[lambdatronics]

> need to sex up the language to convince some editor.

I hated this pressure. I wrote up the core of my thesis as a manuscript for a second-tier journal, but my advisor though I had a shot at a first-tier publication. I disagreed, but I rewrote the paper anyway, and had to significantly rework/descope it. It ultimately wasn't accepted for the first-tier journal, so I rewrote it a second time for the original journal. The whole process was immensely frustrating (cat-herding coauthors, playing volleyball with editors/referees, trying to discern whether my concerns about overselling my results were legitimate issues of integrity vs. instances of imposter syndrome, ...).

I fell in love with the hard sciences because "reality must take precedence over public relations, for Nature cannot be fooled." [Richard Feynman] Finding out how much PR is actually involved was hugely disillusioning.