Three days ago, I went through a traditional rite of passage for junior academics: I received my first rejection letter on a paper submitted for peer review. After I received the rejection letter, I forwarded the paper to two top professors in my field, who both confirmed that the basic arguments seem to be correct and important. Several top faculty members have told me they believe the paper will eventually be published in a top journal, so I am actually feeling more confident about the paper than before it got rejected.
I am also very frustrated with the peer review system. The reviewers found some minor errors, and some of their other comments were helpful in the sense that they reveal which parts of the paper are most likely to be misunderstood. However, on the whole, the comments do not change my belief in the soundness of the idea, and in my view they mostly show that the reviewers simply didn’t understand what I was saying.
One comment does stand out, and I’ve spent a lot of energy today thinking about its implications: Reviewer 3 points out that my language is “too casual”. I would have had no problem accepting criticism that my language is ambiguous, imprecise, overly complicated, grammatically wrong or idiomatically weird. But too casual? What does that even mean? I have trouble interpreting the sentence to mean anything other than an allegation that I fail at a signaling game where the objective is to demonstrate impressiveness by using an artificially dense and obfuscating academic language.
From my point of view, “understanding” something means that you are able to explain it in a casual language. When I write a paper, my only objective is to allow the reader to understand what my conclusions are and how I reached them. My choice of language is optimized only for those objectives, and I fail to understand how it is even possible for it to be “too casual”.
Today, I feel very pessimistic about the state of academia and the institution of peer review. I feel stronger allegiance to the rationality movement than ever, as my ideological allies in what seems like a struggle about what it means to do science. I believe it was Tyler Cowen or Alex Tabarrok who pointed out that the true inheritors of intellectuals like Adam Smith are not people publishing in academic journals, but bloggers who write in a causal language. I can’t find the quote but today it rings more true than ever.
I understand that I am interpreting the reviewers choice of words in a way that is strongly influenced both by my disappointment in being rejected, and by my pre-existing frustration with the state of academia and peer review. I would very much appreciate if anybody could steelman the sentence “the writing is too casual”, or otherwise help me reach a less biased understanding of what just happened.
Having glanced at your paper I think “too casual” means “your labels are too flippant”—e.g. “Doomed”. You’re showing that you’re human and that’s a big no-no for a particular kind of people...
By the way, you’re entirely too fond of using quoted words (“flip”, “transported”, “monotonicity”, “equal effects”, etc.). If the word is not exactly right so that you have to quote it, find a better word (or make a footnote, or something). Frequent word quoting is often perceived as “I was too lazy to find the proper word, here is a hint, you guess what I meant”.
Thanks. Good points. Note that many of those words are already established in the literature with same meaning. For the particular example of “doomed”, this is the standard term for this concept, and was introduced by Greenland and Robins (1986). I guess I could instead use “response type 1″ but the word doomed will be much more effective at pointing to the correct concept, particularly for people who are familiar with the previous literature.
The only new term I introduce is “flip”. I also provide a new definition of effect equality, and it therefore seems correct to use quotation marks in the new definition. Perhaps I should remove the quotation marks for everything else since I am using terms that have previously been introduced.
If my paper was rejected because it doesn’t contain enough technical terms, I desire to believe that my paper was rejected because it doesn’t contain enough technical terms; If my paper was not rejected because it doesn’t contain enough technical terms, I desire to believe that my paper was not rejected because it doesn’t contain enough technical terms; Let me not become attached to beliefs I may not want.
Didn’t read the paper, but I think a charitable explanation of “too casual” could mean (a) ambiguous, or (b) technically correct but not using the expressions standard in the field, so the reader needs a moment to understand “oh, what this paper calls X that’s probably what most of us already call Y”.
But of course, I wouldn’t dismiss the hypothesis of academically low-status language. Once at university I got a feedback about my essay that it’s “technically correct, but this is not how university-educated people are supposed to talk”.
(Okay, I skimmed through your paper, and the language seemed fine. You sound like a human, as opposed to many other papers I have seen.)
Without reading your paper, and without rejecting your hypothesis, let me propose other consequences of casual language. Experts use tools casually, but there may be pitfalls for beginners. Experts are allowed more casual language and the referee may not trust that you, personally, are an expert. That is a signaling explanation, but somewhat different. A very different explanation is that while your ultimate goal is to teach the reader your casual process, but that does not mean that recording it is the best method. Your casual language may hide the pitfalls from beginners, contributing both to their incorrect usage and to their not understanding how to choose between tools.
