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I flagged two research papers for fake authors and both were accepted as orals

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Re: I flagged two research papers for fake authors and both were accepted as orals

#91

Post by inigyou »

jltsiren wrote: post #87
JumpCrisscross wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> We are very rapidly automating humans out of the academic publication loop We are rendering it irrelevant. If this is the norm for academia, I’m sympathetic to the folks looking to cut its funding.

This is the norm for the industry. When there is a lot of money to be made, people will chase it by any means they can think of. AI is a special case, as academia isn't usually that lucrative. In the rest of CS, many major conferences still have ~300 people, and interesting stuff often happens in specialized meetings with fewer than 100 participants.

This is the norm for the economy. When there is money to be made, at least one person will chase it by any means they can think of.

Academia is a specific case. It happens everywhere.

Re: I flagged two research papers for fake authors and both were accepted as orals

#92

Post by bell-cot »

blackqueeriroh wrote: post #36
ryandrake wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Consequences and reputations stemming from one's actions" isn't necessarily draconian social scoring. Without a structure for imposing consequences on wrongdoers, we're not a society, we're just monkeys flinging poo at each other.

The problem is that everyone imagines some sort of just and fair arbiter of these things, when the reality is all of the social scoring and consequences and reputations rarely actually stem from one’s actions, and far more often stem from how much money someone has put in someone’s pocket, who someone knows, the color of someone’s skin, or what’s between someone’s legs. Until we’re actually serious about treating peo…

> The problem is that everyone imagines ...

I'd phrase it "most people want to imagine". Or will claim they want to - since not believing sounds depressing, or suggests that the person is an evildoer hoping to escape justice. (But unfortunately, people usually disagree about exactly what would be "just" or "fair". While wanting to imagine that they don't. Yes, the problem just went meta.)

> when the reality is ...

Try asking some really old folks about how much drama, inequity, and nastiness there often was in social settings where everyone was the same color and gender, nobody was notably wealthy, and nobody had any great connections. Or talk to an experienced junior high teacher. Or read some history. Humans are quite capable of dividing themselves into camps over any "differences" that they're able to perceive. Or invent, since dividing themselves into camps is often the unspoken objective.

Re: I flagged two research papers for fake authors and both were accepted as orals

#93

Post by globalnode »

ryandrake wrote: post #29
boplicity wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> draconian social scoring This is a legitimate question: should people have reputations? Should their behavior be made more visible publicly, both good and bad? How? In a small contained society, where consequences are more directly affecting individuals immedately, these questions don't need to be asked, because they're inherantly answered. We now are a society with billions of people, and dire consequences sometim…

"Consequences and reputations stemming from one's actions" isn't necessarily draconian social scoring. Without a structure for imposing consequences on wrongdoers, we're not a society, we're just monkeys flinging poo at each other.

and then you have to ask who defines good and bad behaviour and who determines consequences when power is lop sided.

Re: I flagged two research papers for fake authors and both were accepted as orals

#94

Post by gradstudent »

ludicrousdispla wrote: post #73
jsrozner wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Idk if we're automating humans out of the publishing loop as much as rapidly automating the production of crap. I had a very similar experience reviewing for EMNLP recently. We are nowhere near AI being able to judge the quality of research (in fact, one might reasonably state that even most humans can't really judge the quality of research). Most things in society are not like math: we can't automate (via verificati…

The 'named' reviewers typically pass on the review responsibilty to grad students or less-senior colleagues. This is currently a generally accepted and sanctioned/encouraged practice. A social scoring system would need to eliminate that for true accountability.

Reviews are typically in conjunction with junior colleagues and the senior person is involved in the discussion and held responsible for the outcome. The junior folks then end up in the proceedings as external reviewers. In my experience anyway. I don't see an issue here. How else do you train junior researchers to review? Its how I learned and all those around me as well.

Re: I flagged two research papers for fake authors and both were accepted as orals

#95

Post by ben_w »

inigyou wrote: post #89
nneonneo wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The "Chinese social credit" system is vastly overblown. I'm living here (China, Beijing and Jiangsu) now, and there are exactly two cases in the past eight months where the "social credit" system has had any impact at all: - To open "take first pay after" vending machines. These are vending machines which are basically big locked fridges; if your credit score is high enough, you can open the machines, take whatever d…

But the USA has a social credit score that affects a lot more about your life, doesn't it? Like whether you're allowed to have a house or a car.

