Day 32 — Note on self-criticism

Today I attended a seminar where we discussed several papers — including one whose main author was a coordinator of the session. I was prepared to make a couple of several critical comments, but for some time I was wondering what approach to take to this criticism to be fair, open and polite. And not sound like an arrogant newbie.

Before we got a chance to discuss this paper, we already covered quite a lot of ground, although I must say the level of discussion was below what we reached during the last session (at least in my opinion). This, by the way, is a bit sad, given the importance of the topic in question.

In any case, the session lead disarmed me from the arguments by starting off with a strong self-criticism.

There wasn’t as much urgency in my comments any more, given that he already recognized that his previous article was not that strong.

I’m not sure what to think about it. On the one hand, I understand that we all learn and that past work doesn’t need to be in line with our current thinking. On the other hand, there is value in going of the track, as long as the progress of the idea is happening. In other words, there is value in exploring.

I still think there were many weak points in the paper, but there were also interesting ideas and angle of approaching the problem.

Maybe, what I was expecting is an attitude I’d like to see in sport. Challenge is in itself a good reason enough. Just because there is no hope to save the game, you should still take the challenge on.

His advice at the end of the session was to submit to AMR, because you have a chance to get published if someone sees value in your work (and you happen to be lucky to have that someone be your referee).

Sound advice for a young doctoral student? Maybe, but I’d defend my early idea, even if it becomes weaker over time. I don’t know if that’s just me, but I tend to see success in many things I did, even if they didn’t turn out perfect. I’ve learned. And that’s the most important thing.