Peer Review

More than ten years ago an idea came to me in a flash. I was reading about the long-term effects of breastfeeding and I gasped. What if breastfeeding played a role in a mysterious disorder (we'll call it MD for short) in my own field?

I emailed the professor who researched MD at the school where I got my master's degree, along with his research associate. I said, "You guys should check this out!" They were unenthusiastic. It turns out that their lack of enthusiasm was a good thing, because that out-of-nowhere idea became my early research project when I returned to grad school to get my PhD.

It also turns out that their lack of enthusiasm was widespread. Again and again people said, "You're researching what??" It was as if I had proposed astrological predictors for MD: no one, but no one in my field, found it plausible.

But do you know what? My data show a significant inverse relationship between MD and breastfeeding duration. In other words, the longer a child nursed, the less likely he was to have MD.

(It was a little funny, going through this project with so many friends in the breastfeeding support community. For them, it was obvious that breastfeeding would protect against MD. Doesn't breastfeeding protect against everything? Studies that conclude otherwise must have been funded by formula companies! Covariate control, schmovariate control! I was a little worried they'd ride me out of town on a rail if I tried to report a null finding.)

One of my big tasks for the fall semester was writing up my findings for publication. I submitted the manuscript in December and got a decision a few weeks ago. (Fact #1 about peer review: it is usually slow.)

I was aiming for the flagship journal of my professional organization, half-expecting to be rejected outright. I had heard so many times from people in the field that this was an implausible association -- I wasn't sure if my data would be enough to overcome the bias. Victory #1: I did not get rejected. I got a revise/resubmit decision, which means I am welcome to send it back when I incorporate the reviewers' feedback. Even better, I got a personalized note from the editor encouraging me to keep plugging.

Victory #2: there was not even a murmur of skepticism -- in any of the reviews (two reviewers, one associate editor, and one subject editor) -- about the rationale for investigating this association. Hurray!

Victory #3: the reviews themselves were mostly very encouraging. My mentor told me that it's unusual for reviewers to be complimentary; usually, she says, they just dive right into the list of concerns. So I'm delighted to have received this feedback: "I've reviewed a number of papers on [MD] in recent years, and this one stands out for the clarity in writing, the engaging writing style, and careful attention to editing details. The authors are to be commended for this."

(I've been dithering since I got the email about whether that's too braggy to post on my blog. I hope it doesn't rub you the wrong way. It was such a pleasant surprise to get a comment like that in what can be a bruising and ego-deflating process.)

The negative feedback was pretty narrowly focused, centering mostly on one paragraph -- and to be honest, that paragraph warranted some criticism. They also are suggesting that I throw a little metaphorical napalm on the mama wars by raising questions about how breastfeeding mothers might interact differently with their children than formula-feeding mothers, but I am going to exercise my authorial judgment and decline to speculate. I've proposed two perfectly plausible mechanisms already, and I'll tell them the best evidence points in that direction. We'll see if they buy it.

The biggest changes I'll be making are to the length of the paper. I am resubmitting it as a different manuscript type, and so it needs to be shorter. It's not my favorite thing, taking a document that I labored and sweated to expand and hacking out a sizable fraction of its guts. But I can do it anyway. That's what I'm up to this week. Wish me luck!

Comments

[Miriel]

Yay you! (And you do not sound braggy.) Keep plugging away!

[bearing]

I think that being commended for your clarity of writing is totally brag-worthy. My pet peeve in technical academia was always unclear writing. Any press that clear writing gets is good press, if you ask me.

Bonus points for being engaging and meticulous.

[jecathre]

I think a little bragging is just fine. You're pretty upfront about your imperfections, so you have every right to be upfront about your assets.

I'm curious what MD is. When the paper is published will you link to the abstract so we can all "ooh" and "ah" over it?

[Sarah]

Congratulations! You certainly have earned a moment to bask in the rewards of all of your labors. I'm really interested to read more about your research (from a non-mathematical point of view).

[Sarah in Ottawa]

Congratulations, Jamie! I'd love to read it one day, with your last name redacted, of course.

I am so curious to know WHAT the disorder is. I wonder if I'll see it or other ones in my son whose posterior tongue-tie wouldn't allow him to effectively latch but who did get (hand-expressed) breast milk until 17 months? His now seven-month-old sister has been successfully breastfeeding all along, so I wonder if I'll see speech differences between them?

[Lilian]

Congratulations!! That is just WONDERFUL!!

In any case... have you been asked to resubmit it in another format? Or are you just doing it because it'd have a better chance of acceptance or of promulgating your work? just curious. ;)

[Jamie]

Thanks, everybody! I appreciate the kind words.

Lilian, changing the format was one of their recommendations and it makes a lot of sense.

[Jody]

Jamie, that's fantastic! Oh, and I hope you'll share the paper when it comes out, because having a vague sense of what you've been doing with the stats package, I really want to read that paper!

(Also, if it makes you feel better, the turn-around on first peer review in Calder's field averages 9-12 months. That's FIRST review.)

[Celeste]

"It ain't braggin' if it's true."

Well done, you! I'm so happy for you to have gotten such a good review, and what sounds like very constructive criticism. Good luck with the workload; I know you can do it!

[Slim]

Not braggy. Worked hard, got rewarded -- isn't that something we like all like to see, even if we know it's not how things always work?

[Laura]

That's just terrific, Jamie! Not braggy at all-- the fruits of some seriously hard work is what that is. :) I, too, would love to see the paper when it's published. Good luck with the revisions!