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A bot crawled thousands of studies looking for simple math errors

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Re: A bot crawled thousands of studies looking for simple math errors

#71

Post by danharaj »

munificent wrote: post #33

> There’s a big, uncomfortable question of how to criticize past work, and whether online critiques of past work constitute “bullying” or shaming. Science is fundamentally reputation-driven. One of, if not the primary incentive that encourages scientists to do science work is the chance of raising their prestige. Citations are one very quantifiable yardstick for this. If positive social sanctions are a driving force…

Shaming becomes another power structure that allows the influential to bully their peers. It's not so simple as you suggest.

Re: A bot crawled thousands of studies looking for simple math errors

#72

Post by Mithaldu »

dahart wrote: post #59
Mithaldu wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> unsolicited error reports for already published papers, and I can understand being initially irritated Please don't see this as me attacking you, i am genuinely baffled by what you said and would like to understand your thinking. How exactly could you possibly have any sort of understanding for that? How would you feel about a software author being irritated by unsolicited error reports? If that irritation is less…

> How exactly could you possibly have any sort of understanding for that? I'm also confused by your question, so I can relate to you. :) Despite your warning, the way you phrased that question does sound like an attack, it implies that you know my experience does not allow me to speak on this subject, which you do not know. Why is it hard to think that I can empathize? What do you think you know about me that makes i…

> it implies that you know my experience does not allow me to speak on this subject

Not in the least my intention. I could not understand how anyone, regardless of knowledge level, could empathize with the quote as stated.

From your response, it seems then that your quote wasn't meant in the way it seemed to me. It's not even the unsolicited nature of the report, but any error that causes irritation, and while possibly felt in the direction of the messenger, ultimately caused by the system being ... Well. Broken.

Thanks for the in-depth explanation. :)

Re: A bot crawled thousands of studies looking for simple math errors

#73

Post by thaw13579 »

c3534l wrote: post #57
thaw13579 wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> That anyone in the field of psychology would even be comfortable publically espousing a non-scientific worldview like that means that psychologists are not being properly educated in the scientific method. This is a generalization about psychologists from a sample size of one psychologist, to suggest that they don't understand science?

Hey, I did say "if" at the start of my little rant. You're right that I don't know how embedded this attitude is in psychology, but I am often dispirited by the attitude towards verification these days based on a number of different things I've read.

It can be dispiriting, but I think there is also a lot of good science being done that is too boring to hit the radar.

Re: A bot crawled thousands of studies looking for simple math errors

#74

Post by agumonkey »

dmd wrote: post #43
c3534l wrote: post #34

> and whether online critiques of past work constitute “bullying” or shaming. The PubPeer comments are just a tiny part of that debate. But it can hit a nerve. > Susan Fiske, a former president of the Association for Psychological Science, alluded to Statcheck in an interview with Business Insider, calling it a “gotcha algorithm.” > The draft of the article said these online critics were engaging in “methodological t…

I took a class with Susan Fiske in grad school, and the following is a quote from one of her comments on a homework where I had called into question a paper that was clearly not just statistically incorrectly done but was based on urban-legend-level assumptions: "These results are from respected investigators, so it's inappropriate to question them."

I've seen churches with more skepticism.

Re: A bot crawled thousands of studies looking for simple math errors

#75

Post by emodendroket »

csallen wrote: post #35
c3534l wrote: post #34

> and whether online critiques of past work constitute “bullying” or shaming. The PubPeer comments are just a tiny part of that debate. But it can hit a nerve. > Susan Fiske, a former president of the Association for Psychological Science, alluded to Statcheck in an interview with Business Insider, calling it a “gotcha algorithm.” > The draft of the article said these online critics were engaging in “methodological t…

You left out this part: > The gist of her article was that she feared too much of the criticism of past work had been ceded to social media, and that the criticism there is taking on an uncivil tone. So it seems to me, her complaint was not that research shouldn't be criticized. It was more-so that research should be criticized well , and that social media is a poor place for it, because it favors personal attacks ov…

Personal attacks in academia aren't really unheard of.

Re: A bot crawled thousands of studies looking for simple math errors

#76

Post by zeveb »

alphonsegaston wrote: post #60
zeveb wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I am pretty sure taking issue with masculinity or "gendered" text is not the same thing as taking issue with objectivity. Well, since English is a gendered language, taking issue with 'gendered' text is taking issue with the objective reality that … English is a gendered language.

Aside from things like pronouns, English hasn't been gendered since the 14th century: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gender_in_English

'Aside from that Mrs. Lincoln, how was the play?'

Pronouns are precisely what folks who complain about gender in English are complaining about (well, that and words like 'mankind').

Re: A bot crawled thousands of studies looking for simple math errors

#77

Post by dahart »

c3534l wrote: post #34

> and whether online critiques of past work constitute “bullying” or shaming. The PubPeer comments are just a tiny part of that debate. But it can hit a nerve. > Susan Fiske, a former president of the Association for Psychological Science, alluded to Statcheck in an interview with Business Insider, calling it a “gotcha algorithm.” > The draft of the article said these online critics were engaging in “methodological t…

> If these are attitudes typical of psychology, then I cannot say I consider psychology to be a proper social science.

It's quite unscientific to draw a blanket conclusion like that about a field based on the anecdotal evidence of one named person and some unnamed "critics".

Let's get some statistics before casting doubt on the entire field of psychology.

I think most people are trying to get by and to be good. My personal experience in academics is that the vast, vast majority of students and teachers just want to study their art or science and contribute to their community without having to spin or sell to get funding. Some of the people that you hear about in articles get attention because they like attention, and they will happily say opinionated, contentious and unscientific things because it gets talked about.

There are bad actors with high levels self interest in all fields of study and work, so really the only scientific conclusion you can come to is that not all humans are perfect.

Re: A bot crawled thousands of studies looking for simple math errors

#78

Post by SerLava »

6stringmerc wrote: post #19

What a clever and, dare I say it, fantastically useful experiment! So much less harm than even "door knob twisting" type explorations - no, this was using published works and pretty much running them through a process to verify or not verify accuracy. Unsolicited? So what! As a practiced writer I make unsolicited judgments on language usage all the time. Are these people that completely write from their own minds and…

Certainly not bullying. It's actually shocking to me that these studies could have been published without running a similar check on all of the arithmetic. The technology to automate this has been possible for decades.

Re: A bot crawled thousands of studies looking for simple math errors

#79

Post by Practicality »

danharaj wrote: post #69
Practicality wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The equating of objective facts with "male-dominant views" is just bizarre. I mean, seriously, they are saying that in the feminist view is that there is no objective reality? I suppose they are saying that feminists... don't live in... reality. You can't make this stuff up. At least they're up front about it, I suppose.

A fact is a human construct. It is a symbol. You just conflated facts with reality. A cursory examination of reality will reveal that observations of reality are observer dependent. So what is an objective fact? An objective fact must be one that is covariant in change of observer interpreting the fact. Physical laws like General Relativity are covariant in this way: the facts of relativity differ symbolically depend…

Ok. So this is semantics and in this science there is a different meaning for the word "fact."

What is the utility of redefining a fact as a human construct of accepted information, rather than as data points corresponding to components of objective reality?

Re: A bot crawled thousands of studies looking for simple math errors

#80

Post by marcosdumay »

mturmon wrote: post #70
douche wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I guess I can accuse my compiler of bullying me.

Bully it back with: $ cc test.c || sudo rm -f $(which cc) "Listen, cc, we can do this the easy way, or the hard way..."

Just make sure you don't make a mistake on that command. You don't want to get into MAD with the shell.
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