Scientists do "hard argument" and are used to it from each other; to outsiders it sounds vicious and petty and nasty and sarcastic. (Well, in fact, it is all those things.)* They take that as the price for really getting scientific work torn apart and every flaw and every fuzzy spot found -- or they _hope_ that happens. Sometimes some flaw isn't seen for a long time after publication and that means other work has to be redone.
I'd urge you to just pretend to be grateful (as the sergeant said to the kids in the trenches as the artillery started falling) -- and keep doing the work you do, knowing it can be better and taking the value from the comments without taking injury or discouragement.
(Peter Watts has a wonderful piece on this at http://www.rifters.com/crawl/?p=886 in which he writes:
"... That’s how science works. It’s not a hippie love-in; it’s rugby. Every time you put out a paper, the guy you pissed off at last year’s Houston conference is gonna be laying in wait. Every time you think you’ve made a breakthrough, that asshole supervisor who told you you needed more data will be standing ready to shoot it down....
This is how it works: you put your model out there in the coliseum, and a bunch of guys in white coats kick the shit out of it. If it’s still alive when the dust clears, your brainchild receives conditional acceptance. It does not get rejected. This time.
Yes, there are mafias. There are those spared the kicking because they have connections. There are established cliques .... I know a couple of people who will probably never get credit for the work they’ve done, for the insights they’ve produced. But the insights themselves prevail. ... The credit may not go to those who deserve it; but the field will have moved forward.
Science is so powerful that it drags us kicking and screaming towards the truth despite our best efforts to avoid it. And it does that at least partly fueled by our pettiness and our rivalries. Science is alchemy: it turns shit into gold ...."
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This kind of 'hacking' at flashlights is like that too. Some of you are honestly good kind people who share encouragement with others. Some people can do the tech but not the kindness. I can't yet do much of the tech, trying to learn in my spare time, and I can fake the kindness (grin) or try to.
Well, "incoming" -- duck your head, plug your ears -- and don't give up, eh?
You do work a whole lot better than I do. I can learn from you -- and faster to the extent you learn from others, even the harsher ones.
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