Perlman, M., Clemente, E.C., Graham, L. et al
A manuscript submitted for publication in Nature Communications by Dr. Heidi Merrill was rejected earlier this week due to author Dr. Merrill’s unusually low confidence level in herself.
“I’m not sure why Dr. Merill isn’t more confident,” commented Reviewer #2. “Her conclusions were well supported, but it was really distracting to read ‘does that make sense??’ so many times in a single paper.”
“Dr. Merrill’s research was quite impressive,” explained Publishing Director Nataniel West. “The experiments were extremely well-designed and the statistical analyses were very robust. However, the author ended the manuscript with ‘idk idk lol,’ which made our editorial staff uncomfortable publishing the work.”
“She also tried to list ‘dumb luck’ as first author, which seemed unprofessional,” West added.
“Heidi asked me for feedback on the first draft,” noted coworker Dr. Adrian Lovett. “I told her not to title the manuscript ‘So I Did A Thing,’ especially since she worked on it tirelessly for months. However, her back-up title was ‘I Think I Used CRISPR Right But Maybe I’m Stupid?’ so I just gave up.”
Dr. Lovett says Dr. Merrill’s imposter syndrome has lowered her confidence level so much that she likely isn’t sure that she even is a scientist. He added that he may switch his research project to study the negative correlation between ‘time spent in academia’ and ‘confidence levels.’
But not all of Dr. Merrill’s coworkers believe her paper was doomed due to her lack of confidence.
“Heidi’s paper? Yeah, it was cute,” noted Dr. Merrill’s summer student, Travis Chadwick, loudly chewing a sandwich at his desk. “Not as good as the manuscript I hammered out in an hour after getting drinks with my buddy Dave last weekend.”
“That shit is going straight to Cell,” he added, belching.
At press time, Dr. Merrill was unavailable for comment because she was too busy agonizing over how dumb her voice sounds on the phone.
