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About Google's approach to research publication – Jeff Dean

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Re: About Google's approach to research publication – Jeff Dean

#11

Post by bnj »

drfuchs wrote: post #6

My researcher acquaintances at industry labs at IBM, Microsoft, HP, Xerox, ATT, Bell, DEC, Compaq, etc. never have had to have their papers reviewed internally before submitting them to conferences or journals. What's up with Google?

I wonder how consistently these standards are applied, even zeroing in on Google. If it turns out that most people within the company don’t face a barrier from this process in the same way then that sounds like a really problematic symptom.

Re: About Google's approach to research publication – Jeff Dean

#12

Post by iab »

kaymanb wrote: post #3

> Our aim is to rival peer-reviewed journals in terms of the rigor and thoughtfulness in how we review research before publication. I can see how this might be frustrating for academics working within Google. The field already has systems in place for peer-review. While I admire the idea of Google holding their research to a certain standard, it also provides a mechanism for dismissing research that paints Google (th…

I think this is the crux, in that google is not academia; so naturally a band-gap would arise if your expectations were that it should behave like an academic institution. From their perspective, what requirement is there to publish work that is not well aligned with their goals (optics, financial, etc)?

Re: About Google's approach to research publication – Jeff Dean

#14

Post by thisgoodlife »

dang wrote: post #7

Previous threads on this ongoing story: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25292386 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25285502 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25289445

one link says she resigned. The other one says she was fired. Which one is it then?

Re: About Google's approach to research publication – Jeff Dean

#15

Post by danpalmer »

kaymanb wrote: post #3

> Our aim is to rival peer-reviewed journals in terms of the rigor and thoughtfulness in how we review research before publication. I can see how this might be frustrating for academics working within Google. The field already has systems in place for peer-review. While I admire the idea of Google holding their research to a certain standard, it also provides a mechanism for dismissing research that paints Google (th…

> If a paper is good enough to pass an (external) review process, why should it not be published?

There are many journals that have a poor track record on peer review, and in fact even those that have a generally good track record often have times that it famously failed.

Whether we agree or not, Google want to protect their reputation. Because not every journal will be up to their standards, ensuring that papers do meet a standard is going to be important for them.

They could do this by only allowing submission to certain journals, but this would require an understanding of each journal, its processes reputation, etc. Perhaps easier is just to review papers before they are submitted.

This does also allow them to protect potentially NDA'd info from being accidentally included in a paper given to external reviewers, which is (whether you agree or not) something they will clearly want to do.

Re: About Google's approach to research publication – Jeff Dean

#16

Post by geodel »

hartator wrote: post #9

It sadden me that they make Jeff Dean work on these kind of issues. His map/reduce invention brought to the world a lot more than managing his coworker egos.

How do you know they are making him to this. It seems to me Jeff chose to accept leadership position at Google. So managing egos would be first class task to deal with for him.

Re: About Google's approach to research publication – Jeff Dean

#18

Post by dang »

thisgoodlife wrote: post #14
dang wrote: post #7

Previous threads on this ongoing story: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25292386 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25285502 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25289445

one link says she resigned. The other one says she was fired. Which one is it then?

It's fuzzy, and people are disagreeing about which aspect to emphasize.

Re: About Google's approach to research publication – Jeff Dean

#19

Post by nova22033 »

Timnit responded with an email requiring that a number of conditions be met in order for her to continue working at Google, including revealing the identities of every person who Megan and I had spoken to and consulted as part of the review of the paper and the exact feedback. Timnit wrote that if we didn’t meet these demands, she would leave Google and work on an end date. We accept and respect her decision to resign from Google.

This sheds some new light...

Re: About Google's approach to research publication – Jeff Dean

#20

Post by vikramkr »

gcr wrote: post #2

Maybe different teams are different, but on my previous team within Google AI, we thought the goal of google's pubapproval process was to ensure that internal company IP (eg. details about datasets, details about google compute infra) does not leak to the public, and maybe to shield Google from liability. Nothing more. In all of my time at Google AI, I never heard of pubapproval being used for peer review or to criti…

They might have enough of a PR budget to make the Google version of the story stick. But, its concerning that, if what you say is true, they are hoping to make that work by leveraging the public's ignorance of how the Google specific process works. Its also not the smartest move, since Google is important enough and public goodwill towards tech is low enough that journalists will have a field day looking for evidence of double standards/a cover up. And they're not making it too difficult for the journalists if that evidence is found in the top comment on a hacker news post.
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