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Please commit more blatant academic fraud

jacobbuckman.com

321–330 of 365 posts

Re: Please commit more blatant academic fraud

#321

Earlier quoted context omitted.

People keep bringing out that this can be a joke, but he said this two days later "I did mean the part about having trouble with girls. It is true that I have fallen in love with people in the lab, and that people in the lab have fallen in love with me, and it's very disruptive to the science. It's terribly important that, in the lab, people are on a level playing field. And I found these emotional entanglements made…

So what part of falling in love with people in the lab, people in the lab falling in love with you, and that affecting concentration and productivity, is so evil as to get someone fired? Sorry, honest question. Being from a different culture, I honestly fail to get this kind of outrage. For me it's just a description of humans being human...

> and that affecting concentration and productivity, is so evil as to get someone fired?

Hard to not assume malice when you accuse someone for implying something they explicitly said they don't want to imply.

Re: Please commit more blatant academic fraud

#322
post #273

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The controversial part is where he suggests that this is a "problem" and might be a good reason to exclude women from working in the lab alongside with males. That looks like he's starting out with a very sexist attitude and trying to justify it with flimsy excuses.

By framing that as “exclusion” are you assuming the women-only labs would be worse places to work than the men-only labs?

[deleted]

Re: Please commit more blatant academic fraud

#323
post #24

Which is why several journals are pushing for reproducibility as a requirement and dedicated reproducibility tracks where there are opportunities to call bluff on established papers. As an academic from a small lab in an unknown university it is shocking for me when we are unable to reproduce performance numbers from papers by popular institutions.

> several journals are pushing for reproducibility as a requirement The current requirement for academic publishing is peer-review, i.e.: "Colleagues in my field looked over it briefly and said it's ok [because it doesn't challenge their work]" This inevitably leads to whole fields of science being corrupted and biased in ways that we can't easily identify. Science publishing standards could be improved in any number…

The reason it exists, is allowed to exist, and is no problem that it exists is that most science is infotainment, in that no one actually has any vested interest in it's accuracy.

It's meant to be interesting to read, but for most science no one is banking on it's accuracy to the point that they would surely notice if it weren't accurate because, say, a plane would crash or a train would derail or a rocket would explode.

Such does not happen with scientific research that forms the basis of the engineering on which many modern day applications are built. If the principles be wrong there, companies would loose substantial investment, so they are quite vested in verifying that it's accurate.

Most science is simply infotainment for other scientists: it exists for no other reason than to be entertaining and fascinating to read, and might as well be fiction.

Re: Please commit more blatant academic fraud

#324

One big problem in our society is that there is a Darwinian selection process occurring which selects for psychopathy. It's only going to get worse. Psycopaths are attracted to power and are willing to do anything for it so they are more likely to get it. Power comes with money. Money allow psychopaths to have more children. The children are more likely to be psychopaths too so they will also end up in positions of p…

Your thesis relies on the selective pressure for psychopathy being larger now than it was previously. Is that the case? It's harder nowadays to be an outright criminal or murderer and get away with it due to strength of the rule of law.

I do think that in a globalized environment, there is much stronger selective pressure for psychopathy due to higher competitive pressure and more ways to avoid consequences for misbehavior. Opportunities are fewer and bigger - Those people who are more ruthless and manipulative have a higher chance of qualifying for the few opportunities that are available because they're willing to step over ethical boundaries to get those positions. This makes them stand out as candidates.

Another point is that our modern financial system is designed to limit the liability of individuals. Corporate executives repeatedly get away with financial misconduct and their companies merely end up paying relatively small fines. Also, the government keeps bailing out big corporations; ensuring that the same people who created the problems stay in power. There is also the problem of international money laundering; wealthy people fleeing one country which considers them to be criminals to move to another country which doesn't consider them to be criminals. Similar story with bankruptcies; people changing countries to escape consequences.

There is an accountability crisis.

Re: Please commit more blatant academic fraud

#325

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The problem is that laypeople or bureaucrats can't judge highly specialized technical contributions. It's already difficult to do if your subfield is a different niche.

> It's already difficult to do if your subfield is a different niche. It's not that difficult, at least in science and science-adjacent fields. The scientific method still follows the same principles. If you are used to reading papers, you can tell when someone has elided important detail, or not included the evidence for their claims - or, if someone [or a whole subfield] is using technical language to obfuscate the…

> The scientific method still follows the same principles.

“the scientific method” is rather loosely defined and wide.

What passes as “the scientific method” in some fields would not in others.

Re: Please commit more blatant academic fraud

#326

I ran into these issues in an adjacent field a generation ago. Many candidly spoke to me about having to be a ‘team player’. This is all due to the criteria for survival and graduation. Let’s be honest, not every idea will work and this does not reflect badly on the researcher who came up with it. But the only way to graduate and put food on the table is to keep getting funding through novel papers that have great re…

> this does not reflect badly on the researcher who came up with it. > But the only way to graduate and put food on the table is to keep getting funding through novel papers that have great results. So in the way in which it matters, it does reflect badly on the researcher who came up with it.

