Here's a query:
Let's suppose that there's a really idiotic position that has risen to prominence in a certain interdisciplinary area of research to which philosophers, among others, are regular contributors. Let's say that the idiotic position is most commonly held among the non-philosophers working within the interdisciplinary area. So, one dutiful philosopher I know has taken up the cause of exposing this idiotic position, and he has written a definitive refutation of the idiotic position.
But there's a problem: his paper keeps getting rejected at the main journals in this interdisciplinary area. And reviews that accompany the rejection are indisputably idiotic; in fact, the reviews most often confirm the criticisms the author makes of the idiotic position. So, he keeps revising in ways designed to respond to the idiotic criticisms contained in the most recent rejection he has received.
Now there's a different problem: some of the criticisms he anticipates and deals with are so absurd as to strike any non-idiot reviewing the piece as cooked-up and irrelevant. But, as I said, the criticisms anticipated in the most recent version come directly from actual referees' reports rejecting prior versions of the paper. So, the question: May the author indicate in the current version of the paper that the criticisms he's anticipating and disposing of come from actual reviewers of previous versions of the essay? Can he say something like, "A reviewer of an earlier version of the paper recommended rejection on the grounds that my view entails.... But this is mistaken..."? Thoughts?
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9 comments:
Please someone say "yes" and give a good argument-- or offer some other solution to the sort of problem that's mentioned in this post. In case after case when I'm writing a paper, there are dumb-ass objections that I have to address if the paper is to be accepted, and meanwhile I need to make it clear I see no philosophical need to address those objections.
Yeah, for as much as folks from other departments like to talk about how they do interdisciplinary work in philosophy, it's mostly about how *they* get to pretend to be philosophers every once in a while. But when philosophers talk about their area, they get bristly. Especially when it is shown that they can't reason their way out of a box.
The worry, as I see it, is that the author, to rebut persistent stupid objections, needs to address them. But because they are so stupid, it may look like a straw man is being erected (a straw-objector, maybe?). So to prevent the worry of straw-manning, there needs to be evidence that someone actually occupies the position. But nobody has ever voiced the objection, except in reviewer reports?
I'm inclined to say that if quoting stupid journal reviewers makes the paper dialectically poignant (i.e., addresses the going responses), do it. Though it does let your readers know that the paper has been rejected!
I guess it isn't so different from addressing stupid objections that have actually been given to the paper at conferences. Perhaps you don't need to mention the fact that it was a referee's report, but simply footnote something like 'this objection strikes me as implausible, but has actually been made to an earlier version of this paper'.
My view is that unless a journal is going to publish your paper, you shouldn't change it to respond to the inane objections of their referees (except in the relatively rare case that the referee actually points out something important). The journal that ultimately accepts your paper will have its own referees whose own inane objections will more than adequately interfere with the main thread of your paper.
I've done what Ben suggested. In a footnote, I quickly described and rejected comments made by "two respondents to earlier drafts of this paper." In this case, I rejected a stupid but common mistake. In the same paper, I also referred to an anonymous reviewer's worries, and briefly explained why they didn't bother me. Though the worries he expressed were not stupid, I didn't think they amounted to much at all. But I acknowledged them, in a footnote, and then moved on.
I understand what Bandersnatch is saying. Some stupid comments aren't worth mentioning at all. But common and shared stupid ideas probably have to be mentioned (for your own good, if not theirs). I think it's sometimes enough to say, "I know some of you are thinking X, but here (briefly) is why X doesn't bother me -- now look at the rest of my paper." This can probably be accomplished in a footnote or two. This shows that you are not unaware of, or simply ignoring, their concerns, but instead just asking them to set those issues aside for a while.
This is a real problem. Often we receive very helpful reports from anonymous referees....and then have our paper rejected. These helpful reports have useful suggestions that lead to recommended changes in our next draft, but alas for another journal. More than once I've wanted to thank the referees for that different journal -- but this is not standard practice and I've avoided doing this.
You have a different problem: the problem of getting tripped up by unhelpful recommendations. I think you still avoid noting the referee reports (if the paper is rejected by that journal), but desperately search for the source of that bad view to put it right (and perhaps there is another who agrees on that point).
Stupid, ill-informed, and malicious comments should always be thought to be helpful at the very least in the service of idiot proofing the paper so that the next round of reviewers will not be able to make the same mistake. If you do this well then the paper really will be better even after being rewritten from manifestly unhelpful reviews.
Really great teachers are able to take a dumb student comment and transform it into something relevant and plausible in a way that the student offering the comment still feels ownership of the point. I think the same thing goes for referee's comments, both in revise and resubmit cases and in idiot proofing for the next journal case.
Use hyper-charity to try to get the best possible positions and arguments you can that are such that the reviewer making them would still recognize them as being the point they were trying to make.
The norm is not to cite reviewers of journals that rejected your paper. Maybe that should not be the norm, and as such people with tenure should break it. But it would be disproportional to expect people without tenure to advertise that their paper had been rejected elsewhere (even though for most of us most papers go through a lot of resubmissions before finding a home).
Why not simply stop submitting it to interdisciplinary journals and start submitting it to mainline philosophy journals, where, presumably, the stupid non-philosophy objectors won't be on the referee list?
I think you can say, "I've sometimes gotten the following reaction to this argument . . ." Then in the final post-accepted version you can put back a reference to "reviewers for several journals" or just "several helpful reviewers," or something of that sort.
It does seem that you want to thank good reviewers of rejected drafts and we now have no good way to do so.
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