611 You Wrote That Thesis?

Peer review was a job without glory.

First of all, this was an unpaid job. Well, it was paid in things that were unrelated to money, such as journal acknowledgments, positions in the editorial department, free access to journals, discounts on thesis processing charges, etc.

Secondly, being able to judge whether something esoteric was correct or not, was very difficult in and of itself.

If it were a normal proposition, it was fine, but when it came to a world-class problem like the Yang-Mills equations, there was no room for error. Every line in the thesis had to be carefully reviewed by reviewers.

The reason why people would accept this job, other than for the reputation of being a reviewer for a well-known journal, was more out of social goodwill and a sense of purpose for being a scientific research gatekeeper.