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Tortured phrases: A dubious writing style emerging in science

nature.com

181–190 of 263 posts

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

#181
post #87

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.

I think it's a tortured phrase for Ivy League.

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

#182

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…

As a native English speaker, but not an academic researcher, I would have naively done the same.

To preface: I am speaking in ignorance of the mechanisms of credit and advancement in your field, so I'm undoubtedly overly harsh. I'm not even trying to be fair, because I admittedly don't have the knowledge to do so.

I know academia is a different world from private sector industry, but I would think if the point of a confidential review is for you to do anonymous work to improve someone else's credited work, and their work was improved by incorporating your feedback, you would be happy with the outcome, or else why are you participating in a confidential review process in the first place? There are different mechanisms for publishing words that you want credit for.

When someone incorporates my feedback on code or documentation word-for-word, I might in the worst case be suspicious that they are trying to get my approval without engaging with my criticism, but in most cases I'm flattered that they respect my idea enough to put their name on it. Although, in my world, putting your name on something is more about responsibility than credit. The command is called "git blame" and not "git credit", after all.

Wanting them to incorporate your feedback, but also wanting them to make some change to the wording to avoid plagiarism, smacks of how freshman essays are graded, not how real work gets done.

Like I said, I'm not trying to be fair and don't have the right background to be fair to you. I only speak up because I grew up in an academic family and know that there is a presumption that academic work is more idealistic, more altruistic, and less mercenary than private sector work, and I think it's worth pointing out when the reverse is true.

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

#183
post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> the authors plagiarized my definition and explanation almost word for word (from my confidential review). Is there any way the authors could have kept your definition, and somehow credited you, even anonymously? Because rephrasing definitions is the pinnacle of wasted effort, and leads to confusion - you are asking them to say what you said, but without using your words.

That is a good question that I do not have a good answer for, unfortunately. The review process for this journal is supposed to be blind, so crediting me would only reveal me as a reviewer. An anonymous acknowledgment is better than nothing, if the authors only copied a short definition without my permission, but they copied an entire paragraph from my review without my permission. That's just inexcusable. I can unde…

I don’t understand what the problem here is actually. If you plagiarize on an assignment for school, that’s bad, because the goal of assignments is to test your knowledge and plagiarism makes it a less effective test. But here the goal (I think) is to produce an informative and accurate paper. You told them the definition - what would have been gained by rephrasing the definition you told them? Especially if they’re nonnative english speakers, it seems likely that any rephrasing would have made the definition less understandable and possibly less accurate.

I guess the fear is that they don’t actually understand the definition, and anyone reading the paper will incorrectly believe that they do, improving their reputation in a way they don’t deserve?

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

#184
Black hatters abusing the Google Translation API -

https://www.seroundtable.com/auto-translated-content-spam-go...

Example-

Unknown Source -> stolen using Machine Translated English and Published -> Stolen again, Machine Translated language X -> Machine Translated English -> re-publish on another web site -

Result - https://m-eng.ru/en/plumbing/sinii-kit-vesit-150-tonn-zhivot...

So people are using machine translate to steal stolen machine translated articles.

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

#185
post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How do you feel about doctorates?

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…

Wow---you are right.

University of Phoenix does offer Ph.D's.

I would have never guessed.

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

#186
> software that attempts to disguise plagiarism

AFAIK today it has became necessary to "disguise plagiarism" even when you are not plagiarizing anything because bullshit "anti-plagiarism" software would detect many phrases similar to what somebody else already used. I believe the war on plagiarism brings little good in exchange for the hassle.

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

#188

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In your review, did you suggest the definition and explanation that they used? In this situation, would have an acknowledgment at the end have been enough? In my mind, it seems like you all had a conversation and the authors took up your suggestions as the reviewer.

No, I did not suggest the definition and explanation as content for them to use. I was trying to explain a concept that they discussed incorrectly multiple times in the paper. It is an advanced concept that might not even appear in graduate-level courses on the subject, so I can understand why they did not understand it fully. That said, I did not give them permission to copy my words there. If there are any particul…

> What the authors should have done was ...

In the absence of an explicit directive or request from you, given that the authors are from a different culture, how do you expect them to know what was required by them?

I don't mean to be snarky or accusative. Your comment was thoughtful, articulate and detailed, which tells me you are a sophisticated communicator.

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

#189
post #64
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…

Computer generated articles from much older technology than GPT3 have made it through peer review

https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-021-01436-7

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

#190

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That is a good question that I do not have a good answer for, unfortunately. The review process for this journal is supposed to be blind, so crediting me would only reveal me as a reviewer. An anonymous acknowledgment is better than nothing, if the authors only copied a short definition without my permission, but they copied an entire paragraph from my review without my permission. That's just inexcusable. I can unde…

I don’t understand what the problem here is actually. If you plagiarize on an assignment for school, that’s bad, because the goal of assignments is to test your knowledge and plagiarism makes it a less effective test. But here the goal (I think) is to produce an informative and accurate paper. You told them the definition - what would have been gained by rephrasing the definition you told them? Especially if they’re…

As I have said in another comment, the authors did not just copy my short definition but my entire paragraph-length explanation of the concept. I might have let the short definition slide but an entire paragraph is just inexcusable.

I agree that this is not a school assignment, so the nature of plagiarism is a bit different. But you hit the nail right on the head. We should be worried that they are pretending to know something that they really do not. They copied my explanation nearly word-for-word. Doing that does not prove that they actually understand the concept. It only proves that they have copy and paste. Now maybe they did spend some time learning it and looking into, but there is no way to know for sure. The only way to prove that they really understand the concept fundamentally is to make them explain it themselves in their own words. And that is precisely what they should have done.

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