Salon des Refusés (“exhibition of rejects”) was an 1863
exhibition of artworks rejected from the official Paris Salon.

With hindsight those excluded from the Salon on the grounds of incompetence included significant number of now highly esteemed painters.

A high proportion of the three thousand rejected works must have been unsuccessful attempts to produce normally academic pictures. Painters took the risk that their work would be seen as incompetent rather than modern.

Academic peer review

Naively, peer review ensures that

• Your measurements are solid
• Your proof is right
• Your methodology is sound
• Your work is in context

Should we have a check-list?

Those are all important, but...

Personal knowledge

All knowing, no matter how formalised, relies upon commitments. Scientific method cannot yield truth mechanically.

How to acknowledge personal
knowledge and allude to it?

Format of critiques

• Present alternative position
• Provide additional context
• Develop idea in a new direction
• Summary of discussion

Classical sources of ideas

Programming language research as
mathematics, science and engineering

Alternative cultures to learn from

• Metaphors, myths and analogies
• Thought experiments
• Literature, performance and other art
• Jokes and science fiction

Modernism in programming research

Self-consciousness about how research is done!

What can we ask? What can we think?

• Foucault's episteme
• Kuhnian paradigms
• Lakatos' research programmes