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CORRESPONDENCE On the Offense of Reviewers The Editorial by Professor J. F. Bunnett entitled “On the Defense of Hypotheses”’ suggested to me-by some sort of a phonetical and ethical analogy-another one, the title of which could be “On the Offense of Reviewers”. My complaint is not directed to those reviewers that ignore one’s own work on a given field. Everybody is free to select, according to his own criterion, the “best material” and the more significant contributions in order to write a review, or an annual report, on a given topic. In any case, however, the “Matthew effect” will always be operating. As stated by Robert K. Merton,2 “the Matthew effect consists in the accruing of greater increments of recognition for particular scientific contributions to scientists of considerable repute and the withholding of such recognition from scientists who have not yet made their mark”.3 The name is taken by analogy from the following words of the Gospel according to St. Matthew” “For unto every one that hath shall be given, and he shall have abundance: but from him that hath not shall be taken away even that which he hath.” My complaint is actually directed to those reviewers that trivialize, distort, or mispresent the results of their colleagues. Although I am convinced that most of them are not even aware of such an injury, this fact does not change the situation at all. (1) J. F. Bunnett, Acc. Chern. Res., 15, 267 (1982). (2) R. K. Merton, Science (Washington, D.C.), 159, 56 (1968).
(3) A more graphical, but rather trivial expression of the ‘Matthew effect” is found in the exponential function y = 8,where y is the ‘fame” and x the “CitationIndex power”. (4) Matthew, 25, 14-30.
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Very often, the contribution of an author represents years, and even decades, of careful and patient work. This research work has normally, as a whole, some “internal consistency”, either because the objectives fulfilled are quite clear or because the dialectics of the scientific methodology have led to exploration of some related areas or topics so that a more or less complete body of facts is presented. It is, in fact, this “internal consistency” that is the ultimate justification for the publication of different papers in the field. If reviewers break it, the whole work becomes trivialized. Moreover, because reviewers are usually under the pressure of either Editors or Publishers, a very fast and superficial look at the huge amounts of collected bibliographic material may lead to a misinterpretation of the results and even to completely false conclusions. In such a case, the defenseless author feels very miserable and he would have preferred to be ignored by the reviewer. But the injury is already committed. Because of a great number of readers and scholars will never go back to the original papers, the misinterpretation may perpetuate and the author may even suffer some loss of reputation as a specialist in the field. How to repair such an injury? I could quote right now a couple of examples taken from my own personal experience. However, it would be unfair to unmask, here and now, the “culpables”. A Hamletian doubt arises in my mind, nevertheless: “To be or not to be”...cited. Is that really the question? FBlix Serratosa
University of Barcelona Barcelona, Spain
0 1984 American Chemical Society
