
Using peer review to avoid a computing-induced apocalypse - dfjg
https://acm-fca.org/2018/03/29/negativeimpacts/
======
jsteinhardt
I think the proposal is directionally correct, but a bit too sweeping. Saying
that "every paper should have a societal impacts section" is naively
prescriptive, as can be seen by comparing to statements such as "every paper
should have an experiments section" (false for theory papers), or "every paper
should have a future work section" (in some papers, future work is folded into
the intro).

On the other hand, I am in favor of the idea of holding claims about societal
impact to a higher standard of rigor (although worry that the effect might
simply be for people to stop making such claims altogether). I also think that
encouraging (but not mandating) greater discussion of societal impact would be
very positive.

Here is an alternative proposal, motivated by the often space-limited
conference format used in computer science: allow for an _optional extra page
specifically dedicated to addressing societal impacts of the work_. Reviewers
are free to read or ignore this page as they choose, but crucially, this page
does not count towards the page limit of the conference.

The goal of the above proposal is to eliminate the need for authors to choose
between addressing societal impact and intellectual impact in a paper (even if
I care a lot about the former, I know that most reviewers [correctly, in my
opinion] care more about the latter, so there is a strong disincentive to
spend space on the former given a strict page limit).

