Ever since I read Guns, Germs, and Steel, and then more books like it, I started a mental category of “books that changed the way I see the world.” These books have a few things in common: they are non-fiction; they often span eras; they present grand theories based on solid evidence; they’re engagingly written for a relatively broad audience; in most cases, I couldn’t put them down, finishing them in a short amount of time, and then buttonholed all my friends telling them to read the...| Aaron Hertzmann’s blog
In peer review for scientific and technical papers, peer reviews occasionally discuss the paper authors directly. In this post I argue that this behavior can be toxic: it harms the review process, the authors, and, potentially, the community as a whole. This particular problem can be prevented by one easy guideline, one already used in some communities: paper reviews should be about the paper, not the authors.| Aaron Hertzmann’s blog