Social credit? Or money credit?

(Genuine question, I'm not American and don't have any desire to move to the US).

Re: I flagged two research papers for fake authors and both were accepted as orals

#96

Post by plastic-enjoyer »

nneonneo wrote: post #2

At this point, in the field of AI research: - papers are written by AI (as pointed out in this article, and as obvious to anyone who spends a while actually reading recent AI research) - papers are reviewed by AI (NeurIPS is doing an AI assisted review experiment - https://neurips.cc/Conferences/2026/ai-reviewing-experiment - and I feel the trend is moving towards AI reviewers whether we like it or not) - papers are…

> We are very rapidly automating humans out of the academic publication loop here.

It more looks like the breakdown of the current academic publication system, which was rotten to the core pre-AI and which internal contradictions are just accelerated by AI to the point of breakdown now.

Re: I flagged two research papers for fake authors and both were accepted as orals

#97

Post by turtletontine »

kingstnap wrote: post #7

https://arxiv.org/stats/monthly_submissions They should consider swapping this for a log plot. I can imagine in 2027 academia looking like Moltbook.

> I can imagine in 2027 academia looking like Moltbook.

This is certainly “directionally correct”, but keep in mind this is all highly uneven across fields and subfields. The people generating slop articles are mostly trying to publish big flashy things, and naturally ML research has it much worse than most other fields. There are many topics that are super important and interesting, but niche or obscure enough that no slop authors is trying to publish on them yet. So plenty of topics are still dominated by real earnest researchers doing their best, but they’re niche enough that you wouldn’t know about them unless you study that field.

Re: I flagged two research papers for fake authors and both were accepted as orals

#98

Post by turtletontine »

leikarnes wrote: post #81

Why dont we require the reference PDFs to be uploaded at the same time as the paper?

This is foolish for several reasons. It’s an undue burden on authors to make them download and upload potentially a gigabyte of files (or more) from many different sources. It is also likely a copyright violation for many or the sources. This also makes it arbitrarily difficult to cite things like conference talks, which are not published texts.

There are already standard keys to index publications, like DOIs. Requiring a list of DOIs for citations would make a lot more sense and be somewhat feasible, but still doesn’t prevent errors in the author list given in the draft.

Re: I flagged two research papers for fake authors and both were accepted as orals

#99

Post by tgv »

emil-lp wrote: post #80
low_tech_love wrote: post #74

“…because conferences have made it mandatory to review 4-5 papers if you submit to them.” Is that really a thing? So if I submit a legit paper it is being reviewed forcefully by a bunch of random people from god knows where?

That's correct. And 4–5 is low-balling. I was forced to review 7 papers. Now, how are these papers chosen for you? You get to bid on which to review. Bid on 30 papers out of 30,000. I got none of those, and I had to review 7 papers I wasn't really competent enough to review.

30k papers? What field is that? How do you even select your area of competence from such a haystack?

I went to smaller conferences, I suppose, but back then I also had to review papers outside my direct expertise, although nothing too remote. But I didn't know the literature well, obviously. I was able to weed out the sub-par papers (I think), but it was harder to estimate the merits of those that did make sense, as I only saw 1 or 2 per area. And that's what determines the acceptance, after all. No criticism because the reviewer judged it perfect or because the reviewer didn't know what to look for? Outcome is the same.

Re: I flagged two research papers for fake authors and both were accepted as orals

#100

Post by adastra22 »

vladms wrote: post #79
low_tech_love wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is the truth. As a researcher, I say good riddance. It was always kinda stupid, AI is just accelerating the demise of something that hasn’t worked correctly for a few decades now. The time is way overdue for us to figure out some other system.

I feel this is a case of "perfect the enemy of good". Looking at the output (scientific progress in biology, medicine, material physics, etc.) the "something" seems to have worked well. Could it be optimized? Probably. Should we completely destroy it and hope a new system will be better? My read of history is that in many cases the new ideas were worse of what they were replacing and it took a long time for a fix. So…

Look into the replication crisis. It has seriously impacted some fields very negatively. Psychology and Alzheimer’s research in particular have been set back decades.
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