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I think many people have independently discovered and use this technique. My wife once had a boss who would always find points to argue in any proposal she aut
by fsagx 5y ago
I think many people have independently discovered and use this technique. My wife once had a boss who would always find points to argue in any proposal she authored. She began adding at least one spelling or grammatical error to every document. He red-penned those, and his inner critic was satisfied. The points that really mattered went unopposed.
- bookofjoe 5y agoYou are spot-on! Back when I was an anesthesiology research fellow (U.C.L.A. Department of Anesthesiology, 1979) I was first author on a number of papers resulting from my experimental work. As was expected and routine, I passed my manuscripts on to my research director for editing. Invariably he'd make changes each time I submitted a freshly typed revised draft. One day I noticed he'd changed some things back from the way he'd revised them to my original wording. From then on, I submitted papers for publication when I felt they were ready. And they were accepted for publication.
- karaterobot 5y agoDefinitely a thing that gets independently discovered over and over. I'd heard this described the "hairy arm technique[1]", with similar setup as the Queen's Duck anecdote, but a hairy arm instead of a duck. I remember reading about it and thinking "oh, so that's the name for that". The Queen's Duck is a catchier name though! [1] https://lifehacker.com/use-the-hairy-arm-technique-to-deal-with-overly-critica-1475508532 https://lifehacker.com/use-the-hairy-arm-technique-to-deal-w...
- jiscariot 5y agoI know an electrician who will reverse polarity on a couple of outlets when they do a large job. It gives the inspectors something to mark down and is an easy fix.
- sam_bristow 5y agoThe other side of this is 'brown M&M' issues. Sometimes small mistakes will cause a reviewer to go over things much more thoroughly than they otherwise would.
- evan_ 5y agoJust so like as they remember to go back and fix them if the inspector doesn’t catch the mistake…