"Reflect" means to provide information about; you're talking about it having bad consequences for the researcher.

Re: Please commit more blatant academic fraud

#327
post #159

Earlier quoted context omitted.

People keep bringing out that this can be a joke, but he said this two days later "I did mean the part about having trouble with girls. It is true that I have fallen in love with people in the lab, and that people in the lab have fallen in love with me, and it's very disruptive to the science. It's terribly important that, in the lab, people are on a level playing field. And I found these emotional entanglements made…

‘Doubled down’ on what? I’m curious if you think any of his statements are untrue?

The one about woman crying when they are criticized? That one is certainly untrue. While some people cry when they are criticized (I personally am severely effected and have cried in the past but afterwards), women have no extra tendency to do this.

Re: Please commit more blatant academic fraud

#328

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Your thesis relies on the selective pressure for psychopathy being larger now than it was previously. Is that the case? It's harder nowadays to be an outright criminal or murderer and get away with it due to strength of the rule of law.

I do think that in a globalized environment, there is much stronger selective pressure for psychopathy due to higher competitive pressure and more ways to avoid consequences for misbehavior. Opportunities are fewer and bigger - Those people who are more ruthless and manipulative have a higher chance of qualifying for the few opportunities that are available because they're willing to step over ethical boundaries to g…

I see opportunities tending towards the most competent foremost, with psychopathy potentially helping but in many cases hurting. I've seen many people fired for being assholes, as an example of cases where these traits have hurt. All the psychopaths I've met have had pretty pathetic and lonely lives. People figure them out and they get sidelined.

Politicians, quantum healers, fraudster psychics, snake oil salesmen, etc, are rare niches where psychopaths genuinely thrive over regular people.

5000 years ago you pretty much had to be willing to murder someone to get what you wanted and survive. Nowadays such ruthlessness is punished in many contexts more than rewarded. The corporate ruthlessness that we see today is such a tamed beast in comparison.

So I'm not convinced that the selection for psychopathy has increased.

Re: Please commit more blatant academic fraud

#329
post #216

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I would encourage you to think more about the social use of "jokes". Once we get past the level of knock-knocks, jokes very often have social meaning. Look at people like George Carlin, for example. His "7 dirty words" routine was deeply political. It was a full-on assault on American government censorship and the cultural elements that demanded it. And looking at history, he's won. Humor can be very powerful. Jokes…

Unpopular Opinion: people making these sexist jokes do actually think they are jokes. They aren't using them to push people down. Most people are nice people and don't realise they are being assholes and pushing people down. On the other hand it's completely fair that people feel pushed down by them. HOWEVER - this entire social justice movement is being used to outsource getting into conflict, and standing up for yo…

I think it depends on what you mean a lot by "think". Did they wake up thinking, "Hey, let's go for some misogyny today"? Probably not. But on the other hand, it's not like their behavior is random, patternless. People often do things without really understanding what it means. Indeed, given how hard actually understanding a global society and its history is, I'd say we almost never totally understand anything we do. It's a big world, and people are universes unto themselves.

One book you might read here is, Bancroft's "Why Does He Do That? Inside the Minds of Angry and Controlling Men". It's written by a therapist who mainly dealt with men in court-mandated therapy programs related to domestic abuse. Few of the men ever saw themselves as bad actors. There was always a reason they were justified in their abuse. He goes into great detail examining how abuse worked well for them.

I also think you misunderstand the systemic nature of things like misogyny and racism. You are effectively saying it's the job of women to fix sexists. Putting the burden there acts to support sexism. That's true anywhere, but it's especially true when we're talking about academia. Look at that UMich CS professor: he had many opportunities to understand his behavior was wrong. He surely heard it from women. He certainly heard it in trainings; "don't grope the students" is something every professor knows by now. Ignorance is not the problem, and suggesting that women with little power should educate men who can ruin their careers only helps abusive men.

Ignorance can be the problem in specific cases, of course. But even there, individuals are responsible for their own behavior. If men would like to not be sexist, they should study the topic. For the HN crowd, I might suggest Manne's "Down Girl: The Logic of Misogyny" and the follow-on book "Entitled". Both are sharp, readable, and very analytical looks at the topic.

Re: Please commit more blatant academic fraud

#330

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I would encourage you to think more about the social use of "jokes". Once we get past the level of knock-knocks, jokes very often have social meaning. Look at people like George Carlin, for example. His "7 dirty words" routine was deeply political. It was a full-on assault on American government censorship and the cultural elements that demanded it. And looking at history, he's won. Humor can be very powerful. Jokes…

> for social control I think you’re reading way too deeply into this. You’re referring to the Tim Hunt quote linked? Everything is about control or manipulation - its implicit to the human condition.

I am not particularly referring to Hunt's "joke" there. There's a whole genre of "jokes" used to denigrate women.

I disagree that everything is "about" control or manipulation, but as status-oriented primates, humans certainly do inject it into everything. However, that's all the more reason we have to examine little things like "jokes" and be conscious of the effects we're having.

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