Publishing desk
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For potential participants
What you would actually do here.
The point is not to arrive knowing everything. It is to show your assumptions, respond to feedback, and leave the work easier for another reader to audit.
Your name stays with your work.
Published contributions would carry a named byline. Editing sharpens the piece; it does not erase the author or turn every voice into mine.
Educational work, not client work.
Fellows would be student contributors—not employees, advisers, portfolio managers, or representatives soliciting money or trades.
Gate 04 · Challenge
What review would actually check.
Every desk goes through the same six gates, but the fourth one — a peer whose job is to find the weak link — looks for different things depending on what you built. These are the checks a reviewer on the Research desk would run first, roughly in order.
A piece that fails the first check does not get read for the others. That is deliberate: it keeps review honest about what actually disqualifies work.
Before you write it
How this desk goes wrong.
Each desk has characteristic failure modes — the specific ways competent, well-intentioned work on the Research desk still ends up not being worth publishing. Naming them in advance is cheaper than finding them in review.
None of these are hypothetical — they are the mistakes I have made on this site and had to correct in public. The Research Standards page exists largely because of them.
A possible first assignment
- Define the question and the reader.
- Build the evidence file and disclose what is missing.
- Submit a draft for a real countercase review.
- Revise, source, and publish under your own name.
Current status
Interested later? Here is how to prepare now.
Applications are not open yet, and I am not collecting names through a pretend waitlist. A strong future participant will be able to bring one question they genuinely care about, one sample of how they think, and a willingness to let another student challenge the work before it is published.
The program should be valuable because the work is real—not because the title sounds impressive.
Read the full Fellows standard