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Stop the Madness!…or Let Madness Reign Supreme? A Reviewerly Dilemma

I found myself caught in a dilemma today that brings to mind recent posts about reviewerly duties. The paper defends a new theory of something by arguing that the theory avoids a certain "problem" that many others in the field have raised. Here's a reviewerly dilemma: I think the so-called "problem" that the entire paper assumes is a bunch of hooey. I think there there's nothing even remotely close to a good argument for its being a genuine problem (just a lot of table-banging). In my estimation, the only reason some people think it is a problem is that they are grip in a very, very bad theory — one that I think there are decisive reasons to reject, and which shocks me to no end that (some) people take seriously to begin with (again, almost entirely on the basis of table-banging assertions).

Here, then, is my dilemma:

  1. If I don't advocate rejecting the paper, I run the risk of contributing to the further dissemination and acceptance of something I take to be a genuine kind of philosophical madness that has taken hold of a substantial part of the literature. (which seems bad to me)
  2. If I do advocate rejecting the paper on these grounds, I have faulted the author for something that I think is a grave mistake but which many other people in the discipline don't. (this seems bad to me too)

Now, in the abstract, I generally loathe to hold authors responsible for (what I take to be) others' mistakes. However, in this case, the entire argument that the paper rests on seems to me to be utter madness. It's hard for me to say to myself, in good conscience, "Let this pass", when I simply can't believe how others in the discipline have let it pass for so long.

What say you, my fellow Cocooners? What's a reviewer to do in this sort of situation?

 

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9 responses to “Stop the Madness!…or Let Madness Reign Supreme? A Reviewerly Dilemma”

  1. David Morrow

    Interesting dilemma.
    First, to get clear on your situation: The paper argues for the author’s theory — call it Theory A — on the grounds that A avoids problem P. You say that
    P is only seen as a problem because people are in the grip of a bad theory — call it Theory B. Is it true, though, that P is a problem for proponents of B? If so, then I take that the paper establishes that proponents of B have a good reason to prefer A. And since lots of people hold B, that seems like an important conclusion — one that you shouldn’t reject on the grounds that you disagree with B and reject P as a problem.
    If P is a pseudo-problem even for B, however, then I think there’s a case to be made that the paper doesn’t really advance the literature: it only advances our understanding of a pseudo-problem. I’d say you should just be frank about this with the editor (and probably the author). Say something like, “The argument in this paper clearly establishes that P is not a problem for A. The author thinks this is significant because P is thought to be a problem for B. I have my reservations about the significance of the paper because it doesn’t provide those who reject B any reason to accept A, since those who reject B don’t see P as a problem.” I think that would give the editor all of the information he or she needs. After all, your reviewerly duty is not to decide whether to publish the paper, but to render your professional judgment about its merits as a contribution to philosophical scholarship.

    Reply
  2. Marcus Arvan

    Hi David: thanks for the helpful comment. Yeah, it’s the second situation. The person is arguing that their theory A is better than an alternative theory B because B faces the “problem” P and A avoids it. But, as I see it, P isn’t any sort of problem for B at all, so A in no way improves upon B. In addition, I actually think P is not only not a problem but actually a perfectly compelling implication of B. Accordingly, I think the new theory A is worse than B, as the new theory lacks an implication that many take a problem but which I find more compelling than its denial.

    Reply
  3. Jonathan Livengood

    Is it the case that many philosophers in the literature think that P is a problem for B? Does the author cite those philosophers and make clear that those philosophers think P is a problem to be taken seriously?
    If so, then I think it is wrong to reject the paper on the grounds that P is not a serious problem. Put it this way: suppose you hold some theory T and you worry that it suffers from some objection O. Someone writes a paper showing that if T were slightly amended, it could avoid objection O. But the reviewer (not you) thinks that O is not really an interesting objection and rejects the paper. Hence, you go on being bothered by objection O, not realizing that there is a solution.
    I do not think that we can afford to evaluate the legitimacy of a problem as reviewers, provided the problem has a well-established history in the literature. Maybe if the problem is being stated for the first time and you find it unpersuasive, but not when it has already made it into the literature.

    Reply
  4. Marcus Arvan

    Jonathan: thanks for your comment, which seems sensible to me. However, isn’t the kind of practice you suggest precisely what contributes to bad ideas becoming entrenched in the literature to begin with. Consider ordinary language philosophy — now almost universally regarded as a colossal blind alley, but which generated paper after paper, etc.? Isn’t there a point at which we, as peer reviewers, have to stand up and say “enough!”? How else are we to stop bad ideas in their tracks? It seems to me that all too often what happens in practice is that a “problem” gains an unjustified foothold in the literature and no one bothers to stop it…until several years or a decade goes by and everyone sees the thing for what it was all the time: a lot of time spent on a pseudo-issue.

