Further, she claims that initially she was not allowed to even see the contents of the criticisms, only that the paper needed to be withdrawn.
Let's say you were working on a feature. At the 11th hour, just before it hit production, you get an email telling you to revert everything and scrap the release. Apparently somebody in the company thought it had problems but they won't tell you the problems. Then after prying you do get to see the criticisms and they look like ordinary stuff that is easily addressed in code review rather than fundamental issues. They still won't tell you who made the critiques. Would you be upset?
Fro my understanding, this paper had already passed peer review and been accepted. Google management then decided to block the publication using the IP review process.
Timnit shared the paper a day before the publication deadline, ie, no time for internal review, and someone with a fat finger apparently approved it for submission without the required review.
1) Is the review protocol that requires a two-week review period a peer review process intended to maintain scientific rigor, or an internal controls process intended to prevent unwanted disclosure of trade secrets, PII, etc.?
Repeating the comment at the very top of the thread:
> Maybe different teams are different, but on my previous team within Google AI, we thought the goal of google's pubapproval process was to ensure that internal company IP (eg. details about datasets, details about google compute infra) does not leak to the public, and maybe to shield Google from liability. Nothing more.
If it's not a scientific peer review process, arguments about why scientific peer review is generally anonymous are irrelevant, just like arguments about why, say, code review is generally not anonymous would also be irrelevant. It's a different kind of review process from both of those.
2) In practice, is the two-week review period actually expected / enforced? Other Googlers, including people in her organization, are saying that the two week requirement is a guideline, not a hard rule, and submissions on short notice are regularly accepted without complaint:
https://twitter.com/le_roux_nicolas/status/13346245318860718...
https://twitter.com/ItsNeuronal/status/1334636596113510400
https://twitter.com/lizthegrey/status/1334659334689570817
(I don't work for Google, but I work for another very IP-leak-sensitive employer that does ML stuff, and we have a two-week review period on publications. The two-week rule exists for the purpose of not causing last-minute work for people, but if you miss it, it's totally permissible to bug folks to get it approved, and if they do, it's not considered "someone with a fat finger." It certainly doesn't exist for the purpose of peer review - it's assumed that the venue you're submitting to will do review, and I think everyone understands that someone from your own employer isn't going to be a fair peer reviewer anyway. There is a "technical reviewer" of your choice, but basically they just make sure you're not embarrassing yourself and the company, and there's no requirement for how deeply they review. I think I've gone through the process twice and missed the deadlines both times.)
So, if this "rule" exists on paper, but only exists in practice for her, then this is the textbook definition of unfairness.
