Arrogance
In my job as a researcher, I've gotten to know the peer-review system well. It certainly has it's faults: I've had papers that I didn't think were that great that got accepted, and I've had papers that I thought were great that got rejected. It depends a lot on whether the reviewers that get assigned to your manuscript have a similar world-view as you do. Although most times I get the review, my initial reaction is, "Who is this idiot! Doesn't he/she realize that if I choose alternative A, then Problem Z gets bigger?" After letting the review sit for a few days, I'm able to come back to the review and rework the paper. And almost always, it's better.
This process has made me realize how important it is to be able to communicate things clearly. Often, when a reviewer says, "Paragraph A doesn't make sense", the answer is that I wrote poorly and did not clearly communicate what the reviewer needed to understand what I did. The onus is on me. Beyond reviewers, when I communicate with the media, if the interviewer does not understand, it is my job to communicate more clearly (usually in 30 seconds or less).
This is in stark contrast to the only person I've ever talked with who works on Wall Street. When I asked him what he was working on in 2006 (?), he said it had something to do with bundling mortgages. When I pressed him on how bundling could lead to substantial profits, he said, "It's complicated Sei. You wouldn't understand."
I remember this conversation clearly (we were walking along the Embarcadero, it was sunny but a little chilly w/fog nearby) because I've thought about it with every newsstory trying to explain the economic meltdown (caused by bundled mortgages or CDOs). Also, his answer pissed me off. I consider myself fairly bright with a wide interests; I felt like I could pick up most things fairly quickly.
Being a researcher undergoing peer-review requires you to be humble. You never win by directly confronting your reviewers. If they don't understand, it's because you didn't explain it clearly.
In contrast the corporate/financial system seems full of incredibly arrogant people. This is Enron all over again--Remember the "smartest guys in the room." The ones who had rolling blackouts in California, causing life threatening injuries (street lights stop working) and several deaths (critical home oxygen, etc). They arrogantly convinced the world they were smarter than everyone. And the financial system had the same attitude. We're smarter than everyone and so we don't need to answer your questions or even abide by your weak regulations (that we lobbied heavily to water down).
In retrospect, I wonder if my questions made him uncomfortable. My question about how profits can be made in bundling gets to the heart of the problem with this. No matter how you slice and dice the bundle, some are going to fail, most are going to not fail. So the only way that someone is going to pay more or less for a slice of the bundle is if they don't have smarts (unlikely) or the information (likely) to make an appropriate decision. The fact that people were making lots of money on this suggested that this was not a free market with both the buyer and seller having equal access to critical information.
This process has made me realize how important it is to be able to communicate things clearly. Often, when a reviewer says, "Paragraph A doesn't make sense", the answer is that I wrote poorly and did not clearly communicate what the reviewer needed to understand what I did. The onus is on me. Beyond reviewers, when I communicate with the media, if the interviewer does not understand, it is my job to communicate more clearly (usually in 30 seconds or less).
This is in stark contrast to the only person I've ever talked with who works on Wall Street. When I asked him what he was working on in 2006 (?), he said it had something to do with bundling mortgages. When I pressed him on how bundling could lead to substantial profits, he said, "It's complicated Sei. You wouldn't understand."
I remember this conversation clearly (we were walking along the Embarcadero, it was sunny but a little chilly w/fog nearby) because I've thought about it with every newsstory trying to explain the economic meltdown (caused by bundled mortgages or CDOs). Also, his answer pissed me off. I consider myself fairly bright with a wide interests; I felt like I could pick up most things fairly quickly.
Being a researcher undergoing peer-review requires you to be humble. You never win by directly confronting your reviewers. If they don't understand, it's because you didn't explain it clearly.
In contrast the corporate/financial system seems full of incredibly arrogant people. This is Enron all over again--Remember the "smartest guys in the room." The ones who had rolling blackouts in California, causing life threatening injuries (street lights stop working) and several deaths (critical home oxygen, etc). They arrogantly convinced the world they were smarter than everyone. And the financial system had the same attitude. We're smarter than everyone and so we don't need to answer your questions or even abide by your weak regulations (that we lobbied heavily to water down).
In retrospect, I wonder if my questions made him uncomfortable. My question about how profits can be made in bundling gets to the heart of the problem with this. No matter how you slice and dice the bundle, some are going to fail, most are going to not fail. So the only way that someone is going to pay more or less for a slice of the bundle is if they don't have smarts (unlikely) or the information (likely) to make an appropriate decision. The fact that people were making lots of money on this suggested that this was not a free market with both the buyer and seller having equal access to critical information.
Comments
Post a Comment