Peer Review (If You Can Survive It)

Most academics love to share horror stories about the day their papers were shredded to pieces by "The Big Name" at the national convention. For Iraqi historians, to escape with a verbal upbraiding was something to be thankful for:

"One Iraqi historian told me with some embarrassment that Saddam used to insist on coming to the meetings of the Iraqi Historical Association and giving a long-winded paper. The historians in attendance, of course, could not present any serious historical findings under such circumstances. This, even though Iraqi historians often had a first-rate training and some did serious archival work." (Juan Cole, Informed Comment blog, Tuesday, July 19, 2005).