An interesting case. I sympathized (and mostly agreed) with the author until I read this
"For example, I think massive changes proposed by the open science movement for post-publication peer review in public view would be much worse. Peer review by the self-selected mob is likely to give us only the 'facts' the mob wants."
Then I realized how little respect the author has for people who disagree with him. Things are now clearer for me. A mob?? Ohh...
The elephant in the room is that, once again, it's women doing most of the censoring because of "hurt feelings". Science, and even the rule of law, may not survive the onslaught of women in positions of power.
For an example of another place where science has little place, see the Rocky Mountain Public Health Training Center. Recently, when asked for data showing causality in various statistical associations between social circumstances and health outcomes (so-called Social Determinants of Health) the training center included 2 books. ‘Under the Skin: The Hidden Toll of Racism on American Lives and the Health of Our Nation’ by Linda Villarosa, along with ‘Weathering: The Extraordinary Stress of Ordinary Life in an Unjust Society’ by Arline T. Geronimus. Along with these books the training center gave links to government websites where data was to be found only by digging. Not much help to one asking for directions...
I'm with Hazel, though I think accepting that we are doomed is liberating -- it is easier to try to rise when you've been down so goddam long it looks like up.
I think the editor’s suggestions are actually pretty reasonable. The portion of the review we read here appears somewhat long-winded and polemical. The editors changes preserve the meaningful criticism but with less hackles-raising bloviation. The editor made the review tighter and clearer and kept the focus on specific and relevant issues. Hopefully the paper’s authors will learn something from this feedback.
Writers often react defensively to editorial input, but usually editors are worth listening to. As to whether the editor has the *right* to edit a review before passing it on to the author, I do think the editor should obtain the consent of the reviewer first, especially if the reviewer is not anonymous.
Agreed. I think Jussim is right on the politicization of many of the assumptions used by the manuscript, but some of the deleted sections here could easily be taken out of context in unfortunate ways and removing them makes the critique on the whole stronger. Also, they did reach out to Jussim to review in the first place. That's more than I would have thought they'd do these days.
That said, would be very curious if the editors applied as careful a hand in deciding what criticism to allow or not from the other side of the political spectrum. E.g. would they delete "the Whiteness of the authors visually impairs them to possibilities of otherness" or similar language in other reviewer reports? Not letting the reviewers see the handbook on reviewing guidelines is a bit weird too.
Though I agree that the redactions are not changing the core meaning, they do remove the message that they study author's are highly political.
A key problem in our society is the bubble we reside in. The frustration in Lee's review is an important message in itself to signal to the authors not everybody agrees.
Good point. From what I can infer about the study, I am more offended by the intellectual sloppiness of the authors than their politics. Research papers need to be intelligible. If it were my review I would hammer them on poorly defined terms and incoherent “methods”. It is also fair to disagree with their politics, but it’s a very different angle of criticism.
I also suspect that the study authors will be deaf to overtly political criticism - perhaps even casting themselves as martyrs for their vision of justice. Tactically, I favor criticism that leaves aside politics for this reason.
You do have a point, but note the fact that all the redacted edits were pointing out politically contested terms and assertions present in the article.
Take ‘latinx’ for example: it’s a silly Anglo-centric neologism that is entirely ignorant of gender being a grammatical construct that has a lot less to do with biological sex than it appears. Imposing such an ignorant category on a people who very proudly have a gendered language is rude and silly. Not to mention ALL the other info-European languages that have gendered nouns and verb conjugations. Researchers are better off avoiding such an imposition and just use ‘Latin American’ or Latino as they use themselves.
Oh, to be clear I think the reviewer is right about everything. Latinx is ridiculous and moreover disrespects the idea of allowing groups to choose what name to use. Which is especially egregious because the papers authors go out of their way to use “indigenous” at the request of “partners” instead of the more precise and accurate “native Alaskan”.
I just think it’s more effective and compelling to respond to woke gobbledegook by asking for a precise operational definition of a term rather than calling out the term as political.
Holy shit. I know that this kind of bias and authoritarianism pervade many fields, but this is the first time I've encountered unsanctioned redaction of peer reviews. Sadly, if this piece hadn't described the helpful editor as a woman, I would've guessed it. It seems that, when it comes to eliminating "harm" in the academy, a woman's work is never done. And I say this as an old, cranky woman.
