161–170 of 203 posts
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.
Peer review is much older than that. It dates back to the 18th century.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Please keep the sinophobia out of HN. Thanks.
How is questioning the motives of departments of the CCP like Huawei and any other Chinese company Sinophobic? Do you realise we have relatively strong crypto today due to lobbying and pressure on the US government in the 90s, who wanted to keep crypto weak. Why on earth should we not question when China adopts the same tactics via direct or indirect methods?
I do believe there is a HN guideline that discourages that sort of behavior.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
It's like police. Good ones do good, and bad ones do harm. You'd expect the good ones to be pro-reform, but there apparently isn't enough pro-reform in academia to have reform. With that, less and less good will happen, and more and more harm.
There’s a lot of room for improvement: - grad student stipends are negligently low, making it difficult for students to complete their PhDs. - many journals in CS are not open access despite the authors and reviewers not being compensated for their time. I think pre-print servers and the ability to publish work on your own website has really improved the state of CS research over the past 5 years. In the past, the of…
My cynicism doesn't come from a lack of understanding of the academy or the good parts of the academy. To the contrary; it's based on:
1) Seeing the upper levels of the academy (which are often incredibly corrupt, although this is well-hidden from students).
2) Seeing enough cases handled to know that cover-ups are much more common than resolutions.
3) Seeing many students get abused, and seeing the impact fake research has on the real world.
The lack of transparency makes academia look bad for perfectly good reason: there are huge amounts of money flowing into pockets corruptly at elite schools, entire academic careers build on academic fraud (which is /not/ the same as legal fraud), and there's enough rot in the system that it's hard to reform. The higher you go, the more rot there is.
Appearances to the contrary, students are university customers, and faculty are employees. The power legally rests with the administration and the board. The rot persists since the people benefiting set the rules. If I'm the president of a school, and a reform would put me in jail, or even make me lose my million dollar salary, why would I listen to student protests? Faculty protests carry a little more weight, but not enough, and enough faculty are corrupt themselves that you can't build a united front for reform.
Regarding peer review, the system is entirely bankrupt. There are no incentives to do a good job. Anecdotally, most reviewers skim papers; no one reads them, and certainly no one checks the math or replicates the results. Less anecdotally, when people have looked at data, it's no different from a die roll (NIPS did a proper evaluation of peer review).
Regarding grad student stipends, the basic deal is good on paper: freedom to pursue intellectual interests, quality mentorship, and a quality education with basic living expenses covered (on the taxpayer dollar). This seems like exactly the right thing. It breaks when universities break their side of the bargain, with the taxpayer dollars and charitable donations go to faculty clubs, yachts, and vacation homes, internal power dynamics forcing graduate students to be treated as cheap labor rather than as students, and competition forcing widespread academic fraud.
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
Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
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
While true, you absolutely need your mentor support. Without it you wont graduate and you likely wont be able to switch mentor.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
There’s a lot of room for improvement: - grad student stipends are negligently low, making it difficult for students to complete their PhDs. - many journals in CS are not open access despite the authors and reviewers not being compensated for their time. I think pre-print servers and the ability to publish work on your own website has really improved the state of CS research over the past 5 years. In the past, the of…
Well, I had a great time in my Ph.D program. My advisor was the very model of caring about students and integrity. I did good research which I was proud of (but which had very little impact since at the time I didn't know how to sell / position it well) I see the upsides of a functioning academia. My cynicism doesn't come from a lack of understanding of the academy or the good parts of the academy. To the contrary; i…
^ As you know, many areas of science have a reproducibility crisis including psychology and medicine. I hope this will go a long way towards addressing some weaknesses in peer review in CS. For myself, I try to be thorough when refereeing papers. Anecdotally I know some more busy academics farm out their reviews to their grad students.
I had a largely positive experience in grad school also thanks to my excellent advisor. Although I can say that my ~$25k/yr stipend made it difficult to live on without the additional scholarship money that I earned, and even then...
I agree with you that there absolutely needs to be more transparency in many aspects including complaints about advisors, and investigations into dishonest publishing behaviour like in this case.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
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
The program officers were contacted, leading to the OIG being notified on 6 December 2019 and supposedly an investigation was openened, but we have not heard anything back since then.
As someone who received both their B.S. and M.S. at UIUC, I'm honestly disgusted at how various professors and administration have handled certain incidents that my friends have been part of
Earlier quoted context omitted.
The program officers were contacted, leading to the OIG being notified on 6 December 2019 and supposedly an investigation was openened, but we have not heard anything back since then.
I just want to thank you for your actions and ask if you have any advice for career paths to do something about this type of academic bullshit. My GF is currently pursuing a PhD in biochem but very interested in pursuing science policy so that she can do something about all the injustice one witnesses as a graduate student. As someone who received both their B.S. and M.S. at UIUC, I'm honestly disgusted at how variou…
It is easier to fight things from the outside, as the internal higher-ups have less power to mess up your life.
It's interesting you mention UIUC, as traditionally that was the source of a lot of suspect papers. It was a running joke about the "coincidence" of how many people with UIUC connections managed to get papers into ISCA each year.
1. i dont want say anything which gets me trouble, but hotcrp was set up wrong by the chair in that year ISCA. i know pc members were able to download the whole paper submission list. i personally saw _all_ papers and _all_ reviewer comments on anything i did not submit. it is likely that everyone had access to this, because i am not a "big players" in this field. i really doubt i had some special access because i have no relationship to the chair that year.
i still have all the papers from isca19. i should not have these, but i just got them from a normal download (no enumeration or guessing urls).
2. point 1 does not excuse leaking, just made easier. instead of calling all pc friends and asking them to call their pc friends, you just need to call one pc friend not on your submission. he could see it.
3. good luck getting tao li. hint: did he fund anyone in the past who was investigating him? did he fund anyone who reviews his papers?
4. the tao li story is deeper. a) there's race issue. because it's easier to manipulate people if your business is being a chinese -> usa faculty pipeline. and once people go through your pipeline, they are even more likely to keep it going! b) if you think the paper push is bad, wait until the details of how he actually treated his students come to life. hint: some things advisors do to students in china is immoral, but tolerated. those things are illegal in usa.
5. this is bigger than tao li. you will never get rid of the cliques, but it's at point that i don't even want read the papers anymore. why sell my integrity for grants, when i could get industry money where at least the product shows the work is not crap?
6. if you want to know some worst players, i heard they are upset they are not in micro2020 reviewer list :p. of course it's not a completely good reviewer list, our community is too small!
7. i hope one day we can honestly talk this out. i would like to tell pressuring stories :)