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Woke up to an acceptance this morning! I might talk up the paper once it's in print, but today I want to talk about the review process and share my experience dealing with a reviewer who only wanted to push race science
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I had two reviewers. Reviewer 1 initially gave a long, detailed review which drastically improved the quality of the paper. I'm super grateful to them and their review. They had several requests, one of which was to increase my engagement with the existing literature.
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I started reading the report from Reviewer 2. This is where the story gets good. They said that the paper has "significant theoretical drawbacks". Note that they said drawbacks, as in plural.
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The full report lists exactly one criticism - my engagement with the existing literature. Reviewer 2 did not address any section of the paper outside of the Literature Review section. But just wait until you see the specifics...
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RED FLAG ALERTThey structured the body of their review with a series of paragraphs containing a link to a paper. They did not provide citations. They provided links. Why is this a red flag? Well, because 4 of the 5 papers they wanted me to cite have a common author.
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So at this point I clearly know the identity of Reviewer 2. If these papers were truly relevant, the discussion would be different, but they weren't. This was somebody abusing their position as a reviewer.
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Oh, and don't worry, the fifth paper was written by a co-author of Reviewer 2.
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But let's look at the papers they listed. Why were they inappropriate? Why did I refuse to cite these papers and push back instead of appeasing a reviewer to ensure the paper was accepted? They all used the Lynn & Vanhanen mean national IQ data set.
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For those of you who aren't familiar with this data set, it's garbage. It's race science peddling garbage. It's horrendously flawed. It should never be used, and you should be HIGHLY CRITICAL of people who use this data. I'll tag some great threads in the next few tweets
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This data set was created to show that there are inherent differences in cognitive ability across race. It has become the foundation of contemporary "empirical" race science.
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Here's a tweet referencing a paper critiquing a specific paper that used that data set. The original paper being critiqued here was eventually retracted. This is key as that retraction was actually part of my response to Reviewer 2.
https://tinyurl.com/y3673s2j
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https://tinyurl.com/y3673s2j
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So clearly this data is garbage and cannot be used in empirical studies. So why is it so widely used? Because those using it are deliberately trying to publish race science in academic journals. This, unfortunately, is more widespread than you would like to believe.
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As academics, we do catch a lot of these papers and ensure they aren't published, but also remember that when submitting a paper we are typically asked to suggest reviewers....And to top it off, these people have created their own "peer-reviewed" journals.
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So what did I do? What was the outcome? First, I refused to cite any of these papers. Second, I wrote a letter explaining why I would not cite these papers.
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Remember that Reviewer 1 wanted me to improve my lit review section? I made sure that I could tie the general topics listed by Reviewer 2 into the expansion of the literature review done under the guidelines listed by Reviewer 1.
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Here's a snip of my response to Reviewer 2 (I also wrote a separate letter to the editor that was based off of this):
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Ultimately I was successful and the paper was accepted once Reviewer 1 was satisfied!
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NOTE TO OTHER WHITE ACADEMICS: If I can push back against race science as a grad student, you can push back against race science as a faculty member. If a journal's decision to accept/reject your paper comes down to citing race science, do you really want to publish there?
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