The rounding of concepts and results is very common in academia, where researchers try to publish results or ideas that are “novel”. A common concern in the peer-review process is that the idea is not really new, but a consequence or a re-framing of another idea. “How is this new?” is a typical question in any referee report. In some cases this concern is correct. In others, it is conceptual rounding of a new result.
This intellectual attitude dismisses useful new instantiations of general ideas. In many cases, the particular application could be more impactful than the general result. It reminds of the reaction of Jonh von Neumann to John Nash’s work: “That’s trivial!. That’s just a fixed point theorem.” . Von Neumann was rounding too much. [I use this as an illustrative anecdote, well knowing that Nash partly generalized JvN’s results ]
I work in research in economics/management, where conceptual rounding is endemic. A machine learning colleague became exasperated by the general attitude in management, lamenting that marginal improvements to existing results are seen as trivial. He told me, “If aerospace were run like management journals, planes would not fly”.
The rounding of concepts and results is very common in academia, where researchers try to publish results or ideas that are “novel”. A common concern in the peer-review process is that the idea is not really new, but a consequence or a re-framing of another idea. “How is this new?” is a typical question in any referee report. In some cases this concern is correct. In others, it is conceptual rounding of a new result.
This intellectual attitude dismisses useful new instantiations of general ideas. In many cases, the particular application could be more impactful than the general result. It reminds of the reaction of Jonh von Neumann to John Nash’s work: “That’s trivial!. That’s just a fixed point theorem.” . Von Neumann was rounding too much. [I use this as an illustrative anecdote, well knowing that Nash partly generalized JvN’s results ]
I work in research in economics/management, where conceptual rounding is endemic. A machine learning colleague became exasperated by the general attitude in management, lamenting that marginal improvements to existing results are seen as trivial. He told me, “If aerospace were run like management journals, planes would not fly”.