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Potential organized fraud in ACM/IEEE computer architecture conferences

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

#111

Post by Gatsky »

SoylentOrange wrote: post #100
Gatsky wrote: post #89

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.

This comment is not very helpful. Many scientists are doing their best to improve the world by publishing their research to the public. They are doing so, at least in CS, at a substantial pay cut compared to industry. You can see the efficacy of modern science by the real and impactful discoveries in machine learning and related fields made over the last 10-15 years.

You misunderstand. I am definitely not anti-science. The point is we would probably be much further ahead and have many more impactful discoveries if this sort of nonsense wasn't happening, and good people who want to improve the world were given the maximum opportunity to do this. Instead these people are constantly exploited by sociopathic careerists who manage to rise to the top in many places.

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

#112

Post by Retric »

light_hue_1 wrote: post #98
hocuspocus wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> His future job prospects in academia and to a large extent outside of academia depended on his advisor. In academia, you're absolutely right. But outside, sorry, no. I can perfectly understand how a PhD student under an abusive advisor would feel they're trapped. And I'm gonna sound racist, but I've seen the kind of toxicity there is among Chinese researchers in Western universities, and that's probably making this…

It's not so simple. Even when I got industry offers, labs asked my advisor about what he thought and now when my students get industry offers, I'm asked what I think. Sometimes this is formal, sometimes it's informal over lunch asking if a former student is suitable for a job. It depends where you are going and who is in charge, but your advisor and their opinion can matter a lot.

If you spend some time talking to past supervisors / advisors you find sometimes negative comments are a good sign.

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

#113

Post by dependenttypes »

rshnotsecure wrote: post #19

This was a long time coming. A quick look at the historical DNS records for IEEE.org shows there have been strange things going on for some time. Recently, OpenSSL unveiled a new "notification" policy that gave massive preference to Huawei and Smartisans [1]. They are OpenSSL's largest donors. The process by how this was done was kind of laughably deceptive, which of course aroused further suspicion. Many things have…

> A quick look at the historical DNS records for IEEE.org shows there have been strange things going on for some time

Such as?

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

#114

Post by dependenttypes »

anjc wrote: post #48
loeg wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

His mentor (one of those involved in this fraud) refused to withdraw the paper, according to the translated messages with friends from the same link above.

It isn't up to his mentor to withdraw a paper for which he isn't the first author. It doesn't even require a retraction as it wouldn't be published yet, albeit, withdrawing is still frowned upon

From the link that someone else posted in this thread http://pbzcnepu.net/isca/timeline.html

> Only one e-mail response is received. That PC member said the first author of a paper has no right to withdraw an article due to methodology concerns and that if an advisor says publish, they should just publish without complaint.

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

#115

Post by hoistbypetard »

m0zg wrote: post #93
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.

Not even in "small" fields. A lot of the time any new work is just a further development of previous work by the same author. So if you're well read in your field, that "double blind" peer review is not blind at all.

The cure to that (reviewers who are not well read in their field) seems far worse than the disease.

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

#116

Post by throwawayiionqz »

BurningFrog wrote: post #82
mhh__ wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

This does not make sense.

Before scientists started reviewing each other, who at the journal was judging the work of scientists to be published? Scientists?

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

#117

Post by BurningFrog »

throwawayiionqz wrote: post #116
BurningFrog wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

This does not make sense. Before scientists started reviewing each other, who at the journal was judging the work of scientists to be published? Scientists?

Well, science literate people working at the journal, I assume.

The point is that they did not have a conflict of interest.

In 2020 peer review, people are often asked to review the work of their rivals. So they're incentivized to (1) say that it's bad and demand many changes, and/or (2) steal their ideas.

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

#118

Post by shultays »

This was one of the reasoss for me to drop from graduate and quit my research assistant job.

I was working on a paper along with a professor. We sent a paper for review and one of the anonymous feedback from one of the reviewers was something like "these (a couple related papers to our subject) also would make good annotations". My professor said "this person is probably writer of those papers and asks for annotations for a good review". I was quite shocked how casual when he was talking about this

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

#119

Post by dbancajas »

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…

Are you still a grad student? I already graduated and have the same sentiments as you.

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

#120

Post by throwawayiionqz »

pbzcnepu wrote: post #97

some of us made a big effort to get anyone at the IEEE or ACM to care about this ISCA'19 incident. The initial investigation by Torrellas was run mostly by ISCA insiders with conflicts of interest, and mostly seemed to be a stall tactic. They did eventually open a new investigation. ISCA'20 should really have been cancelled until this was resolved. See a timeline of our attempts to get anyone at ACM/IEEE to care: htt…

I am wondering if the NSF program officers responsible for overseeing the grants should be contacted as they would be in power to make the University and the PIs accountable and/or start their own investigations.

They can be easily found in grant webpages, eg https://www.nsf.gov/awardsearch/showAward?AWD_ID=1900713

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