On Being Commented On
It was a Saturday. I was on my way to lunch when a Slack message came in from my PI: my recent paper had received a commentary, written by Dr. Joshua Roffman at Harvard. My heart started racing. A million thoughts came at once. Did I make a mistake somewhere? Did I overclaim? What if he found the work uninteresting, or not rigorous enough? I knew the work. I had been deliberate about every decision, methodical in the analyses, and conservative about every claim. But there is a difference between knowing you did something carefully and knowing how it will land once it is fully out in the world. ...