Gustavo Lacerda, professional skeptic

[gusl]

I just accepted an invitation to review for a neuroscience journal. The material is related to a task for which I presented some innovations in my UAI paper.

This paper cites previous methods for doing this task, which I also cited, but whose details I don't remember. The paper has lots of details and technical words, and I am learning from it, stuff from my own area... A naive look would suggest that these authors are much more expert than me in my area. Except that, occasionally, the paper makes no sense!

This is a definite pattern in my reviewing: I start out feeling like I'm less knowledgeable than the authors... until I go "WTF DO THEY THINK THEY ARE DOING??"

Most researchers are insufficiently skeptical of their own ideas and, at least in CogSci, many treat statistics like something they can just hack, without much justification. They slap together ideas, and hope it stands up. I, however, tend to insist on making one's assumptions explicit.

(Also, I'd love to tell the authors to use LaTeX, but that's probably not a good idea)

Comments

[glapaloopscap.livejournal.com]

Somehow I assumed all scientists wrote up their papers in LaTeX!

[gustavolacerda.livejournal.com]

Physicists are spoiled. :-) You guys were way ahead of everyone in terms of open-access journals.

[bhudson.livejournal.com]

You should also be careful to be very skeptical that you didn't just miss something they actually did say.

[gfish.livejournal.com]

How can you take math seriously if it isn't typeset in LaTeX?

[gustavolacerda.livejournal.com]

There's only a little math (like 0.2 lines of math per page).

At CMU, one of my supervisors mostly used Word (this was normal in his community). I was appalled.

[easwaran.livejournal.com]

I really really really hate it when journals make me send the final version in Word instead of LaTeX. I assume it would be far worse to get the opposite message, since you can't presuppose that people know how to use LaTeX the way you can presuppose that they know how to use Word. (That said, I do wish everyone would use LaTeX.)

[gustavolacerda.livejournal.com]

I don't see why people can't just submit a PDF. (UAI accepted mine)

[easwaran.livejournal.com]

I don't understand this either. I submitted .pdf's for refereeing but when time came to accept the paper and publish it, for some reason the journal wanted it in .doc format. I never submit the .tex file until the end, and only if the publisher accepts LaTeX.