> However, just a couple of months into my project, I figured out, I wouldn’t find anyone to discuss my research with: My supervisors have a rather superficial understanding of Quantum Computing, and I feel like their idea to start a project in that domain was to a not inconsiderable extent motivated by the prospect of granted research funds, not primarily by their desire to achieve a deeper understanding of quantum…
> weapons research disguised via a friendly sounding problem
No implicit agreement to privacy can exist on the internet. Once you click publish, its archived. I wanted to read what the author wrote. https://web.archive.org/web/20220523144108/https://blog.derh...
It depends. The author should also have the Right to be forgotten, which applies to some jurisdictions, specially in this situation that the matter may have not been set. But I still disagree with you not respecting the author's implicit wish. For instance, thanks to the various similar links like the one you just sent, I can pin-point exactly who the person in question is. How can you guarantee the information will…
Are you blaming me that archive.org crawls the web and makes archives?
There is no implicit agreement to privacy between the author and public. Especially when there is an effort to archive the internet.
There's no agreement, but is it _the right thing_?
whats right or not is completely an internal dialogue that you engage with and irrelevant here. if you dont like archive.org crawling your blog, the correct action would be:
- dont write it
- dont submit it on social media with unknown side effects
Academia is no more motivated by a honest interest to understand things around us, raise questions and spend time deeply thinking and genuinely coming up with solutions that really make sense and bring change to the world. A lot of researchers are very mediocre and they treat research as a simple career where they superficially advise a bunch of PhD students. A lot of those researchers neither think nor raise questio…
Okay that's your problem with the system, but how would you propose to fix it? That's the important part. And be careful in your proposal that you don't end up reinventing the current system (but worse), because lots of proposals I've seen tend to go that way (coming from a place that doesn't actually understand the system they purportedly want to fix).
To be honest, I have no idea how to fix this. This was just an insider observation. Luckily, I am doing a PhD on systems software and I have a large support network of very smart people on the Internet in the form of contributors to large open source projects such as the Linux kernel, GCC and LLVM. My supervisor is the shallow-type of researcher, but because of my special circumstances, it's easier for me to overcome the issue. However, it may not be that easy for other people working on exotic topics such as Quantum Computing.
There are basically three good outcomes from CS PhD's: - Learn you like teaching / mentoring - Become trained to read and write world class research, and become a world class engineer. - Learn that you are great at marketing and networking, and become a professor or nontechnical exec somewhere (perhaps your own startup). Obviously, the more of the above boxes you tick, the better (all three is the path to ACM Fellow…
> quantum computers are almost real now
in what sense is this true? practical quantum computers seem almost as far off as they were decades ago and NISQ appears to mean not large or reliable enough to do much with
one consequence being people take option 3 and pad a career with speculative papers, too many of which are lacking in rigor
QCs are "possible in principle" but remain a formidable engineering challenge in which we seem to be making rather slow headway
It depends. The author should also have the Right to be forgotten, which applies to some jurisdictions, specially in this situation that the matter may have not been set. But I still disagree with you not respecting the author's implicit wish. For instance, thanks to the various similar links like the one you just sent, I can pin-point exactly who the person in question is. How can you guarantee the information will…
Are you blaming me that archive.org crawls the web and makes archives?
No, I'm just inferring your ethical framework for this specific situation. Shedding more light into a matter that is not settled yet is not appropriate at this time, specially because the author is the vulnerable person in question.
I don't think he's trying to do himself any favors. If anything he's trying to do others a favor by expressing a very common problem within academia.
Academia is full of mechanisms to negatively judge your research work. In fact judgement is pretty much the only constant in the field: every single piece of work you do will be under constant scrutiny, will be torn apart both before and after publication, and your entire (research) value will be harshly judged by outsiders on a more or less constant basis. The one positive of this environment that when you see someo…
> The one positive of this environment that when you see someone who has succeeded in publishing a substantial amount, it's safe to presume that their work is not entirely without merit. That's not a 100% guarantee, but it's a good heuristic. A post like this implies that the author's personal judgement is more insightful than a process that I know to be enormously thorough and harsh [...]
This has not been my experience. In my own field, I've found that quite a few well-cited peer-reviewed papers have severe flaws that are not difficult to find. I can't call the process "enormously thorough and harsh". I view current academic processes as more of a facade than anything else. Sure, the process probably filters out absolute garbage, but I don't think most people need peer review to recognize the worst quality research.
I feel for the student writing this piece and I'm sad that they've developed some bitterness at their advisors and the entire field (which I read in the piece, even if it wasn't the intent.) Everyone needs to understand something important: a PhD is first and foremost an apprenticeship. It is your opportunity to study under someone who has done a specific kind of research, and learn from that person. If that relation…
This is a fresh perspective, and a DUH moment for me.
I know quite a few PhD(s) and researchers, and a few PhD programs dropout. My takeaway up until now was "PhD = politics", but now I see that I was looking at it all wrong, I was looking under the wrong lens of pick_a_school->get_an_advisor. The reverse is true, when the student is read, the master will appear; the place comes with the advisor (not the other way around).
Are you blaming me that archive.org crawls the web and makes archives?
No, I'm just inferring your ethical framework for this specific situation. Shedding more light into a matter that is not settled yet is not appropriate at this time, specially because the author is the vulnerable person in question.
and you know this because you've spoken to the author?
>telling someone to keep their story to themselves unless they can present an argument that satisfies a scientific standard I don't see where they made this claim, or a reference to a 'scientific standard'. Can you please point to it?
>If you can't be specific enough to be scientific about it, just keep it to yourself.
I'm in favor of specific criticism rather than lumping everyone together or painting with a broad brush, so on that specific point, I agree with the OP. There is no mention about needing to satisfy any specific 'standard' as you claimed. What you quoted doesn't say that either. Anyway, there isn't much meat in this thread arguing over such minutia, so I will just let you have the last word if you'd like to.