Aweh, My Dearly Beloved Fellow Ruminants & Groupies,
Some rightly accuse me of being pompous and using fancy vocabulary. Now that I am pretending to be an academic, I have also found that to be truly impressive you must confuse people with fancy and obscure language and terminology. People may strongly suspect you are talking shit. Still, your whizzy vocabulary and fancy terminology will mean they don’t understand what you are saying. They will be too embarrassed to challenge you because that might make them look ignorant. Even if they do challenge you, you can introduce new fancy words, and they usually give up.
One of the things real academics are supposed to do is publish learned papers in peer-reviewed journals. This is a game I used to play when I was a real academic in the eighties. Back then it was about solving differential equations for things like modelling reactive transport in fractal catalysts with chaotic dynamics. Lots of equations and fancy graphs showing your results. Lots of papers published but only read by the true cognoscenti. Those sad suckers interested in things like that.
Now more than thirty years later I’ve lost interest in differential equations. At least that’s what I tell myself because I haven’t looked at a differential equation for decades. So back to publishing a journal paper so that I can try to demonstrate that I’m not an academic imposter (which I am). What to write about? Green hydrogen of course! Those of you who know me will know that I can be terribly boring about that but don’t worry I’ve covered that in previous blogs and I’ll no doubt return to it in the future. So, rest easy no missive about green hydrogen today.
So, I write a paper with a colleague and send it to journal A who send it to three reviewers. Two reviewers suggest quite significant revisions and that we must cite their (irrelevant) papers the third says it’s rubbish reject. So, we attend to the two reviewers’ comments, and they ask for further changes and then they are happy. The third reviewer says why do you keep sending me this rubbish. So, they appointed two new reviewers in addition to the original three who now want a whole set of different and contradictory changes as well as asking that their irrelevant papers be cited. They also suggest journal B would be more appropriate. At this point, I give up.
But then another friend and colleague offers to assist and take up the cudgels with journal B. So, we do a major rewrite and start again. More reviews and more changes and then they suggest journal A might be more appropriate.
Finally, we approach journal C and make the changes requested by their reviewers, and voila our paper is published. No sooner than our paper has been published an old colleague points out a mistake in our paper! I immediately go back to my calculations and pore over them and sure enough I have made a mistake. It is at this point that I find a new fancy word to add to my vocabulary and it’s not a four-letter word starting with F.
The word is corrigendum. A corrigendum (plural: corrigenda) is a correction issued for a mistake in a published document, typically in a book, journal article, report, or academic paper. It’s used when the authors identify an error after publication that needs to be formally corrected. So now we have a peer-reviewed paper with a corrigendum.
So, we owned up to our mistake and found a fancy new word to add to our vocabulary. This has led me to ruminate on making mistakes. Mistakes are a reflection of imperfection and are an inherent part of learning and being human. They will also slip past extensive peer review.
Owning up to your mistakes can be a very difficult thing to do and it can be embarrassing and painful. So perhaps I need to see how the greatest leader of the free world learns from his mistakes and try to emulate him. Perhaps he can teach me a thing or two.
Donald Trump has identified his “biggest mistake” as hiring “bad people” (e.g., John Kelly and John Bolton). This is called externalization—where your failures or problems are caused by forces outside yourself. Trump did not display poor judgment in choosing or managing his appointees. They betrayed him and were incompetent. In short, throw your subordinates under the bus.
By January 2021, the turnover rate among President Trump’s “A Team”—a group comprising his most influential executive office advisers—reached 92%. There are a lot of “bad people” out there and they are a very sneaky bunch even the best leaders struggle to identify them. Lets see what happens this term but I have a strong suspicion the sneaky bad people haven’t gone away, and they are part of his new “A Team”.
This paradigm is very helpful for me. My biggest mistake was not the error in the paper but choosing bad co-authors. They didn’t find my mistake and they betrayed me. Oh yes, and they are incompetent. Unfortunately, it is at this point that my bullshit deflectors are buzzing so loudly that quite honestly, I find it easier to admit my mistake. The best way to deal with mistakes with the minimum amount of anxiety is not to have bullshit deflectors.
Let’s now get back to fancy vocabulary because I need to impress you. Electorigendum (noun) (plural: electorigenda) A formal recognition by the electorate or society that a past electoral decision (i.e., electing a particular leader) was a mistake, warranting correction. Its origin is from elector- (Latin root related to voting or choosing) + -igendum (meaning something that ought to be corrected).
Will there be an electorigendum in 2028 or do we need it sooner? What proportion of the electorate has functioning bullshit deflectors? Enough for an electorigendum? Dearly beloved readers I don’t know the answer to this question but I’m sure you do.
Lest you think I’m bashing the USA I can assure you that an electorigendum is fully warranted in South Africa. Think the USA, Turkey, South Africa, and perhaps Israel amongst others. Electorigenda are required.
So, whether it’s a bungled equation, a dodgy journal review, or a questionable ballot choice, mistakes are everywhere. The trick, I suppose, is knowing when to own them, when to publish a corrigendum, and when to call for a full-blown electorigendum. In the meantime, let’s keep our bullshit deflectors tuned and our vocabularies fancy.
Thanks for all the comments and input.
Bruce
Ruminant Pink Friday 