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[totoro]

I found this article pretty weird:

http://chronicle.com/article/Straight-Queer-or-Academic-/130329/

Not for the sexual side of it so much as for the negativity attached to collaboration. Actually, I've often been surprised to find that collaborators are actually married, rather than the reverse. Though as I comment, I've certainly "transgressed the boundaries"...

[larryc]

The article is damned weird. I am in the humanities, I have worked on a ton of collaborative projects, and not a word of this article rings true to me. The authors are projecting from a pretty unusual (and toxic) set of experiences. Or perhaps their imaginations. In any case it is a load of tripe.

[systeme_d_]

What a bizarre article.

I know folks in the humanities who collaborate, and none of this very strange stuff has come up for them, as far as I know.  I can't help but think the authors of the article are extreme outliers.

[oldfullprof]

I don't like to collaborate.  The few times I've actually done it, I was already "involved" with the collaborator, however (first.)

[_touchedbyanoodle_]

I think that article came from a different dimension. Weird.

[pournelle]

Collaboration is overrated:

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/01/15/opinion/sunday/the-rise-of-the-new-groupthink.html?src=me&ref=general

[proftowanda]

My research areas have caused a couple of people at conferences to make fools of themselves, based upon their expectations that, say, only basketweavers research basketweaving.  I've wondered, at times, whether historians have to be dead to research dead people?

So what?  So there are a few fools everywhere.  This essay extrapolates from a few fools to make sweeping generalizations, one of the major pitfalls for poor researchers.

[mountainguy]

I have some familiarity with one of the programs employing these authors. The hysterical tone is par for the course.

My *favorite* paragraph was this:

"Then there are the conventional norms (hetero, homo, and gender) that shape institutional hierarchies and public domains—norms in which sexuality trumps collegiality. Academic couplings have to be sexual in some way because men will never resist going all the way with their friends under the right circumstances ... or so the manifold stories of fraternity parties, business conventions, and workplace romances would seem to confirm. Orientation isn't particularly relevant either—male collaborators become sexually coupled in the minds of many of their colleagues, just as a male-female collaborating couple is often perceived as straight."

My immediate reactions:

1) Evidence, please?
2) Straw man much?
3) Do you seriously use words like "hetero and homo" without suffixes attached when addressing other academics?
4) Why are you grouping "hetero and homo" with "gender?" Didn't you read Judith Butler in grad school?
5) You've solved the two-body problem. Stop feeling sorry for yourelves.
6) As an extension of #5, no one else cares that you think you're oppressed because you have an androgynous first name.
7) Yes, people assume all the time that my openly lesbian colleague and I are a romantic couple when we hang out at conferences together. It's clearly a major concern that should be high on our field's list of public priorities. NOT.

[larryc]

The Chronicle will print anything.

[cranefly]

Bizarre. I regularly collaborate with a number of different people. Does that make me a whore?
Ignoring the stupid sexual  side of the argument, what gets to me is this:

"If it were 'natural,' promotion-and-tenure criteria would multiply rather than split the credit for collaboratively done projects, rewarding rather than punishing scholars for such work. Six months of work is six months of work"

I don't agree with this at all. We are not rewarded for "six months of work". We are rewarded for getting articles into journals. If two people work on the article, each individual did less than a full article. I get out three times as many articles as my non-collaborative colleagues, because I split the work between the group of us that work on those articles. I don't expect full credit for each one.

If you work in a collaboration and together only accomplish the work of one person, why should you receive full credit?  If you're putting in twice the work, you need to find a new person to collaborate with.

[madhatter]

I can't wait until I'm in a committee meeting and an argument breaks out. I'm going to jump in with, "What's going on here? Is sexuality trumping collegiality again?"

[larryc]

"Is sexuality trumping collegiality again?"

Each of us should try to work this sentence int one conversation today.

[oldfullprof]

I liked the way they handled it in The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo. 

[quasihumanist]

I don't agree with this at all. We are not rewarded for "six months of work". We are rewarded for getting articles into journals. If two people work on the article, each individual did less than a full article. I get out three times as many articles as my non-collaborative colleagues, because I split the work between the group of us that work on those articles. I don't expect full credit for each one.

Actually, in my recent joint work, having two authors has made the papers twice as long rather than half as much work per person.

In our opinions, the papers are also more than twice as good, which is why we didn't split them back up into two (or more) papers.

Hmm - someone should do a study - are collaborative papers (within a single (sub)field) longer (on average and in distribution)?  Does it keep going up with the number of collaborators?  Less quantitatively - did they need to be longer, or is it just that more authors insist on more excess verbiage?

[deadcatbounce]

I didn't like this article at all, but my experience as chair of a large humanities department is that collaborative work is consistently undervalued in the humanities by merit, tenure and promotion committees, and that a jointly authored book, article or chapter counts for a small fraction of what a sole-authored book, article or chapter counts for.