Reviewing a festschrift: what are we doing with our scientific lives?

Abstract

Writing reviews of festschrifts is a dangerous occupation for at least two reasons. A review of a festschrift may mistakenly be treated as a review of the person whom it is intended to honour. Even if this misunderstanding is avoided, a review of a festschrift is fraught with unknown risks, like a walk along a dark road on a stormy night. It affects a network of people who know one another in mysterious ways. Who better than ecologists to know that negative feedback in one area of a network may provoke catastrophic responses from another unexpected area of the network? Or, to put it in more colloquial terms, 'let sleeping dogs lie'. My own recent experience in this area is that sleeping dogs may not only be testy when awakened, they may be positively rabid (Harvey 1990). Life is short, and who needs more enemies, right? (Reviewing an ordinary symposium volume may give similar problems, but I will concentrate on festschrifts now.) Not long ago I spoke to a colleague who privately voiced misgivings about a festschrift he was reviewing. (I thought 'mixed feelings' was actually a charitable assessment.) Yet when the review appeared, it was as if the reviewer had experienced a miraculous conversion on the road to Damascus. Presumably he had considered the above constraints, and stepped quietly around the dog. Even if one avoids these two political minefields, reviewing a festschrift can strike at the heart of our deepest, darkest fears as ecologists: what are we doing with our scientific lives? Are we really getting anywhere? Recent experience with symposia and symposium volumes suggests to me that if the Wright brothers had been ecologists, we would still be sailing to Europe to attend symposia where groups of ecologists discussed the many different shapes and colours of wings one finds in birds and butterflies. Is it our pastime to get together in groups and give erudite papers about old problems citing the latest work of our friends, or is it our profession to make concrete progress towards solving real problems? I enjoy going out for a beer with friends as much as the next person (and possibly more), but don't need a scholarly symposium as an excuse to socialize. I am increasingly convinced, however, that many practitioners of ecology enjoy getting together to talk about the plants and animals they have seen, without any real concern for the discipline. Peters (1980) has already written about this distinction between natural history and ecology, but given how rarely this paper is cited, one presumes that this fundamental distinction doesn't trouble most workers on a day-to-day basis. But I digress. Being aware of the above pitfalls, let me lay out in advance four criteria which we may use to evaluate festschrifts. I offer them here explicitly in the hope that they will constrain future reviewers, and future planning committees for festschrifts (and symposium volumes in general). 1. Is there a clear, focused, timely theme? 2. Does the literature cited provide students with an overview of key references? 3. Are there significant new insights into the selected theme? 4. If none of the above, do the papers at least illustrate the diversity of approaches being used, providing graduate students with a tool box?