free variable

Here’s a good article by John Regehr on failures of peer review. This point, about the consequences of disciplinary conservatism, is pretty spot-on: “In computer systems, paper submissions from non-PhDs in industry are not uncommon. Usually these papers doesn’t quite look right and they often get rejected. In a number of cases I’ve seen reviews so blisteringly ugly that nobody in their right mind who received them would ever submit another paper to that community.”