Potential organized fraud in ACM/IEEE computer architecture conferences • Hacker News Board

Re: Potential organized fraud in ACM/IEEE computer architecture conferences

#81

Post by frequentnapper » Tue, Jun 09, 2020, 12:37 AM UTC

jjjjjj__ wrote: post #9

Fraud? Are you kidding me? I have publication in MICRO with a very famous institution in US. (Top 20). You know how my professor published his paper in MICRO? Relationship! Relationship! Relationship! As a graduate student coming from a third world country, I totally lost my hope on the system when I saw a venue as famous as MICRO, is only based on relationship. Don’t judge me, who can I report it? I am graduate stud…

I saw this in my university too. It's common in many labs (not all) for all the researchers, even masters students who might've just proofread a thesis to put their names in there.

Re: Potential organized fraud in ACM/IEEE computer architecture conferences

#82

Post by BurningFrog » Tue, Jun 09, 2020, 12:37 AM UTC

mhh__ wrote: post #65

BurningFrog wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Seems like Peer Review is hopelessly broken. Conflicts of interest galore. Science did fine without it until ~40 years ago, and it can do so again. I hope.

The solution is still within peer review, I feel. What ethical alternative is there? Required reproduction of the result could be a step forward, but only for cheap research.

I don't think science was unethical before Peer Review.

As I understand it, modern peer review came about as a 'crowd sourcing" solution to the hugely expanding number of articles to publish, in ever more specialized fields.

The journals couldn't keep enough relevant expertise around, so letting the scientists review each other was the simple fix.

Re: Potential organized fraud in ACM/IEEE computer architecture conferences

#83

Post by tnecniv » Tue, Jun 09, 2020, 12:43 AM UTC

light_hue_1 wrote: post #62

screye wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The concept of Double Blind is gone, because papers are out on Arxiv the second work is done on them. Within a small research domain, everyone knows what the other person is working on. You don't know the reviewers, but the reviewers often know who the authors are.

This isn't true at all. In AI, ML, NLP and Computer Vision, for example, conferences tend to be double blind. In robotics they tend to be single blind. Most people are not putting their work up on arxiv before publication, so you can't find that out either.

Often those double blind conferences contain explicit exceptions that let you post on Arxiv. Check the Call for Papers from this year's NeurIPS for example. Obviously you aren't required to put anything on Arxiv, but lots of people want to stake their territory and will post either a preprint or an incomplete version of the paper (e.g. with an example missing).

> In robotics they tend to be single blind.

I just wanted to point out that this does vary a little bit. RSS was double blind this year but ICRA was single blind last I checked.

Re: Potential organized fraud in ACM/IEEE computer architecture conferences

#84

Post by BeetleB » Tue, Jun 09, 2020, 12:45 AM UTC

yutopia wrote: post #27

Academia has become tremendously cutthroat but it still operates under the assumption that everyone acts honorably. Perhaps that’s no longer sustainable, but what is the solution? Many of the problems with modern-day academic research can be traced back to increased scale and competition, neither of which is going away.

> Academia has become tremendously cutthroat but it still operates under the assumption that everyone acts honorably.

I think the problem goes a bit beyond that, in that the notion of what constitutes acting honorably has changed.

Re: Potential organized fraud in ACM/IEEE computer architecture conferences

#85

Post by zoomablemind » Tue, Jun 09, 2020, 12:46 AM UTC

lazyjeff wrote: post #29

qznc wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can often guess who the reviewers are as well. The most obvious tell is "also cite paper X" which is their own 99% of the time.

I don't think this is true from my experience. I've been on several program committees, and have managed a couple as well. Usually if you're above the first-level reviewers (e.g. senior PC, track chair, PC chair), you can see the actual author names and reviewers. Most of the time when an author later says (formally through the review system, or informally in casual conversation) that "I know it's this reviewer who a…

Makes sense. Also at times the automated anti-plagiarism check systems may list some references by similarity of the topic or the certain degree of match, not necessarily suggesting that it's been copied. So it's helping the reviewer to suggest such references to the relevant extent.