If your paper is aimed purely at experts, then casual language is the best means of communication. But should it be? Remember when you were a beginner. How did you learn the tools you are using? Did you learn them from papers aimed at beginners or experts; aimed at teaching tools or using them? Casual language papers can be useful for beginners as an advertisement: “Once you learn these tools, you can reason quickly and naturally, like me.”
Professors often say that they are surprised by which of their papers is most popular. In particular, they are often surprised that a paper that they thought was a routine application of a popular tool becomes popular as an exposition of that tool; often under the claim that it is a new tool. This is probably a sign that the system doesn’t generate enough exposition, but taking the system as given, it means that an important purpose of research papers is exposition, that they really are aimed at beginners as well as experts.
This is not to say that I endorse formal language. I don’t think that formal language often helps the reader over the pitfalls; that work must be reconstructed by the reader regardless of whether it the author spelled it out. But I do think that it is important to point out the dangers..
This definition is based on the probability that a person who would otherwise not have been a case “flips” to being a case
in response to treatment, and the probably that a non-case flips to being a case.
To me that sentence seems cryptic.
Do you mean probability instead of probably?
Maybe the reviewer considered “flips” as too casual. I think the paper might be easier to read if you either would write flips directly without quotes or choose another word.
What the difference between otherwise not have been a case and non-case?
in my view they mostly show that the reviewers simply didn’t understand what I was saying [...] From my point of view, “understanding” something means that you are able to explain it in a casual language.
If the reviwers don’t succeed in understanding what you are saying you might have explained yourself in casual language but still failed.
Yes. Thanks for noticing. I changed that sentence after I got the rejection letter (in order to correct a minor error that the reviewers correctly pointed out), and the error was introduced at that time. So that is not what they were referring to.
If the reviewers don’t succeed in understanding what you are saying you might have explained yourself in casual language but still failed.
I agree, but I am puzzled by why they would have misunderstood. I spent a lot of effort over several months trying to be as clear as possible. Moreover, the ideas are very simple: The definitions are the only real innovation: Once you have the definitions, the proofs are trivial and could have been written by a high school student. If the reviewers don’t understand the basic idea, I will have to substantially update my beliefs about the quality of my writing. This is upsetting because being a bad writer will make it a lot harder to succeed in academia. The primary alternative hypotheses for why they misunderstood are either (1) that they are missing some key fundamental assumption that I take for granted or (2) that they just don’t want to understand.
Three days ago, I went through a traditional rite of passage for junior academics: I received my first rejection letter on a paper submitted for peer review. After I received the rejection letter, I forwarded the paper to two top professors in my field, who both confirmed that the basic arguments seem to be correct and important. Several top faculty members have told me they believe the paper will eventually be published in a top journal, so I am actually feeling more confident about the paper than before it got rejected.
I am also very frustrated with the peer review system. The reviewers found some minor errors, and some of their other comments were helpful in the sense that they reveal which parts of the paper are most likely to be misunderstood. However, on the whole, the comments do not change my belief in the soundness of the idea, and in my view they mostly show that the reviewers simply didn’t understand what I was saying.
One comment does stand out, and I’ve spent a lot of energy today thinking about its implications: Reviewer 3 points out that my language is “too casual”. I would have had no problem accepting criticism that my language is ambiguous, imprecise, overly complicated, grammatically wrong or idiomatically weird. But too casual? What does that even mean? I have trouble interpreting the sentence to mean anything other than an allegation that I fail at a signaling game where the objective is to demonstrate impressiveness by using an artificially dense and obfuscating academic language.
From my point of view, “understanding” something means that you are able to explain it in a casual language. When I write a paper, my only objective is to allow the reader to understand what my conclusions are and how I reached them. My choice of language is optimized only for those objectives, and I fail to understand how it is even possible for it to be “too casual”.
Today, I feel very pessimistic about the state of academia and the institution of peer review. I feel stronger allegiance to the rationality movement than ever, as my ideological allies in what seems like a struggle about what it means to do science. I believe it was Tyler Cowen or Alex Tabarrok who pointed out that the true inheritors of intellectuals like Adam Smith are not people publishing in academic journals, but bloggers who write in a causal language. I can’t find the quote but today it rings more true than ever.
I understand that I am interpreting the reviewers choice of words in a way that is strongly influenced both by my disappointment in being rejected, and by my pre-existing frustration with the state of academia and peer review. I would very much appreciate if anybody could steelman the sentence “the writing is too casual”, or otherwise help me reach a less biased understanding of what just happened.
The paper is available at https://rebootingepidemiology.files.wordpress.com/2016/03/effect-measure-paper-0317162.pdf . I am willing to send a link to the reviewers’ comments by private message to anybody who is interested in seeing it.
