We want more!

Nature Journal has posted a very interesting six-minutes video based on a new study, proving that humans have a strong tendency to solve problems by adding something, even if the problems would be solved more efficiently by taking something away. For example, when people are asked to stabilize a wobbly structure that could be fixed by taking out one building block, they rather add three or more pieces to solve this issue. This finding strongly resonates with my experience from the circulation of manuscripts for approval. The change requests I receive are overwhelmingly either substitutions, usually with more complicated terms than before, or additions. To be honest, I thought this happens because people want to see their footprint in a piece of work but now it seems they are just acting out of a subconscious evolutionary habit.

What was even more interesting in this study is the following finding: If the investigators told their subjects that removing building blocks was free, but adding a building block would cost 10 cents, more subjects were motivated to removed pieces instead of adding them. Again, this finding is reflected in experiences with internal manuscript reviews. If reviewers are told that further addition to a text would possibly push it over the word limit set by a journal, the number of additions drops and substitutions are less wordy. Finally, the investigators checked if subjects were performing worse in taking things away to solve a problem if they had to perform a second task in parallel (they had to watch a line of numbers and hit a key if a five appeared). Unsurprisingly, they were less likely to subtract under this “cognitive load”. So if you receive a manuscript with a lot of additions and few subtractions, it may indicate that the reviewer was not very focused on the task? But maybe that is a bit of overstretching the evidence. The best indication for a lack of attention to a manuscript still is receiving it with an OK and without revisions – or did you ever read a paper without finding something you wanted to change?