > ... if you believe in your work, and the criticisms of it are not 
valid, do not give up. ...

 > ... all criticisms by reviewers are valuable and should be taken into 
account in your revision.

 > Even if a reviewer's criticisms are, to your mind, wrong-headed, they 
represent the
 > viewpoint of a more-than-usually-qualified reader who has given you 
the privilege
 > of taking enough time to read your article.

Really?

1) I believe in my work, and the criticisms of it are not valid. I did 
not give up, and the net result of not giving up was ... nothing.

2) No reviewer who has ever commented on my work has shown the slightest 
sign that they understood anything in it.

3) Good plumbers are more than usually qualified in their field, and if 
one of those gave you the privilege of taking enough time to read your 
article and give nonsensical comments, would you pay any attention to 
their viewpoint?

** - **

I have spent my career fighting against this system, to no avail.

I have watched charlatans bamboozle the crowd with pointless 
mathematics, and get published.

I have watched people use teams of subordinates to pump out streams of 
worthless papers that inflate their prestige.

I have written grant proposals that were exquisitely tuned to the stated 
goal of the grant, and then watched as the grant money went to people 
whose proposals had only the faintest imaginable connection to the 
stated goal of the grant.

** - **

The quoted remarks, above, somehow distilled all of that history and 
left me shaking with rage at the stupidity.

I have been a member of the Connectionists mailing list since the early 
1990s, and before that I had been working on neural nets since 1980.

No more.


Best,

Richard

-- 

Richard Loosemore

Cornell University

...

rpl72 at cornell.edu

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