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Tortured phrases: A dubious writing style emerging in science

nature.com

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Re: Tortured phrases: A dubious writing style emerging in science

#91

Post by laurent92 »

Freak_NL wrote: post #76
aaron-santos wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I enjoyed finding "counterfeit consciousness" for artificial intelligence. To me it evokes a kind of science fiction that's shown up occasionally on HN[1]. [1] https://qntm.org/mmacevedo

Also “haze figuring” for cloud computing. It sounds like something you'd find in 30s, 40s, 50s sci-fi for sure! Like “visiplate” (E.E. “Doc” Smith, Heinlein) for a computer display screen. (Along with ticker tape printouts and tape reels in the far future of course.)

Ah, vapordecisionware. But that might be confused with regular management.

Re: Tortured phrases: A dubious writing style emerging in science

#92

Post by etempleton »

I often wonder while reading an academic paper how the writing could be as hopelessly bad as it is.

This type of manipulation and plagiarism may be partially to blame, but the academic writing style has also gone completely off the rails to the point that half the journal articles being published today read as if written by some kind of paper writing AI robot even when I am quite certain that that isn't the case. And no, I am not talking about cases where the author is writing in a non-native language.

I have a theory that it may have to do with imposter syndrome and a need to sound smart. The author, fearing that they don't really belong and at any moment will be found out, therefore never making tenure, starts jamming academic sounding words where they don't belong and stretching sentences with commas and semi colons until the whole thing is just as insufferable to read as it was to write.

There is also the possibility that there are just a lot of terrible writers out there.

Re: Tortured phrases: A dubious writing style emerging in science

#93

Post by seoaeu »

Freak_NL wrote: post #76
aaron-santos wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I enjoyed finding "counterfeit consciousness" for artificial intelligence. To me it evokes a kind of science fiction that's shown up occasionally on HN[1]. [1] https://qntm.org/mmacevedo

Also “haze figuring” for cloud computing. It sounds like something you'd find in 30s, 40s, 50s sci-fi for sure! Like “visiplate” (E.E. “Doc” Smith, Heinlein) for a computer display screen. (Along with ticker tape printouts and tape reels in the far future of course.)

Really highlights that the actual phrases don't make any more sense than the tortured versions, other than the fact that we've been hearing all of them for years so they now sound normal

Re: Tortured phrases: A dubious writing style emerging in science

#94

Post by throwawaygh »

lyaa wrote: post #90
throwawaygh wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Depends. University of Phoenix awards doctorates that take 3-4 years (HUGE red flag -- the best and brightest phd students might get out in 4 years if everything goes perfectly; an "expected time to graduation" of anything less than 5 years is almost certainly a worthless degree). Those doctorates don't require much more than taking some coursework and paying a boatload in tuition. Basically an expensive and length o…

Length of PhD programs is an indicator that should be considered in context. UK Universities, for example, often have research PhD programs that take 3 years to complete and they are legitimate.

Yes, my comment is specific to US (where, additionally, it's somewhat uncommon to have a masters degree prior to starting the phd).

Re: Tortured phrases: A dubious writing style emerging in science

#96

Post by andai »

hdjjhhvvhga wrote: post #78
bjourne wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I really doubt you can computer generate a Master's thesis. Completing a Master's thesis at an accredited institution is a heck of a lot of work and even a cursory reading of a thesis by an examiner, supervisor, opponent, or other interested party would give the generated content away. Maybe if you get your degree from a diploma mill you could get away with it, but then your degree wouldn't be worth toilet paper anyw…

I agree that in most cases it would be very difficult to do. But I can imagine some specific circumstances where it could be pulled off, possibly with some manual modifications: soft sciences like sociology (you can't imagine the amount of bs I've read during my college years), the subject matter being very different from the area your supervising prof specializes in, the topic that allows for arbitrary speculation,…

https://xkcd.com/451/

Re: Tortured phrases: A dubious writing style emerging in science

#97

Post by dash2 »

bjourne wrote: post #64
gzer0 wrote: post #35

This is anecdotal evidence at best, but it is worth considering. I know of several individuals who were able to complete their entire Master's thesis utilizing a combination of AI generated content (GPT-3) and a paraphrasing tool. The generated text was well over 50 pages, completely bypassed all known content/plagiarism checks and was even included in the Universities "exemplary examples". To this day, it is still t…

I really doubt you can computer generate a Master's thesis. Completing a Master's thesis at an accredited institution is a heck of a lot of work and even a cursory reading of a thesis by an examiner, supervisor, opponent, or other interested party would give the generated content away. Maybe if you get your degree from a diploma mill you could get away with it, but then your degree wouldn't be worth toilet paper anyw…

Oh my sweet summer child.

I regularly get dissertations with any or all of: barely readable English, useless empirics, half-baked research questions.

Re: Tortured phrases: A dubious writing style emerging in science

#99

Post by aliswe »

hdjjhhvvhga wrote: post #75
atrettel wrote: post #60

I have encountered something similar to this for a submission that I reviewed for a scientific journal. I will not list any names or give much detail past those generalities, but I pointed out that the authors were misusing a particular technical term. In my review I defined the term and explained it briefly. I asked the authors to revise their submission accordingly. The paper was not bad but the authors did not kno…

> The paper was not bad but the authors did not know English very well, so it was quite difficult to read. That was its main problem. This seems to confirm my suspicion than these cases are not so much about AI-generated content but rather a result of machine translation.

it's a common technique/first layer of plagiarizing a text to translate it from english to eg. spanish and then from spanish to english, to get rid of the unique words the author used.

Re: Tortured phrases: A dubious writing style emerging in science

#100

Post by aliswe »

bjt wrote: post #87
throwawaygh wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Master's thesis I don't doubt this at all, and I have no doubt that GPT-3 with a bit of human editing can spit out something better than the lower third of masters students at corn row colleges. Masters degrees are cash cows, which is why no one in unregulated industries cares about them. People in regulated/unionized industries also don't actually care; even educators, who at least nominally see intrinsic value in…

> ... masters students at corn row colleges. First time I've heard the term "corn row colleges". Google's not bringing up anything that looks relevant. I suggest picking something else. Given that "cornrows" are a predominantly black hairstyle, the term reads like a racial slur.

nono, it means the long line of colleges that are virtually indistinguishable from eachother.
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