Sadly, the events described here do not surprise me as this type of political correctness and pandering toward particular narratives in the guise of sensitive to protected group feelings has been growing in science for at least the last 20 years. It has become so bad that reviewers self censor for fear of being perceived as bigoted, and perhaps excluded from publishing in the future, or of causing unintended offense. I see this same thing going on in funding review panels as well.
The irony is that the editor's decision to modify a review in this fashion is actually a form of academic fraud and should be called out as such in the same way that modifying one's figures or dropping inconvenience data points constitutes academic misconduct. It appears the only solution to this bias is for reviewers to send the original text of the reviews to the authors...an action that negates any anonymity the review process holds. Personally, I have no problem with this. All reviews should have the reviewers names attached and be published with the article in question as a form of transparency. Keep the editors and journals honest since they clearly cannot be trusted.
The last point is the existence of an apparently secret APA manual being used to drive censorship. Secret rules are foolish as people inherently will violate rules they don't exist...but more importantly, the existence of secret rules is actually cover for individual judgement and malice as no one can then compare the rule to the action to see if the rule is sound and being applied fairly and uniformly. It sounds like this journal should be considered non-academic at this point and be publicly disregarded by the serious academic community. Those who continue to publish in it should similarly have such works excluded from citation as untrustworthy writings that have not undergone proper peer review.
This is not the place for political rants. Do it again and I will take the post down. I am purposely leaving this one here for others to see how ridiculous and embarrassing your comment is (or should be), and this warning.
An interesting case. I sympathized (and mostly agreed) with the author until I read this
"For example, I think massive changes proposed by the open science movement for post-publication peer review in public view would be much worse. Peer review by the self-selected mob is likely to give us only the 'facts' the mob wants."
Then I realized how little respect the author has for people who disagree with him. Things are now clearer for me. A mob?? Ohh...
You need to be careful about making things up, it delegitimizes, the balance of your essay..
Heh. In this case, I think the provenance is obvious from the source, which was linked. And which I suspect you will heartily enjoy:
https://psychrabble.medium.com/an-orwelexicon-for-bias-and-dysfunction-in-academia-neologisms-for-the-insufficiently-woke-a3e5bfc2953
Thank you for promoting free speech Lee, what is happening is very sad
The elephant in the room is that, once again, it's women doing most of the censoring because of "hurt feelings". Science, and even the rule of law, may not survive the onslaught of women in positions of power.
Cory Clark et al have some evidence that bears on this directly.
https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/pdf/10.1177/09567976231168777
We are in the midst of civilizational ruin, and it has been intentionally wrought. Our task as Remnants in this Fourth Turning is to lead.
Thanks for holding the line and for exposing this. People should know what peer review means in practice these days.
very depressing read.
you're doing God's work here. I'm speechless at your relentless fight for good science
For an example of another place where science has little place, see the Rocky Mountain Public Health Training Center. Recently, when asked for data showing causality in various statistical associations between social circumstances and health outcomes (so-called Social Determinants of Health) the training center included 2 books. ‘Under the Skin: The Hidden Toll of Racism on American Lives and the Health of Our Nation’ by Linda Villarosa, along with ‘Weathering: The Extraordinary Stress of Ordinary Life in an Unjust Society’ by Arline T. Geronimus. Along with these books the training center gave links to government websites where data was to be found only by digging. Not much help to one asking for directions...
We are doomed
No we are challenged and are called upon to rise
I'm with Hazel, though I think accepting that we are doomed is liberating -- it is easier to try to rise when you've been down so goddam long it looks like up.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bJuDD93JbOw
Also, you both might be interested in this essay I had over at Heterodox Stem:
https://hxstem.substack.com/p/it-will-get-worse-before-it-gets
I think the editor’s suggestions are actually pretty reasonable. The portion of the review we read here appears somewhat long-winded and polemical. The editors changes preserve the meaningful criticism but with less hackles-raising bloviation. The editor made the review tighter and clearer and kept the focus on specific and relevant issues. Hopefully the paper’s authors will learn something from this feedback.
Writers often react defensively to editorial input, but usually editors are worth listening to. As to whether the editor has the *right* to edit a review before passing it on to the author, I do think the editor should obtain the consent of the reviewer first, especially if the reviewer is not anonymous.
