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Writing a review of a spouse’s book?

In our most recent "how can we help you?" thread, a reader asks:

Is it ethical to write a review of my spouse’s book? It’s a groundbreaking work related to my research. Is there precedent of other philosopher partners doing this?

I'm not entirely sure about the answer to either question, but I suspect it's probably imprudent, and as someone who thinks ethics reduces to prudence, that would constitute ethical grounds to avoid it.

Why do I think it's probably imprudent? In brief: there are social norms against nepotism, those norms exist for reasons (viz. conferring unfair advantages to relatives), and this sort of thing may be seen that way. Even if the work is groundbreaking, spouses aren't exactly known for being free from bias, and so I suspect it's better left for other professionals to judge the quality of the work. But maybe I'm seeing things wrong here? 

What does everyone else think?

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7 responses to “Writing a review of a spouse’s book?”

  1. Daniel Weltman

    Unethical IMHO. If you want your spouse’s book reviewed, review some other book and tell the author of that book you’d appreciate it if they reviewed your spouse’s book.

    Reply
  2. William

    If the work is groundbreaking, others who are at a much less risk of bias will take notice. Let them review the book instead. I’d think that the dangers of negative perception would outweigh any positive review that a spouse’s review could do.

    Reply
  3. Brad

    I am an editor of a journal that only publishes book reviews, Metascience. We would certainly not let you review your partner’s book. That is a clear conflict of interest. We ask reviewers to disclose if they are supervisors or students, or former supervisors or former students of the author of a book we want reviewed. We would assume that someone would disclose whether the author was their daughter, son, husband, wife, partner, grandparent …

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  4. anon

    I think the risk of the perception of an ethical problem justifies not doing it. If a bunch of people think of your review as shady, your review could be detrimental to the perception of your partner’s research.
    (And even if the book is related to your research, there’s probably something better you could be doing with your time when it comes to advancing your own research. So both of your interests seem best served by no review.)

    Reply
  5. quick addition

    Obviously, it’s a good for a book to get a positive review. But as William notes, I think it just makes more sense for someone else to end up doing that work. (Maybe there’s a special case of this to be thought through if you are the only two people in your subfield!)

    Reply
  6. Trevor Hedberg

    As has already been said, this is a clear conflict of interest, and that should be sufficient reason for the spouse not to write the review. Moreover, if the work is “groundbreaking,” then surely someone else in the field can write a suitably positive review of the book. The spouse’s review might even harm the perceived quality of the book, as those who notice the connection between reviewer and author might conclude that if the book was actually good, the author would not need their spouse to review it.

    Reply
  7. Richard Yetter Chappell

    Would you write a review of your own book? Seems relevantly similar.
    That said, it’s obviously fine (good, even!) to write up a summary of your spouse’s book (or your own), and what you most like about it, to share on social media, your blog, or similar personal spaces — just as you might enthuse about it in conversation. Indeed, as someone whose spouse also just wrote a groundbreaking book, that’s something I’m looking forward to doing soon. 🙂 Just don’t try to pass it off as an impartial review.

    Reply

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