Pedro Domingos

It's alarming that NeurIPS papers are being rejected based on "ethics reviews". How do we guard against ideological biases in such reviews? Since when are scientific conferences in the business of policing the perceived ethics of technical papers?

Hi Pedro, I helped create the NeurIPS ethical review process. Looks like there's a healthy discussion going on here already, but let me know if I can answer any specific questions. Up front, I should say that the ethical reviewers gave feedback; they did not accept/reject papers.

Hi Raia, my point is that papers are being rejected based on this "ethical review", and I object to that. The papers' ethics should be evaluated by the readers, not pre-emptively by what is effectively a censorship board.

My point is that papers are being rejected based on this “scientific review”, and I object to that. The papers’ scientific merits should be evaluated by the readers, not pre-emptively by what is effectively a censorship board.

The purpose of a program committee is to save readers time by filtering out papers that are not worth their time, not to filter them out based on ideology. I welcome the first and reject the second, and I hope you do as well.

Wasting readers’ time is one harm that we try to avoid in the scientific review process, but it need not be the only harm that we try to avoid.