Re: Potential organized fraud in ACM/IEEE computer architecture conferences

#86

Post by zelon88 » Tue, Jun 09, 2020, 12:58 AM UTC

Honestly that's how I figured it worked anyway. Popularity contest. Even the less significant confrences seem to just be platforms where "influencers" (Twitter verified personalities in leading roles at popular tech companies with barely any code in their repos) scratch each others back and swap followers. It was always my understanding that confs were a place for networking with other people just for that purpose. Maybe it's because I'm on the East Coast and all the serious confs are on the west coast.

Re: Potential organized fraud in ACM/IEEE computer architecture conferences

#87

Post by angry_octet » Tue, Jun 09, 2020, 12:59 AM UTC

jasonhansel wrote: post #77

Read the alleged response by Tao Li to the original accusations against him: https://medium.com/@huixiangvoice/help-dr-tao-li-is-threaten... This is a really shocking threat: he's saying that his school (the University of Florida) will take legal action against people making good-faith allegations of academic misconduct against him, because they have unspecified "ulterior motives." How is this attempt to silence peop…

That is completely believable actually. Legal threats are very effective at silencing whistle blower reports. The response in these cases is that the faculty (head of the research group and the Dean) suffer reputational damage equivalent to the misconduct penalty of the offender. That is, exclusion from research (including supervision, presenting at conferences), retraction of their publications, demotion or termination. Without this, the old boys network will have its way.

Re: Potential organized fraud in ACM/IEEE computer architecture conferences

#88

Post by throwawayiionqz » Tue, Jun 09, 2020, 1:05 AM UTC

qznc wrote: post #24

the_svd_doctor wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In small fields, it's sometimes really not very hard to guess who are the authors, just given the topic and what papers they cite. Even with double blind.

You can often guess who the reviewers are as well. The most obvious tell is "also cite paper X" which is their own 99% of the time.

It's even easier to trick the authors into believing you (the reviewer) is someone else.

E.g: ask the authors to cite two papers of another researcher (as was mentioned somewhere in the thread as making it easy to guess who the reviewer is), ask to compare to results of that researcher more thoroughly, use some writing style typical of that researcher country of origin, etc.

It's especially easy if you are familiar with works from the other researchers for instance because you also reviewed their work.

Re: Potential organized fraud in ACM/IEEE computer architecture conferences

#89

Post by Gatsky » Tue, Jun 09, 2020, 1:10 AM UTC

Did anyone think this wasn't happening?

Science operates as a priesthood more than anything. Universities orginally emerged out of schools for religious instruction, to train Catholic clergy, and I'm not sure how far we have come from there. There is the same two-faced rapprochement between the highest ideals and the lowest behaviours. The high priests just wear jeans instead.

Re: Potential organized fraud in ACM/IEEE computer architecture conferences

#90

Post by ramraj07 » Tue, Jun 09, 2020, 1:16 AM UTC

codezero wrote: post #5

They seem to summarize it in paragraph four, though I am not clear on what this really means - I think it is that certain authors are able to be "top ranked" and get limited review from colluding peers who may also be co-authors on the paper, but removed themselves to squeeze through review faster and avoid future flags for "conflict of interest" "There is a chat group of a few dozen authors who in subsets work on co…

Extremely sad that this student decided to take their life over this. I have been in a somewhat comparable situation but slightly less extreme. I was minimally able to standup and hold my ground, but partly due to that I'm also out of research now. It's not a fun place at all; you spend years on your projects and professors like these don't take lightly to any objection to what they think is the correct way. This means you truly are jeopardizing your full future after you have already sunk so many productive years of your life in it.

Academia in these labs is probably the closest you can get to war zones without actual felonies. This doesn't just happen in CS, it happens everywhere. Academia doesn't progress because it's filled to the brim with vile creatures who are not in it for science or discovery but personal myopic pride.