    Reply
  5. Daniel

    Do you think you could ask for a revise and resubmit in which you ask the author to do some work to motivate the claim that the putative “problem” that s/he avoids is actually a problem? You could then accept the paper (even while presumably disagreeing with whatever the author says to show that it’s a problem), but you’ll have at least registered that you don’t think people can just presuppose that there really is a problem here, and will have gotten the author to defend that presupposition.

    Reply
  6. Marcus Arvan

    Dan: yeah, that seems to me to probably be the best option. I’d been batting around something similar to that idea, and I think that’s what I’ll go with. Thanks!

    Reply
  7. Andrew Sepielli

    Two arguments for why you shouldn’t reject the paper:
    1) The more reviewers reject papers on such grounds, the more authors will feel the need to front-load their papers with anticipatory defenses of their projects. This makes papers longer, more tedious, and meeker and more apologetic in tone. These all seem like bad-making features.
    2) There are other ways to curb what you think of as “madness”. If the paper does a good job in what it’s trying to do, recommend a revise and resubmit, but ask that the author address your concern about the problem to which she’s responding, so that its alleged “pseudoness” may be apparent to the reader. Or write your own article explaining why the alleged problem is a mere pseudo-problem.
    To be honest, though, without knowing what problem you’re talking about, I have trouble settling on a reaction. I’m vacillating between “It’s a scandal to philosophy that this was ever considered a problem!” and “That damned imperious referee is stifling philosophical progress!” Would you mind telling me the problem by e-mail? (first name dot last name dot utoronto dot the first two letters of “Canada”).

    Reply
  8. Jonathan Livengood

    As someone sympathetic to ordinary language philosophy, the analogy doesn’t really work for me. 😉 But seriously, I think this illustrates my underlying problem here. You think ordinary language philosophy was a blind alley. I think giving up on it was a mistake. We already don’t have agreement on which projects are worth doing. (Hence, my reason for caring about the literature rather than reviewer judgments about what is a legitimate project.)
    The review process is already an enormous crap-shoot. I, for one, don’t want philosophers deciding to reject papers based on their subject matter as opposed to the quality of argument and engagement with the literature. It just makes things more randomly crappy for those submitting articles. I don’t want to start worrying that the referee is going to think that my basic project isn’t worth doing. Not after I find half a dozen contemporary authors working on a similar project.
    Also, I don’t trust my own judgments about what is worth doing, and I don’t think others should either. I mean, if it were up to me, there would be no literature on qualia, no contextualist literature in epistemology, and well, I can think of lots more things I would kill with fire. Who knows, maybe one of the things I think is deeply mistaken is something you think is great! I don’t think I could responsibly take it on myself to stop the madness by saying, in effect, qualia or contextualism or whatever isn’t worth working on, and so on that basis alone, a paper should be rejected. (And I definitely don’t want other philosophers rejecting my work for content reasons — say because they don’t like x-phi or they don’t like the metaphysics of causation or some such.)
    As to stopping a bad project, I thought the way we usually did that in philosophy was by writing papers arguing that the target project is bad, getting those papers published, and convincing other philosophers — especially young philosophers — that the project really is bad. Then people stop working on that project. Is that just too naive?
    Anyway, I wonder if you have another option. Perhaps you could tell the editor something to the effect: “I don’t think this project is worth doing — at all — even though I admit that there is a literature on it. As such, I don’t think I can objectively review the paper. You will have to find someone else.” I expect that if an editor gets that response a couple of times, the paper will simply be rejected. Which is what you want anyway.

    Reply
  9. Marcus Arvan

    Hi Jonathan: thanks for the very illuminating comment. I think you’re absolutely right. And, for what it’s worth, this has been a very helpful conversation. As I implied in the post, my personal policy has always been to defer to the literature rather than make these kinds of judgments. I posed the dilemma in part because I’ve had papers of my own rejected by reviewers on similar grounds (viz. they thought an entire area of the literature to be a blind alley), and because I felt a certain pull to do the same in this case. I’m really glad I posed the dilemma to you all, because now I think I’ll be a much better reviewer for it. Thanks again to everyone who has posted so far!

    Reply

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