The goal of the Computing Community Consortium (CCC) is to catalyze the computing research community to debate longer range, more audacious research challenges; to build consensus around research visions; to evolve the most promising visions toward clearly defined initiatives; and to work with the funding organizations to move challenges and visions toward funding initiatives. The purpose of this blog is to provide a more immediate, online mechanism for dissemination of visioning concepts and community discussion/debate about them.
I notice that CACM Editor-in-Chief Moshe Vardi’s letter in the July 2010 issue of CACM speaks to what he calls “Hypercriticality,” and cites my post of May 4 here on the CCC Blog. (You can find Moshe’s letter in CACM vol. 53, no. 7, p. 5; if you are logged into the CACM website, you can find it here.) Moshe appears to agree that we in the computing research community are often too harsh when reviewing one another’s work.
(Contributed by John Leslie King, University of Michigan)
The CCC’s official podcast, “Catalyzing Computing,” features interviews with researchers and policy makers about their background and experiences in the computing community.
Criticality may be explained or justified – when based on sound, careful, knowledgable refereeing. However, especially with grant proposals at NSF, reviews are shabby, careless, without basis, and often factually erroneous. Panelists exploit anonymity and get away with poor quality reviewing unlike NIH where study section membership is known.