Connectionists: [EXT] If you believe in your work ...

[Tsvi Achler]

I think the recent trend (starting 70s& 80s) of having articles accepted
for publications based on peer review is a problem because it adds more
politics to every small decision.
Academic governance, which started in the middle ages, is not democratic
and is actually rather dysfunctional: think tenure type politics.  The less
of it the better.

It may be better to go back to just having a single editor decide if an
article is worthy.  That way at least more novel ideas can be presented.

Of course the other problem is paid journals which have low costs (in these
days of the internet) and free labor and skim lots of money for unclear
reasons.  Also realize most innovative researchers are on a shoestring
budget because of politics.  It is an awful combination: journals love the
peer review system because it lets them act like they are bringing value by
adding more politics and obfuscating the skimming.

-Tsvi


On Wed, Jul 20, 2022 at 12:01 AM Fellous, Jean-Marc - (fellous) <
fellous at arizona.edu> wrote:

> Assuming there are funders on the list, and funding-related people,
> including program officers (and believe or not, there are!): if you had
> $20M to invest in the sort of things we do on this list: how would we make
> things better? Can we brainstorm an alternative system that allows for
> innovating publications and effective funding?
>
> Jean-Marc
> ------------------------------
> *From:* Connectionists <connectionists-bounces at mailman.srv.cs.cmu.edu> on
> behalf of Richard Loosemore <rloosemore at susaro.com>
> *Sent:* Monday, July 18, 2022 1:28 PM
> *To:* connectionists at mailman.srv.cs.cmu.edu <
> connectionists at mailman.srv.cs.cmu.edu>
> *Subject:* [EXT]Connectionists: If you believe in your work ...
>
>
> *External Email*
>
> 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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