My PhD advisor told me to read a particular journal article that he attached in an email. In doing so, I became confused about something the authors said. I emailed my advisor (he and I share emails frequently, so asking him for help is not unusual) asking him about the issue, mentioning that the authors seem to be saying something different from what I understood to be true. The paper is mathematical, so the claims in proofs are either true or not. My advisor sent the following reply, quoted here in its entirety:
I’ve stated numerous times on this board that I have depression and anxiety, am seeing a therapist, am on medication, etc. I’ve also had lots of stress lately in my program, now that I’m in the dissertation phase. That said, the email quoted above sounds snarky to me. When I read the words, I hear, “Jesus, don’t be so damned obtuse. It’s an advanced statistics paper. The authors expect that people who read it know something, which you clearly don’t.”
Looks like your advisor is snarky to the author, not you. He’s saying they were lazy and careless with their explanation by expecting the reader to immediately fill in the fuzziness correctly.
Out of context, no I don’t think that’s snarky at all. He answered your question and followed up with some musing about why it was written that way. He’s your advisor so he gets to share nuggets of wisdom with you.
Then he would have said “The authors assume prior knowledge of __.” And he didn’t say that.
I don’t know your advisor, or what “less than or equal to alpha” means, so take what I have to say with a grain of salt – but I didn’t get snarky out of that.
My guess at translation: “The authors dumbed it down for the general readership, but in doing so actually made it less accurate. Most people wouldn’t be smart enough to catch that, but you did.”
That was how I read it as well. The authors took a loose path, rather than taking the time to write it out correctly as they should have for a journal article.
Not that you probably need yet another opinion at this point, but I’m with the rest who think that if there’s any snark here, it’s directed at the authors for not being precise in a mathematical paper.
Quite. Given the context we have, it wouldn’t surprise me if the advisor is highly critical of the authors. If it were me, I’d assume the authors were playing a sort of word game where things are phrased deliberately ambiguously in order to either get the paper past referees or to cover their own arses in the future.
Joining in the chorus that says that any victims of any snark attack are the authors, not you. I reckon you’re worried/stressed/being over-careful and perhaps seeing issues that aren’t there. (I do sympathise with the depression and anxiety thing, so I hope that can be alleviated).
