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Please commit more blatant academic fraud

jacobbuckman.com

261–270 of 365 posts

Re: Please commit more blatant academic fraud

#261
post #28
post #11

Wow, the amount of depravity in some academic circles is astonishing. The article links [1] the case of a PhD student at the University of Florida who was forced to participate in such a publication collusion ring and was pressured to commit scientific fraud by fabricating results and submitting them to a conference [2], being threatened with physical harm should he decide to go public. This student saw no way out an…

How is it possible that professors with impeccable academic credentials get fired for jokes nearly instantly [1], yet this student's professor was allowed to carry on until he resigned two years later [2]? [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Online_shaming#Tim_Hunt_contro... [2] https://eu.gainesville.com/story/news/education/campus/2021/...

Number one was a highly offensive “joke” minimizing a truly serious problem that was made to a number of journalists to whom it definitely wasn’t funny. Plenty of people are fired regularly for making complete fools out of themselves and the institutions they represent by offending important outsiders.

Re: Please commit more blatant academic fraud

#262

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It's difficult to distinguish genuine romantic feelings from exploitative lust everywhere. Huh?

They're saying people are assholes. For instance, in some American cultures (see my previous comment for which culture), it's a given that perhaps 40-60% of married individuals are cheating on their spouse. That's not love--that's doing what feels good, and then doing someone else that feels good. Where there's a power imbalance, it's easier to ban a class of abuses than to figure out the small percentage of cases wh…

That's pretty easy to distinguish, I don't see any trouble at all in forming those categories.

Re: Please commit more blatant academic fraud

#263

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The rule is really simple: it makes people uncomfortable when you make generalizations about natural traits shared by the group they're in. Period. All groups (even groups people feel proud to be a part of), and all generalizations, even ones that sound positive or don't apply to the listener. I'm not going to list examples but if you're having a hard time thinking of them just imagine overhearing a conversation at a…

> it makes people uncomfortable when you make generalizations about natural traits shared by the group they're in. It does not make everyone uncomfortable, obviously. I thought we were not supposed to resort to stereotypes.

[deleted]

Re: Please commit more blatant academic fraud

#264
post #259

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Where do non-straight people fit into this "solution"?

They don't. I fail to see how that's surprising given that straight people don't fit either.

Plenty of us have absolutely no problem working in same-sex environments, and plenty of straight people have no issues working in coed environments.

This is very clearly a case of the professor being unprofessional and exploitative of his position of power.

Re: Please commit more blatant academic fraud

#265
post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You would think that allegedly driving a PoC student to suicide would count for something in the PC twitter sphere…

Are Asians PoC? I thought they were not and that was literally the only reason the oft repeated phrase “black and other PoC” didn’t literally translate into “not white”.

So many different terms and abbreviations, for what is just humans..

Re: Please commit more blatant academic fraud

#266
post #259

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They don't. I fail to see how that's surprising given that straight people don't fit either.

Plenty of us have absolutely no problem working in same-sex environments, and plenty of straight people have no issues working in coed environments. This is very clearly a case of the professor being unprofessional and exploitative of his position of power.

Plenty and plenty, yes. Now, what's a solution that would work for everyone, males females and others alike?

This is very clearly a professor acknowledging the problems that arise due to interindividual biology in work environments. Unlike PC supporters hiding the issue under the blanket of professionalism.

Re: Please commit more blatant academic fraud

#267

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If the universities wanted the problem fixed it would be fixed. I truly don't believe research universities are focused on producing value (other than to themselves).

Apparently it wasn't always like this, and it used to be common for junior faculty hires to have only 0 or 1 publications coming out of their PhD program. Why did the culture deteriorate so much and become so myopically focused on weakly informative metrics like publication count?

When fields are small, they can rely on much higher fidelity signals for hiring (having significant interactions with the individuals at conferences and workshops, for instance). I did my PhD in a sub field of nuclear physics, and even though I only published one paper in my PhD, I got a job offer at an Ivy League university because I had done extensive work with their group in collaboration, and the group leaders liked me.

However, now that many research fields are so massive that it is impossible to personally know the majority of individuals, institutions need other ways of judging individuals. The number of papers published is a weak signal, but it’s better than nothing. Now that it’s being so heavily gamed by so many individuals, that signal strength is decreasing even more.

There’s also a second strong corrupting factor that many, if not most, of these individuals do not want to become professors, they want to get a high paying job in industry, which means their short term output is far more important to them than their long term reputation in the field.

