I gave him some feedback in the tone and idiom my Scots-Irish heritage is famous for, along with the best ‘crazy eyes’ I could muster. Being ivy covered shouldn’t protect anyone from being asked pointed, even ugly questions if need be. And I don’t think anyone should tolerate rudeness without heaving it back if it is outside the science. Ivy-covered poop still smells like poop.

Being an anonymous nobody from nowhere is pretty handy when you need to give someone a talking-to.

Mitch

And once again, that just proves my point in that this idea would only help those starting off in their career, but will not do much to harm those whose names are easily guessed. Assistant profs don’t get to shoot the breeze that often at conferences and GRCs anyways. Never mind their grad students. And if you’re in Pd catalysis, you can forget about reviewers ever guessing who you are if the name isn’t on paper, even if you do go to every conceivable conference.

“would actually reward PIs that didn’t talk about unpublished work and would potentially penalize PIs that did”

I doubt it would create a culture of secrecy that would harm the scientific enterprise and the spirit of openness. For one thing, it was never there in the first place (that spirit) for many, and the befits that I see clearly outweigh the small risks. No many in my field talks about unpublished work unless it’s been submitted. That’s how I got ’sort of’ scooped a couple of months ago.

Double blind reviewing is not penalizing anyone. As far as I see it, too many people are already unfairly penalized, and if this practice can lift that from about 50% of them, or at least 20%, then so much the better.

I was speaking about the process that occurs when the journal editors decide if a paper should be sent out for peer review, or be rejected outright because it is too specialized.

My impression is that the famous researchers know many of the editors–or the editors know of them by reputation–and hence could have an advantage in this part of the triage process.

I know, I know, write a good cover letter. But, still….

Social engineering, you know. The behavior of people sometimes makes for unobvious results. It would be worth trying, in any regard, since I don’t see how it would hurt.

There is a pecking order in chemistry. That’s because there’s one everywhere. If it’s a human endeavor, staffed by humans, you’re going to have hierarchies, real and perceived – who you did a post-doc with, what huge company you’re a big wheel…

But even if that wasn’t true, I think you’re underestimating how much is already known about a manuscript in the community before it goes out to referees – since professors often talk about unpublished work (at GRCs, when visiting other schools, with their friends/co-workers/ex-advisors, etc.) and since their students give poster presentations at open/closed meetings, a surprisingly large number of potential referees have already heard about a particular paper (or could easily identify what group it came from, solely based on the data presented in the paper) before it is published/when it is sent out for review.

So I think the ‘little transparency’ system you’re advocating would actually reward PIs that didn’t talk about unpublished work and would potentially penalize PIs that did (as they’d be less likely to experience a ‘fully anonymous’ round of review…)