Respected Fellows,
First and foremost, wish you all, all the very best for the year 2021!.
I was formerly a faculty member in Canada (2006-2011, Assistant Prof.), then came back to my mother-land. What I've seen in the past 10 yrs, in regard to publishing our papers, was that politics was GREATLY involved in numerous journals' decision on our manuscripts.
My question for you is as follows:
Do you agree that politics is involved in science these days?, and if so, should we, researchers, be indifferent with respect to unfair behavior of some of our fellows with respect to some others who are working in some countries, like my mother-land?.
Most recently, a manuscript from my research team, which was submitted to a Japanese journal, and it was 100% theoretical work, with no experiments involved at all, was rejected since one of the reviewers has criticized our work and mentioned why different steps of the experiment done in our work were not clearly explained (?!!!!!!). We immediately prepared a rebuttal and appealed their decision, but EIC has responded and mentioned we only accept about 10% of the manuscripts we receive (!!!!).
Thanks for your thoughts in advance,
PS1: I am working on Biomechanics related projects, mostly on Orthopaedic and Dental Implants Biomechanics, so no threat to other nations (?!)- please correct me if I am wrong.
PS2: I am Iranian-Canadian, but now am living in Iran, and working from here. If there is anything wrong with this, please educate me.
Politics in science, yes, very much. In all aspects. Approval and funding of project. Degree of freedom to work in lab. Writing paper, authorship issues, recommending editor to fast track publication, orunderplay it, asking peers for citation as far as possible, and many other gimmicks.
Covertly it matters which country / religion you belong to for resesrch related decisions, admitting and awarding PhD, other research related awards..
Taking about this practice in our field, Yes, very much so. Although not much prevalent during perusal of Bachelors course, it is evidently seen while perusing masters where bright and deserving students are not given their due credit and the same goes towards students who are more into shoe licking of their faculty members and forget that they peruse a course just to gain professional knowledge and should maintain sanctity of the same.
But since the student can't so much about it owing to peer pressure and the fear of being flunked if raised a voice regarding such practices, the same student after completion of the degree and eventually after joining as faculty member should ensure that the same practice of politics and making bright students suffer should never be allowed further.
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