Academic Peer Review

Is it better to work alone or with other people? We've seen in examples like Officiating Ice Hockey that working alone isn't even an option in some settings. Indeed, in science, whether or not you're working directly with other people, the only way to have it be "science" is to situate the work relative to contributions from other scientists. At least that's the standard wisdom: science progresses by a survey of the literature, finding a gap, designing an experiment, and reporting on the results.

Sometimes there might be a leap that doesn't relate so much to other literature - for example, an experience report like that of Darwin. "Foundational science" is nevertheless not going to be accepted as scientific until other peers have certified it as such. (And Darwin had considerable difficulty convincing his peers about his idea of natural selection.)

It's curious how individuals sometimes "want to be left alone" (e.g. to escape from a situation of control or disruption), and sometimes actively seek out others for companionship. Socrates' advice to Meno was to talk over what he had learned with another interlocutor to see if he could convince him to come around to the same understanding. Social engagement seems important for thinking things through seriously: if you can't convince other people of your point, maybe the point isn't really that well thought through.

So for example "peer review" of scientific papers constitutes an important example of paragogy in action. If we thought of the paper as a "product" (see "Laboratory Life: The Social Construction of Scientific Facts" by Bruno Latour and Steve Woolgar, 1979), the reviewers are something like "alpha testers" or a focus group whose role is to see if the product is really fit for market. (Think about the way Motown Records made industrial product development methods part of the workflow for music production.) One good strategy for writing a good paper is to get a good critical review from a friend ("amicus curiae") before sending it in to reviewers.

But what exactly are the reviewers looking for? Generally they are looking for "a significant novel contribution to the field of X", where X is the name of the journal or conference where the paper has been submitted. It is, again, similar with music. An awesome new dubstep track should feature "tightly coiled productions with overwhelming bass lines and reverberant drum patterns, clipped samples, and occasional vocals" and an awesome new dubstep dance should feature someone dancing like a weird combination of Michael Jackson and a half way broke down robot -- or else it's probably not "dubstep". I can enjoy music as music, but somehow the genre, X, is important for people to understand what the music "is".

But the significant novel contribution part is presumably a good bit harder. Though perhaps related to a thorough understanding of X, its constituent parts, its boundaries, the people and styles that have contributed to the development (production) of X in the first place.

If you can't say "This is a significant novel contribution to X" then maybe what you've made is a sort of student piece - a study, like copying someone else's style. Or sketching something that is novel but not so significant (even great painters make sketches that aren't their best work, and which might be beautiful, but which no one really remembers).

For academic writing it tends to be good form to say up front "This is the significant and novel contribution of my paper, and here is why it is significant and novel." This makes it easier for the reviewers to function as good "alpha testers" since they can focus in on the novel aspects and decide for themselves how significant they really are, or focus in on the significant aspects and decide how novel they really are. It's not like you're just promoting some new flavour of coffee where the question is "do people like it". These people have tried pretty much every flavour of coffee there is to try and they are eager for something different, something that hits just the spot that no previous coffee flavour has hit before. Otherwise they would just go back to their old standard and leave you and your trendy new small-batch hand-roasted blend for some other hipster.

So, just like with a bottle of wine, the tasting notes should be there and they should be accurate. (Apologies for the mixed metaphors, I've been feeling my way through this essay as well as I can in a hurry!)