A Dishonest, Indifferent, and Toxic Culture • Hacker News Board

Re: A Dishonest, Indifferent, and Toxic Culture

#111

Post by alyizzet » Sun, Feb 21, 2021, 2:07 PM UTC

greatartiste wrote: post #70

I do some work in a certain field of digital signal processing. From time to time I look at the latest academic papers in that field and am always shocked by the poor quality. Probably 90% of the papers couldn't be repeated due to a lack of source code , the worse ones just have Simulink 'blocks' to illustrate the code. The techniques in this field used by industry for commercial products are never mentioned it's as…

Indeed, during my undergrad I have seen the exact same behaviour with the Electrical Engineering faculty(at one of the most prestigious in the EMEA region). Most of the so called academical output from my department was hidden source code simulink visual spaghettis closed for scrutiny. It seemed to me as the profs spun out a web of lies out of EE jargon plus matlab blackboxes.

Re: A Dishonest, Indifferent, and Toxic Culture

#112

Post by eptcyka » Sun, Feb 21, 2021, 2:10 PM UTC

Tistron wrote: post #43

eptcyka wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I take it you meant to say 'competing lab' instead of 'concurrent lab' in your 2nd to last comment.

Curious. In Swedish we say "konkurrerande" for "competing", I guess adev speaks a language that does something similar. In Danish they say konkurrence for competition.

And in Latvian, probably Slavic labguages too.

Re: A Dishonest, Indifferent, and Toxic Culture

#113

Post by sojournerc » Sun, Feb 21, 2021, 2:16 PM UTC

coldtea wrote: post #109

feralimal wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"I was right technically, businesswise, and morally." ... and in third place, morality. And now lost in the distance. I'm not a Christian, but this is worth considering by everyone: "For what will it profit a man if he gains the whole world, but loses his soul? Or what will a man give as an exchange for his soul?"

> "For what will it profit a man if he gains the whole world, but loses his soul? It will profit them, well, the whole world. Duh! (Yeah, I know what the Christian sentiment means. But it requires the belief, if not in soul, in some trancedental good, for people to care about "loss of soul" over "gaining the world". Which, alas, we don't have as much...)

There's a secular interpretation too.

What good is all the money in the world if you don't respect/ recognize yourself after you get it.

Re: A Dishonest, Indifferent, and Toxic Culture

#114

Post by temp8964 » Sun, Feb 21, 2021, 2:25 PM UTC

tobmlt wrote: post #19

I want to express sympathies in a particular way: When I had a job I didn’t want, in a city i didn’t want, no kids, no wife, and prospects abounding, it was easy to speak truth to power. I did it, and I was right technically, businesswise, and morally. What a win...(?) Now, I have my dream job, my dream location, my own damn house, and my family. -Whole thing feels like a dream I might wake up from if I am not carefu…

That guy sent internal email to his students in Chinese. This is crazy.

Re: A Dishonest, Indifferent, and Toxic Culture

#115

Post by rjsw » Sun, Feb 21, 2021, 2:33 PM UTC

lou1306 wrote: post #45

Tistron wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Curious. In Swedish we say "konkurrerande" for "competing", I guess adev speaks a language that does something similar. In Danish they say konkurrence for competition.

French and Italian also use similar terms (concurrence, concorrenza) for business competition, so it's not a far-fetched hypothesis.

And for sports competition.

Re: A Dishonest, Indifferent, and Toxic Culture

#116

Post by ylyn » Sun, Feb 21, 2021, 2:42 PM UTC

WWWWH wrote: post #59

dbos_friends wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We are really sorry for these mistakes in langauge. Can you please send an email to huixiangvoice@gmail.com with details of these language mistakes so that we can try to fix it. Thanks

Sincerely, I wouldn't worry about it. This is a powerfully written, emotive, bombshell. Anyone who is genuinely worrying about apposite word choice and non-native syntax is missing the wood for the trees.

Of course. It just makes it quite a bit more difficult to read; I need to spend some effort trying to figure out the exact nuance the author was trying to convey.

Re: A Dishonest, Indifferent, and Toxic Culture

#117

Post by dariosalvi78 » Sun, Feb 21, 2021, 2:43 PM UTC

It's a sad story. The action of the student is difficult to understand in my opinion, and may have been the consequence of some other underlying issue. However, even if he suffered from of mental issues, the fact that he didn't get support speaks very badly for the university and the supervisor.

The lack of reaction from the university is also hard to justify. Even if one doesn't want to jump to conclusions about the professor, some temporary measure should have been taken, at least to reassure the family that due investigations were being done.

Re: A Dishonest, Indifferent, and Toxic Culture

#118

Post by marcosdumay » Sun, Feb 21, 2021, 2:47 PM UTC

chii wrote: post #81

tticvs wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is similar to the advantage to amnesty for corrupt dictators proposed by Mesquita & White in The Dictators Handbook. Basically giving authoritarian regimes an alternative to fighting to the death might increase overall utility.

but it also gives the moral hazard of someone wanting to start such a regime, because they know they can profit/garner personal wealth during their reign, then beg for amnesty after a while (when it looks like their grip on power is lowered), and possibly, hiding their wealth gained away somewhere secret. Where as, in a world where such amnesty doesn't exist, they may have to face the possibility of being executed wh…

There must always be punishment. The comments above are too summarized to get into it, but when that kind of amnesty happens, it is never complete.

But if the punishment is so crass that the people prefer to lose their lives instead, that's a clear signal that your society has a problem, and your new regime isn't all that good either.

Re: A Dishonest, Indifferent, and Toxic Culture

#119

Post by ojnabieoot » Sun, Feb 21, 2021, 2:51 PM UTC

jdthedisciple wrote: post #79

I never understand why phd students who are going through mental torture don't just quit their phd program. I mean ... noone can force you to finish a shi*y phd right? Why not just drop out and pursue sth that actually fulfills you? With your Masters degree / diploma in your pocket and the vast theoretical knowledge you have all doors standjng eide open for you, don't you?

As someone who quit a graduate program:

- it looks really really really bad on your CV to not finish a graduate degree. I dropped out for health reasons with an A+ GPA and still have to delicately explain what happened to interviewers. It looks worse than just having a masters degree.

- “just one more year of misery and then your career prospects will increase dramatically” is a very powerful argument and not just a sunk-cost fallacy.

- young people in PhD programs tend to have a lot of identity and psychological investment in getting their PhD and working as a researcher. For most PhD students, the occupation that most fulfills them is their research. It strikes me as very strange that you think PhD students have some secret marketable passion that they would pursue but instead they somehow got stuck in graduate school. Speaking for myself: a PhD program was the only feasible part for me to do something fulfilling. My current work as a software developer is tedious and boring by comparison and, frankly, not at all what I wanted to do with my life.

- PhD students rarely have any savings and their meager stipends are the only income they have. So “pursue [something] that actually fulfills you” is most likely impossible, since that ‘something’ is probably not a routine office/engineering job.

Re: A Dishonest, Indifferent, and Toxic Culture

#120

Post by jrochkind1 » Sun, Feb 21, 2021, 2:56 PM UTC

> Finally, the paper with academic misconduct got retracted by ACM as Huixiang’s last wish. The ACM imposed a penalty of a 15-year ban on participation in any ACM Conference or Publication to the offenders.

Wow. It does sound like the student discovered suicide as one of the only known effective methods of triggering accountability for research misconduct.

That's awfully depressing.

I can't now find the article I remember reading, perhaps from HN, of someone who came across then spent a lot of time demonstrating/reporting apparently falsified data to journals, to pretty much no consequence. (except teaching the researcher how to falsify data better to evade the particular tests the exposer used in that case).