More South Korean academics caught naming kids as co-authors • Hacker News Board

Re: More South Korean academics caught naming kids as co-authors

#81

Post by esotericn » Wed, Nov 13, 2019, 3:49 AM UTC

wallace_f wrote: post #72

gimmeThaBeet wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To be fair, being ground up and having boiling water poured on you isn't completely unlike grad school.

Having worked on farms, with mechanics, and with grad students, I tend to believe grad students exaggerate their misery. While not always true, most grad students I know tend to have relatively good careers, which they are comparing grad school to. They also tend to be, relatively speaking, born into good fortune with finances and healthy families. This is not universally true, of course, but more often the case than…

Which probably means that they're not exaggerating their misery.

The human experience is relative. If you're stronger than you were before you feel strong. If you're poorer than you were before you feel poor.

Manual labour jobs have about as much bearing on how a graduate student feels about their day to day as does a gazelle being eaten by a lion.

Re: More South Korean academics caught naming kids as co-authors

#82

Post by koolba » Wed, Nov 13, 2019, 3:56 AM UTC

shard wrote: post #75

cortesoft wrote: post #22

Who thought it was a good idea to use academic paper authorship as a selection criteria for university!? There can't be enough high school kids writing academic papers for it to be that helpful, and certainly encourages this kind of cheating.

It wasn't that hard for me to be a co-author on a scientific paper in high school. I just walked into some research hospitals, asked if anyone there wanted some help, and worked with some researchers after school a few times a week. I did the lab work, the charts and graphs, and the first rough draft of the paper. The researchers provided the analysis and conclusions and finalized the paper. And voila! A few months l…

That’s sounds like it’d be an exceptional selection criteria. It shows hard work, dedication, follow through, and especially gumption.

How many weeks total were you there?

Re: More South Korean academics caught naming kids as co-authors

#83

Post by chmod775 » Wed, Nov 13, 2019, 4:08 AM UTC

So in one place of the world professors and higher ranking academics are taking credit for the work of those working under them, in another place academics are giving credit to children who did not even contribute, and in certain disciplines (physics for instance, afaik) it is commonplace to just name everyone working in same the place as you as co-authors, whether they contributed to that specific paper or not.

Let's not forget about ludicrous amounts of bullshit-papers being produced to inflate paper counts and citations.

Whoever thinks paper counts and authorship are good metrics for anything at this point? In fact I believe they are more likely to mislead than be useful.

Re: More South Korean academics caught naming kids as co-authors

#84

Post by [deleted] » Wed, Nov 13, 2019, 4:18 AM UTC

smabie wrote: post #35

qwerty456127 wrote: post #30

> The practice was probably used to improve the children’s chances of securing a university place. The fact the competition to get into a university is so hard you need to co-author a scientific paper for this is the problem. Education should be accessible for everybody.

It is. It’s called the library.

[deleted]

Re: More South Korean academics caught naming kids as co-authors

#85

Post by [deleted] » Wed, Nov 13, 2019, 4:19 AM UTC

smabie wrote: post #35

qwerty456127 wrote: post #30

> The practice was probably used to improve the children’s chances of securing a university place. The fact the competition to get into a university is so hard you need to co-author a scientific paper for this is the problem. Education should be accessible for everybody.

It is. It’s called the library.

[deleted]

Re: More South Korean academics caught naming kids as co-authors

#86

Post by chmod775 » Wed, Nov 13, 2019, 4:19 AM UTC

smabie wrote: post #35

qwerty456127 wrote: post #30

> The practice was probably used to improve the children’s chances of securing a university place. The fact the competition to get into a university is so hard you need to co-author a scientific paper for this is the problem. Education should be accessible for everybody.

It is. It’s called the library.

If you just want to learn about the theoretical side of things or if your discipline is purely theoretical (maths, etc.), then sure: You can learn from books and online materials, though chances are good it will go wrong in some way.

For instance in a field like maths it can be important to have someone correct you if you got some fundamentals wrong and it is hard to learn how to formulate a proper proof without someone checking and correcting your first attempts. It can be done, it might just take you a lot longer.

Other areas however require labs and expensive equipment for the practical applications. Some skills you can't learn from books alone.

That would be (almost) like saying: You don't need an actual bicycle to learn riding one, just read a book!

Re: More South Korean academics caught naming kids as co-authors

#87

Post by doctorpangloss » Wed, Nov 13, 2019, 4:43 AM UTC

cortesoft wrote: post #22

Who thought it was a good idea to use academic paper authorship as a selection criteria for university!? There can't be enough high school kids writing academic papers for it to be that helpful, and certainly encourages this kind of cheating.

AP Capstone introduces two research focused classes with pretty high academic rigor, I think it’s great for college prep. We should do more research not less.

Re: More South Korean academics caught naming kids as co-authors

#88

Post by pen2l » Wed, Nov 13, 2019, 5:41 AM UTC

koolba wrote: post #82

shard wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It wasn't that hard for me to be a co-author on a scientific paper in high school. I just walked into some research hospitals, asked if anyone there wanted some help, and worked with some researchers after school a few times a week. I did the lab work, the charts and graphs, and the first rough draft of the paper. The researchers provided the analysis and conclusions and finalized the paper. And voila! A few months l…

That’s sounds like it’d be an exceptional selection criteria. It shows hard work, dedication, follow through, and especially gumption. How many weeks total were you there?

It also sounds pretty unbelievable.

You can't really just walk into some research hospitals and somehow find yourself talking to the right person who will get you in as a research intern. In my experiences, sadly, virtually all research interns are basically just the PI/member-of-lab's daughter/son or a collaborator's children/relatives.

One reason I can think of as to why this is is that you do really need a filter, because not having a filter will cost you immense time. It just turns out that references -- which are bound to be from your close friends and relatives -- are a signal one tends to trust.

Re: More South Korean academics caught naming kids as co-authors

#89

Post by barry-cotter » Wed, Nov 13, 2019, 5:50 AM UTC

qwerty456127 wrote: post #63

smabie wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It is. It’s called the library.

A library won't issue you a diploma employers/states would recognize.

He said education, not certification. Education happens in your head, not in a database where you have x qualification or not.

Re: More South Korean academics caught naming kids as co-authors

#90

Post by barry-cotter » Wed, Nov 13, 2019, 6:00 AM UTC

starpilot wrote: post #33

sithadmin wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've seen this happen in the US among my peers when I was in high school (mid 2000's). Parents with roles in medical / biomed research were by far the most prevalent offenders.

Yeah, similar with the (formerly Intel) Regeneron Science Talent Search. Every kid happens to have a parent who's an eminent researcher of some kind.

That would be more or less the expected outcome if there was no cheating of any kind going on. If you grow up in a household where the dinner table conversation is about carpentry you’ll pick up a lot of background knowledge by osmosis and if you show the slightest actual interest most parents are very happy to share what they’re interested in with their child. Very few people become researchers without being comparatively obsessed with their field. Having family in a lab also means your path to working there is a lot easier because if you screw something up it’ll reflect badly on whoever brought you in.

I’m sure there are tons of fraudulent papers “written” by teenagers but they’re certainly not all fraudulent.