large snip
Susan Forsburg writes:
>I like this distinction and would agree with it. I think the reflexive
>criticism is a huge problem in science--reviewers MUST find something
>nitpicky in their reviews. Do you ever get a review back that says,
>"this is a nice paper. publish it." ? I don't. I WRITE reviews like that,
>but I don't think the editors pay attention.
>>When and why did we become such a "If you win, then I lose" society?
IMHO, when grant funding drops below 20% and the big journals send less than 20% of the
paper out for review (the rest are returned immediately as not hot enough, a decision made
by one or 2 people who I suspect read just the abstract), when the line between funded and
not funded is drawn in the grants that got all "excellents", and publication in a big
journal counts more than in a "journal of record" intdetermining that "excellent", things
get cutthroat.
At the risk of sounding incredibly cynical,I think it all comes down to money. Science will
be civil and sane, in my opinion, if and when public support for the research enterprise
matches public facination with the results of that enterprise, a connection most people
don't seem to make. Peer review and competition work wonderfully well, as long as a
significant portion of work gets funded. But at present, the system is saying that about
80% of the tenure track and tenured professors aren't doing work worth government funding.
Even if half of these people have really bad ideas ( probably an overestimate), that's still
an awful lot of people committed to doing good science who are out in the cold.
Unfotrunately, the results of this kind of short sighted approach to science fundingwon't be
felt for years, at which point it'll take a long time to rebuild.
*****************************************************
Julia Frugoli
Texas A&M University
Department of Plant Pathology & Microbiology
Crop Biotechnology Center
MS# 2123
College Station, TX 77843
409-842-2595
FAX 409-862-4790
*****************************************************