Having glanced at your paper I think “too casual” means “your labels are too flippant”—e.g. “Doomed”. You’re showing that you’re human and that’s a big no-no for a particular kind of people...
By the way, you’re entirely too fond of using quoted words (“flip”, “transported”, “monotonicity”, “equal effects”, etc.). If the word is not exactly right so that you have to quote it, find a better word (or make a footnote, or something). Frequent word quoting is often perceived as “I was too lazy to find the proper word, here is a hint, you guess what I meant”.
Thanks. Good points. Note that many of those words are already established in the literature with same meaning. For the particular example of “doomed”, this is the standard term for this concept, and was introduced by Greenland and Robins (1986). I guess I could instead use “response type 1″ but the word doomed will be much more effective at pointing to the correct concept, particularly for people who are familiar with the previous literature.
The only new term I introduce is “flip”. I also provide a new definition of effect equality, and it therefore seems correct to use quotation marks in the new definition. Perhaps I should remove the quotation marks for everything else since I am using terms that have previously been introduced.
If my paper was rejected because it doesn’t contain enough technical terms,
I desire to believe that my paper was rejected because it doesn’t contain enough technical terms;
If my paper was not rejected because it doesn’t contain enough technical terms,
I desire to believe that my paper was not rejected because it doesn’t contain enough technical terms;
Let me not become attached to beliefs I may not want.
Didn’t read the paper, but I think a charitable explanation of “too casual” could mean (a) ambiguous, or (b) technically correct but not using the expressions standard in the field, so the reader needs a moment to understand “oh, what this paper calls X that’s probably what most of us already call Y”.
But of course, I wouldn’t dismiss the hypothesis of academically low-status language. Once at university I got a feedback about my essay that it’s “technically correct, but this is not how university-educated people are supposed to talk”.
(Okay, I skimmed through your paper, and the language seemed fine. You sound like a human, as opposed to many other papers I have seen.)
Without reading your paper, and without rejecting your hypothesis, let me propose other consequences of casual language. Experts use tools casually, but there may be pitfalls for beginners. Experts are allowed more casual language and the referee may not trust that you, personally, are an expert. That is a signaling explanation, but somewhat different. A very different explanation is that while your ultimate goal is to teach the reader your casual process, but that does not mean that recording it is the best method. Your casual language may hide the pitfalls from beginners, contributing both to their incorrect usage and to their not understanding how to choose between tools.
If your paper is aimed purely at experts, then casual language is the best means of communication. But should it be? Remember when you were a beginner. How did you learn the tools you are using? Did you learn them from papers aimed at beginners or experts; aimed at teaching tools or using them? Casual language papers can be useful for beginners as an advertisement: “Once you learn these tools, you can reason quickly and naturally, like me.”
Professors often say that they are surprised by which of their papers is most popular. In particular, they are often surprised that a paper that they thought was a routine application of a popular tool becomes popular as an exposition of that tool; often under the claim that it is a new tool. This is probably a sign that the system doesn’t generate enough exposition, but taking the system as given, it means that an important purpose of research papers is exposition, that they really are aimed at beginners as well as experts.
This is not to say that I endorse formal language. I don’t think that formal language often helps the reader over the pitfalls; that work must be reconstructed by the reader regardless of whether it the author spelled it out. But I do think that it is important to point out the dangers..
To me that sentence seems cryptic.
Do you mean probability instead of probably?
Maybe the reviewer considered
“flips”
as too casual. I think the paper might be easier to read if you either would writeflips
directly without quotes or choose another word.What the difference between
otherwise not have been a case
andnon-case
?If the reviwers don’t succeed in understanding what you are saying you might have explained yourself in casual language but still failed.
Yes. Thanks for noticing. I changed that sentence after I got the rejection letter (in order to correct a minor error that the reviewers correctly pointed out), and the error was introduced at that time. So that is not what they were referring to.
I agree, but I am puzzled by why they would have misunderstood. I spent a lot of effort over several months trying to be as clear as possible. Moreover, the ideas are very simple: The definitions are the only real innovation: Once you have the definitions, the proofs are trivial and could have been written by a high school student. If the reviewers don’t understand the basic idea, I will have to substantially update my beliefs about the quality of my writing. This is upsetting because being a bad writer will make it a lot harder to succeed in academia. The primary alternative hypotheses for why they misunderstood are either (1) that they are missing some key fundamental assumption that I take for granted or (2) that they just don’t want to understand.
What kind of audience would you expect to understand your article?