Agreed. I think Jussim is right on the politicization of many of the assumptions used by the manuscript, but some of the deleted sections here could easily be taken out of context in unfortunate ways and removing them makes the critique on the whole stronger. Also, they did reach out to Jussim to review in the first place. That's more than I would have thought they'd do these days.
That said, would be very curious if the editors applied as careful a hand in deciding what criticism to allow or not from the other side of the political spectrum. E.g. would they delete "the Whiteness of the authors visually impairs them to possibilities of otherness" or similar language in other reviewer reports? Not letting the reviewers see the handbook on reviewing guidelines is a bit weird too.
Though I agree that the redactions are not changing the core meaning, they do remove the message that they study author's are highly political.
A key problem in our society is the bubble we reside in. The frustration in Lee's review is an important message in itself to signal to the authors not everybody agrees.
Good point. From what I can infer about the study, I am more offended by the intellectual sloppiness of the authors than their politics. Research papers need to be intelligible. If it were my review I would hammer them on poorly defined terms and incoherent “methods”. It is also fair to disagree with their politics, but it’s a very different angle of criticism.
I also suspect that the study authors will be deaf to overtly political criticism - perhaps even casting themselves as martyrs for their vision of justice. Tactically, I favor criticism that leaves aside politics for this reason.
Psychological warfare requires a proportional counter-assault.
You do have a point, but note the fact that all the redacted edits were pointing out politically contested terms and assertions present in the article.
Take ‘latinx’ for example: it’s a silly Anglo-centric neologism that is entirely ignorant of gender being a grammatical construct that has a lot less to do with biological sex than it appears. Imposing such an ignorant category on a people who very proudly have a gendered language is rude and silly. Not to mention ALL the other info-European languages that have gendered nouns and verb conjugations. Researchers are better off avoiding such an imposition and just use ‘Latin American’ or Latino as they use themselves.
Oh, to be clear I think the reviewer is right about everything. Latinx is ridiculous and moreover disrespects the idea of allowing groups to choose what name to use. Which is especially egregious because the papers authors go out of their way to use “indigenous” at the request of “partners” instead of the more precise and accurate “native Alaskan”.
I just think it’s more effective and compelling to respond to woke gobbledegook by asking for a precise operational definition of a term rather than calling out the term as political.
Holy shit. I know that this kind of bias and authoritarianism pervade many fields, but this is the first time I've encountered unsanctioned redaction of peer reviews. Sadly, if this piece hadn't described the helpful editor as a woman, I would've guessed it. It seems that, when it comes to eliminating "harm" in the academy, a woman's work is never done. And I say this as an old, cranky woman.
Sadly, the events described here do not surprise me as this type of political correctness and pandering toward particular narratives in the guise of sensitive to protected group feelings has been growing in science for at least the last 20 years. It has become so bad that reviewers self censor for fear of being perceived as bigoted, and perhaps excluded from publishing in the future, or of causing unintended offense. I see this same thing going on in funding review panels as well.
The irony is that the editor's decision to modify a review in this fashion is actually a form of academic fraud and should be called out as such in the same way that modifying one's figures or dropping inconvenience data points constitutes academic misconduct. It appears the only solution to this bias is for reviewers to send the original text of the reviews to the authors...an action that negates any anonymity the review process holds. Personally, I have no problem with this. All reviews should have the reviewers names attached and be published with the article in question as a form of transparency. Keep the editors and journals honest since they clearly cannot be trusted.
The last point is the existence of an apparently secret APA manual being used to drive censorship. Secret rules are foolish as people inherently will violate rules they don't exist...but more importantly, the existence of secret rules is actually cover for individual judgement and malice as no one can then compare the rule to the action to see if the rule is sound and being applied fairly and uniformly. It sounds like this journal should be considered non-academic at this point and be publicly disregarded by the serious academic community. Those who continue to publish in it should similarly have such works excluded from citation as untrustworthy writings that have not undergone proper peer review.
Sad, very sad, thanks for reporting this. What is the source of your statement that Orwell and Tokheim collaborated on the Thought Poem?
Heh. I made that up. Check out The Orwelexicon (its linked, in the caption). In context, this will be obvious.
This is not the place for political rants. Do it again and I will take the post down. I am purposely leaving this one here for others to see how ridiculous and embarrassing your comment is (or should be), and this warning.
I don't bluff. I will be taking that comment down later today. Do it again, and I will see if I can block you altogether from posting here at all.