{"id":86,"date":"2008-06-10T06:47:29","date_gmt":"2008-06-10T04:47:29","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/occamstypewriter.org\/boboh\/2008\/06\/10\/reviewing_the_situation\/"},"modified":"2008-06-10T06:47:29","modified_gmt":"2008-06-10T04:47:29","slug":"reviewing_the_situation","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/occamstypewriter.org\/boboh\/2008\/06\/10\/reviewing_the_situation\/","title":{"rendered":"Reviewing: the Situation"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>One of the better books about statistics is Abelson&#8217;s <a href=\"\/\/books.google.fi\/books?hl=en&#038;id=YRMnGB4OwiUC&#038;dq=Abelson+statistics&#038;printsec=frontcover&#038;source=web&#038;ots=ZpBmCCMLCF&#038;sig=L3W5LUkLUFw5uq6f1vMdSu-m3wc\">Statistics as Principled Argument<\/a>&#8220;.  Amongst the many words of wisdom, he gives us this useful dictum:<\/p>\n<h3>Chance is Lumpy<\/p>\n<p><!--more--><br \/>\nI mention this, not just because it&#8217;s true, but also because Chance also has a mean streak (um, am I mixing my metaphors?).  So it was that I was musing a couple of weeks ago that I hadn&#8217;t been asked to review any manuscripts.  A few days later a small journal asked me to review one on a topic I am not greatly familiar with.  I have a certain attachment to this journal, so I agreed.  For me the paper looks to be in the &#8220;dull but worthy&#8221; class (as I said, it&#8217;s not in my area).  As I hadn&#8217;t reviewed many papers recently, I accepted the invitation.<\/h3>\n<p>A few days later I was asked by another journal to review a paper on an areas that I am more interested in.  Gah, I thought.  Oh well, I&#8217;ll accept the invitation to look at that one too.<br \/>\nAnd I&#8217;ve just got an email asking me to review a manuscript that looks <em>really<\/em> interesting and cool (or &#8220;dull and worthy&#8221; if you don&#8217;t work in the area).<br \/>\nSo, not only is Chance lumpy, with manuscripts doing their best London bus impressions , it also has this cruel streak where it gradually ramps up the interest in the papers, so I can&#8217;t say &#8220;no&#8221; to any of them.  Either that or there is an international cabal of journal editors who have marked my down in their database as someone susceptible to this sort of treatment.<br \/>\nThey know me as well as the feline world does &#8211; there are just some things I can&#8217;t say no to.<br \/>\n<strong>waves fist angrily<\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>One of the better books about statistics is Abelson&#8217;s Statistics as Principled Argument&#8220;. Amongst the many words of wisdom, he gives us this useful dictum: Chance is Lumpy<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-86","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/occamstypewriter.org\/boboh\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/86","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/occamstypewriter.org\/boboh\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/occamstypewriter.org\/boboh\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/occamstypewriter.org\/boboh\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/occamstypewriter.org\/boboh\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=86"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/occamstypewriter.org\/boboh\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/86\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/occamstypewriter.org\/boboh\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=86"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/occamstypewriter.org\/boboh\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=86"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/occamstypewriter.org\/boboh\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=86"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}