The NIPS experiment « Machine Learning (Theory)

Corinna Cortes and Neil Lawrence ran the NIPS experiment where 1/10th of papers submitted to NIPS went through the NIPS review process twice, and then the accept/reject decision was compared. This was a great experiment, so kudos to NIPS for being willing to do it and to Corinna & Neil for doing it. The 26% disagreement rate presented at the conference understates the meaning in my opinion, given the 22% acceptance rate. The immediate implication is that between 1/2 and 2/3 of papers accepted at NIPS would have been rejected if reviewed a second time. For analysis details and discussion about that, see here.