So much of academia is about connections and reputation laundering
statmodeling.stat.columbia.edu
So much of academia is about connections and reputation laundering
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Re: So much of academia is about connections and reputation laundering
#2It's not clear what technical content this post has. A cubic polynomial vs time would be a terrible idea, but the dashed and/or dotted red line (that people seem upset about) is obviously not a cubic polynomial vs time.
At that point I run out of guesses about exactly what's being said by anybody.
Re: So much of academia is about connections and reputation laundering
#3This is seen even in very technical fields, such as physics. As the saying goes in poker, if you are in academia and can't spot this person, then it's probably you. It's also a slightly cynical take on imposter's syndrome, in a way.
Re: So much of academia is about connections and reputation laundering
#4Very difficult to understand what's going here, through the snark, personal abuse, name calling, and political bias. Everyone's trying to communicate through increasingly scathing Tweets and declaring each time that the previous Tweet is yet another new low point. Not a useful way for anyone to get a point across. Everyone should be embarrassed.
Re: So much of academia is about connections and reputation laundering
#5s/academia/every career/g
Re: So much of academia is about connections and reputation laundering
#6Headline and article content don't line up very well. Actual (short) body of article makes the point that when people in positions of power don't have significant training in statistics, it isn't surprising that they don't understand statistics. But that they do need to understand how much they don't understand. The article says next to nothing about gaming of professional achievement in academia.
Re: So much of academia is about connections and reputation laundering
#7This is seen even in very technical fields, such as physics. As the saying goes in poker, if you are in academia and can't spot this person, then it's probably you. It's also a slightly cynical take on imposter's syndrome, in a way.
Could you elaborate on this latter point further? I guess maybe I have impostor's syndrome but I have a hard time understanding how you could ever tell if you are that person or not. Imagine the following that I saw on a poker video recently:
You have a table full of top-tier poker players and you have a rookie who won a contest to be in a game alongside them. The rookie is playing absolutely terrible, the commentators are cringing at the moves the rookie is making. The other players are clearly doing things to take advantage of the rookies playing style. Yet at the same time, the rookie comes out in 3rd place, up 50k from their buy in at the start of the night. 3 seasoned award winning professionals are all net-negative for the night, some of which are -150k from where they started after 150 hands played.
Is this rookie an impostor or not? Does it matter that the rookie is an impostor if he is still beating people who verifiably are not impostors over the average of 150 separate hands?
I guess all this is to say that I don't get what value using the impostor's syndrome framing gives us.
Re: So much of academia is about connections and reputation laundering
#8It's not clear what technical content this post has. A cubic polynomial vs time would be a terrible idea, but the dashed and/or dotted red line (that people seem upset about) is obviously not a cubic polynomial vs time. At that point I run out of guesses about exactly what's being said by anybody.
I think there's actually two things going on here. There's what this post is talking about, which is a general lack of understanding of statistics, which is likely true and correct, and likely for both reasons that are explored here.
Then there's the reason to actually even talk about this specific instance, which is that there is a complete lack of operating on the assumption of good faith and clarifying intent before making assertions as to other peoples intentions which is rampant currently. Whether it's rampant on twitter and between political parties or has spilled into other areas such that it's harder to have coherent discussions in general now than it was in years past I'm not sure.
There are a lot of assumptions in that reply to the tweet in question that's shown. It's not even a novel set of assumptions, it's the standard twitter fare of "I assume he means X and this thing doesn't explicitly show X therefore he must not understand what he's talking about." Any nuance such as using a secondary aspect of something to outline a potion of what you mean is immediately ignored, and if pointed out later assumed to be covering up after the fact.
Re: So much of academia is about connections and reputation laundering
#9This is seen even in very technical fields, such as physics. As the saying goes in poker, if you are in academia and can't spot this person, then it's probably you. It's also a slightly cynical take on imposter's syndrome, in a way.
It’s difficult for me to take any discussion of imposter syndrome seriously that doesn’t consider the possibility the subject feels like an imposter because he is. Having been personally acquainted with several such imposters and having never seen such a discussion I’m left to conclude the entire concept is deeply unserious.
Edit: sibling is making much the same point. The concept is only useful if actual imposters can be identified.
Re: So much of academia is about connections and reputation laundering
#10It's not clear what technical content this post has. A cubic polynomial vs time would be a terrible idea, but the dashed and/or dotted red line (that people seem upset about) is obviously not a cubic polynomial vs time. At that point I run out of guesses about exactly what's being said by anybody.
The article may not have technical content, but the title certainly is true: http://pseudoexpertise.com/