Friday Fun: My "Favorite" Comments From Anonymous Reviewers

This Friday I thought it might be nice to provide a window into the manuscript review process in psychology. In short, after a researcher (1) designs a handful of studies (typically without much success), (2) finally discovers a finding that is interesting (months to years later), and (3) survives what is (typically) a hyper-critical vetting from among his/her research peers within the home University, it is now time to take on the empirical review process!

The review process is pretty simple for most journals. An editor--usually an influential scholar in the field--reads the manuscript and assigns the manuscript to 3-4 researchers whom he/she thinks can provide an expert evaluation of the research. These anonymous reviewers are then asked to provide critical evaluations of the research in written comments. These comments are then returned to the author along with a written final decision from the editor. In this final decision, the editor typically takes the reviewer comments into consideration, and decides whether the paper is worthy of publication, should be revised, or rejected.

Dawson obviously crying over the comments of Reviewer #2  (source)

[A quick note about psychology reviews: I don't know anything about other fields, but a colleague at UC San Francisco once told me that unlike other science fields, psychologists are the harshest critics of new research, adding poignantly, "They eat their young."]

What I've done below is reproduce some of my "favorite" quotes from these reviews. When you are reading these, try to imagine me crying into a cup of english breakfast tea!


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