I hated my job. I had tried to learn to like it, but I hated it all the same. The organization had moved me from a job I really liked to this job. They called it a promotion; I called it a descent into hell. But as much as I hated the job, I could not afford to lose it. So I stuck with it.
The route to the new job was also paved with broken promises. I had been promised I could choose my assistant. At the last minute, I was told I would be working with the assistant currently on the job. I had no great liking or respect for her and she undoubtedly felt the same way about me. It was an uneasy alliance at best. Management made other promises, too, but somehow none came to fruition.
The job was working for a scientific membership society. Membership societies basically do two things: hold meetings and publish things. This society held two national meetings each year. Scientists from around the world would submit papers to be presented at the meeting, and then attendees would receive a large publication containing 900-word summaries of all the papers.
I copy edited those very dry, technical summary papers. Turnaround time was insanely short, meaning I worked long hours and weekends for months at a time.
In the summer of 1981, more than 1,000 summaries arrived for our winter meeting. Once these summaries were read and judged by panels of peers, some 900 were accepted and arranged into sessions and days. The weeklong meeting where these summaries were judged was called the review meeting. Once the review meeting was over, my copy editing job began in earnest.
But, during the weeks before the review meeting, during the very boring logging-in process, my assistant and I had a little time on our hands. We temporarily set aside our mutual antipathy and hit upon the idea of submitting fake papers from South Africa.
At the time, South Africa was an international pariah because of its racial apartheid policy, and few South African scientists traveled to conferences. Having a South African on a panel would be quite a coup for the society.
We wrote up two papers, logged them in and slipped them into the appropriate folders for peer review. We deliberately made them somewhat comical so the reviewers would have a good laugh before rejecting them. We thought we were really funny.
Except, at the review meeting, one of the papers was accepted for presentation — as the lead paper in a session, no less. Now we were in trouble.
First we had to confess our sin to the volunteers in charge of this particular meeting. They were both amused and horrified. Amused that we had done such a thing and horrified that the paper had passed review.
We offered to resign and, since there was so much work to done before the meeting, as expected they rejected that offer. They discussed the situation and someone even suggested forming a task force. Ultimately, however, they decided that no actual harm had been done; the paper was quietly withdrawn from the session it had been assigned to, and no more was said.
But, once we came home from the review meeting, we still had to face our boss, the executive director. He might not be so understanding. We steeled ourselves to ask his secretary for a few minutes of his time and walked into his office.
He was sitting sideways at his desk with one leg in a cast, raised onto a table. He had broken his leg while we were at the review meeting and would be in a cast for months. He did not look happy to see us.
We confessed our crime and sat waiting for the consequences. He started to lecture us on scientific integrity and the sanctity of the paper review process, when he began to laugh. He laughed so hard I was afraid he was going to fall off his chair and break the other leg. He told us to go back to work, and we got the heck out of there before he could change his mind. Our jobs were safe.
These days, papers are shared for review electronically, so the review meeting is a thing of the past. And as far as I know, in the years since, no one has tried to submit a fake paper to one of the organization’s conferences.
As for me, to my relief, within a year I was assigned back to my old job, the one I loved. This dismal chapter of my life was over.
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