academic rage moment
Feb. 26th, 2015 12:26 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
jinianMy former advisor asked me to edit a rebuttal letter for someone else's paper (from Nature! pretty exciting!), and I am doing so. Come to find out that the third reviewer has addressed the authors as "Ms [Lastname] et al."
EXCUSE ME.
The first author is not a Ms. She is a Professor, in actual fact, but Dr. is the default courteous address in paper submissions. I got called Dr. as an undergrad, because that is just what you assume, because it is offensive to lowball someone's title. And unless this reviewer is of the first author's specific ethnicity, it's not bloody likely that they were able to discern gender from her name. They would have had to go look her up, in which case they would have seen her qualifications. Or they've met her, which would be worse.
She probably doesn't mind this as much as I do. I am really mad right now.
EXCUSE ME.
The first author is not a Ms. She is a Professor, in actual fact, but Dr. is the default courteous address in paper submissions. I got called Dr. as an undergrad, because that is just what you assume, because it is offensive to lowball someone's title. And unless this reviewer is of the first author's specific ethnicity, it's not bloody likely that they were able to discern gender from her name. They would have had to go look her up, in which case they would have seen her qualifications. Or they've met her, which would be worse.
She probably doesn't mind this as much as I do. I am really mad right now.