I honestly don’t know what can be done to fix this that wouldn’t have negative side effects. But perhaps the side effects would be better than the situation we are in now.

Re: Please commit more blatant academic fraud

#268
post #249
post #243

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Maybe you can help me understand the context better. From the GP post where he seems to advocate for separate male and female labs he seems to imply there isn’t enough professionalism present to have co-ed labs. I’m saying that claim is more an implication of the person saying it and their (lack of) professional ethics than an indictment of the subordinates. It’s very similar in my mind to the recent arguments about…

The context is that he in essence says that this problem has no good solution, but he thinks that the co-ed labs are the best alternative even with all the shortcomings that go with them. Everyone will be perfectly professional until someone falls in love and the PC solution crumbles to dust. And FWIW, I think he's right.

>Everyone will be perfectly professional until someone falls in love

Isn’t this the case with everything? I.e., if “everything is fine until it isn’t” it’s not really saying much of anything except he doesn’t think he can create a culture of professionalism within his lab. Does this “welp, we can’t do anything about our base desires” extend outside romantic relations? Would it be acceptable to claim “well, physical altercations are just going to happen because you know people will get mad at each other from time to time”?

I’m not hiding behind professionalism, I’m saying it’s reasonable to acknowledge those base desires while also expecting a higher standard of behavior.

Re: Please commit more blatant academic fraud

#269
post #200

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I guess for me the thing that's really crappy about this quote is that it shows his underlying attitude - that women are basically always potential romantic partners. If he was into men, and he said he didn't want men in the lab because he might fall in love with them, you can sort of see how absurd it is, and how unpleasant it is to be the object of romantic fantasy when you're just trying to get on with your job.

> women are basically always potential romantic partners Ok, why would that not be the case? Laws? PC? Age difference? Love/biology doesn't care about social rules, and this has been shown time and again in every possible situation you could think of. > you can sort of see how absurd it is Huh, no I can't. What makes it different when you reverse the situation?

> Huh, no I can't.

The point is, any human can be a romantic partner to any other. Therefore, his argument should be that no pair of humans should work together ever for risk of romantic entanglements.

Except it doesn't work that way, because we're all really used to the idea that in the workplace, you treat your colleagues as colleagues, not as fantasy-future-partners.

This isn't PC. It's just basic common sense, that he's lost his grip on, because he sees women first as romantic partners or sex objects or whatever, and second as scientists.

Re: Please commit more blatant academic fraud

#270
post #260
post #251

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Huh, I thought I was pretty clear that I meant an individual researcher employed by industry to do their research (" for CS in general - and especially for AI - you'll be just fine in industry.... Go where the incentives are better aligned for you. ") - was it not?

So, limiting research to projects small enough for a single individual, then? Because similar situations will and do arise in industrial research groups.

Ah, I see the confusion. By "individual researcher" I do not mean "independent researcher" - I mean the researcher, considering their motivations as an individual person. They can be part of a group of researchers, and they're generally working for some employer. After all, the "individual researcher" in academia is generally working with a group - e.g., the example given about the grad student who is "every professor's dream" only makes sense in the context of that relationship - and that produces the negative pressures described.

In particular, I mean that a researcher in academia, as a person (an "individual researcher"), is motivated by the demands of academia to get grants and fill their CV and is therefore incentivized to conduct dishonest science to make that happen, and a researcher in industry, as a person (an "individual researcher"), is not directly incentivized to conduct dishonest science - perhaps there's dishonesty in how their employer gained funding or what they do with the research, but that doesn't compromise the accuracy of their research, motivate them to game the peer review system, etc. The researcher as an individual has the choice about whether to be in academia or industry.

So, I don't think I follow how similar situations will arise in industrial research groups. (Though, as mentioned in my original comment, I'm probably missing something, because there were researchers from industry who coauthored these papers.) Even among a group of researchers in industry, the incentives should be to produce things of value to the employer, not to play the part of productive-looking researchers.

I'm specifically not claiming that independence will solve anything; the fundamental problem is funding, and (as you say) nobody is going to want to live out of their car to do good research. And you need access to facilities/tools of some sort to do your research; my claim is that industry can provide those at least as well as academia can, not that they are unneeded. Admit that you're constrained to work at a place that can fund your research and that no place exists that will pay you well and leave you to your own devices, and then find the place whose incentives to fund you are least likely to compromise your research integrity and most likely to reward you for actual good work. At the moment, at least in the society where I live, that happens to be industry.

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