Ok, this post may be stretching the topic of peer review a bit but I want to talk about the connection between peer review and a full stomach. To explain this proposed connection, I will describe a study that one of my undergraduate professors, Mark Fenske, performed on the connection between Judges' verdicts and when they last ate (I'm sorry I tried to find this paper but couldn't, so you will have to take this description on faith). The study was an examination of the correlation between when a judge determined wether convicts should be released or not and the time when the judge last ate. Fenske discovered that there was a positive correlation between having just ate and and releasing convicts for parole as well as a positive correlation between having not eaten recently and not releasing convicts for parole. In general, when judges had full stomachs, they tended to review convicts more charitably. Ever since I read this paper I have been terrified that my professors will read my assignments on an empty stomach.
So what does this study have to do with peer review: although, in many cases, multiple people are reviewing the same paper during the review process, what if the person who sent the paper for review is plagued with bad luck and all of the reviewers haven't eaten in hours. This topic is intended to seem sort of trivial and lighthearted but point to something deeper: systematic review is still subject to luck and probability because of the complexity of the human condition and the universe as a whole. Following from the tradition of both Aristotle, who argues that moderation of the mind is not enough to succeed, one also needs luck and Spinoza, who argues that beings are specific possibilities within a set of possibilities that must be expressed for the universe to be, I argue that the peer review process requires a full stomach, along with many yet to be determined factors that I operationalize as luck.
The moral of this convoluted post is that even if you write the most amazingly inventive paper and attach a cookie to your paper when you hand in for review, it might still get rejected, so keep trying until you get lucky.
I don't know the exact name of the paper you are referencing but Daniel Kahneman's book Thinking Fast and Thinking Slow addresses this exact case. His book goes on to talk about our own cognitive bias's which I talk about in my post - he references himself and a study he did to confirm his own bias when grading his students papers...its a great read although it may reaffirm your fears about professor's grading!
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