Please commit more blatant academic fraud • Hacker News Board

Re: Please commit more blatant academic fraud

#351

Post by soco » Mon, May 31, 2021, 1:04 PM UTC

rscho wrote: post #348

soco wrote: post #345

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Where do you draw the line for tenure? So hitting colleagues with a binder is acceptable, okay got it. How about hitting them with a baseball bat? How much tenure we need for that? Should Einstein be allowed to kill physicists because he's a genius? If we already agreed to make tenure an excuse for doing bad stuff, let's make it official and negotiate the legal borders.

> So hitting colleagues with a binder is acceptable, okay got it > we already agreed to make tenure an excuse for doing bad stuff Re-read my above comment. Never said that. I said removing tenure entirely is a very bad idea for the health of western science.

Removing tenure is indeed a very bad idea. However I think we're talking about using tenure as a hall pass for whatever asocial attitude some might practice. Because hitting your fellow researchers with a binder doesn't do much to advance science, that's for for sure... it's not like the tenured scientists had all the answers and by being aggressive they actually quench different - and possibly novel - ideas.

Re: Please commit more blatant academic fraud

#352

Post by skystarman » Mon, May 31, 2021, 1:52 PM UTC

prepend wrote: post #284

skystarman wrote: post #280

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"WHen making terribly misogynistic comments his INTENT wasn't to be misogynistic, it's just based on his experience that women are driven primarily by their emotions and unable to handle pressure!" Really solid defense!

I’m not defending him and it’s funny you think this is some pro/con situation. That being said misogyny requires intent, right. It means someone who hates or dislikes women. So if you make a statement that every time you criticize a woman, she cries and don’t have ill intent toward women, then that isn’t a sign of misogyny. I don’t think women are any more likely to cry than men, but if there’s research that shows it…

That misogyny or bigotry requires "intent" is so ludicrously divorced from reality I don't know where it came from.

I've heard the most ridiculously hateful and racist things prefaced by "I'm not a racist but..."

Clearly in these people's own minds they aren't racist/misogynist, but when you are pushing plainly racist or misogynistic views it doesn't matter.

The statements are misogynistic. If you think you can convince your boss your intent wasn't to be bigoted so your bigoted comments aren't actually bigoted then be my guess. I am confident you are unlikely to succeed.

Re: Please commit more blatant academic fraud

#353

Post by zepto » Mon, May 31, 2021, 2:44 PM UTC

newswasboring wrote: post #327

zepto wrote: post #159

Earlier quoted context omitted.

‘Doubled down’ on what? I’m curious if you think any of his statements are untrue?

The one about woman crying when they are criticized? That one is certainly untrue. While some people cry when they are criticized (I personally am severely effected and have cried in the past but afterwards), women have no extra tendency to do this.

> The one about woman crying when they are criticized? That one is certainly untrue.

What makes you so certain?

> women have no extra tendency to do this.

The data say otherwise:

https://www.thecut.com/2015/01/why-do-women-cry-more-than-me...

Re: Please commit more blatant academic fraud

#354

Post by prepend » Mon, May 31, 2021, 2:49 PM UTC

skystarman wrote: post #352

prepend wrote: post #284

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I’m not defending him and it’s funny you think this is some pro/con situation. That being said misogyny requires intent, right. It means someone who hates or dislikes women. So if you make a statement that every time you criticize a woman, she cries and don’t have ill intent toward women, then that isn’t a sign of misogyny. I don’t think women are any more likely to cry than men, but if there’s research that shows it…

That misogyny or bigotry requires "intent" is so ludicrously divorced from reality I don't know where it came from. I've heard the most ridiculously hateful and racist things prefaced by "I'm not a racist but..." Clearly in these people's own minds they aren't racist/misogynist, but when you are pushing plainly racist or misogynistic views it doesn't matter. The statements are misogynistic. If you think you can convi…

I’m talking about misogyny, not all bigotry.

The definition of misogyny literally includes intent, perhaps you’re thinking of something other than misogyny.

Here’s the definition from Wikipedia [0]… “ Misogyny (/mɪˈsɒdʒɪni/) is the hatred of, contempt for, or prejudice against women or girls. It enforces sexism by punishing those who reject an inferior status for women and rewarding those who accept it.”

You also didn’t answer my question of what negative information you wouldn’t interpret as misogynistic. Is it possible to report anything negative based on biological sex or gender that you don’t interpret as misogynistic?

How can these differences be studied and discussed to learn more and overcome harm caused toward women?

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Misogyny

Re: Please commit more blatant academic fraud

#355

Post by wpietri » Mon, May 31, 2021, 3:01 PM UTC

monoideism wrote: post #338

wpietri wrote: post #332

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Exactly. Very well put. I once had a Black intern come back to his desk and I could see he was unhappy, which was far from his norm. I asked him what was up and there was this long moment of consideration, clearly deciding whether it was worth even explaining it to a white guy. It turned out he'd left his badge at his desk and got trapped in the elevator lobby, something many people did going to and from the bathroom…

> But it has always stuck with me how instantly this was dismissed by the normal power structure. Your misunderstanding was believing HR is there to solve human interaction problems in the company. HR is there first and foremost to protect the company. In the case of legal, that’s even more the case. But good on your for speaking up and trying to make the situation better. But I also believe your intern was smart to…

Thanks, but avoiding future lawsuits for racial bias is part of protecting the company. As is making it safe for all sorts of people to work there, as that aids recruitment, retention, and results. So this wasn't about protecting the company.

My take is that HR's first goal is to protect HR, and their second to protect the powerful people in the company. Protecting the actual company is low down on the list.

Re: Please commit more blatant academic fraud

#356

Post by wpietri » Mon, May 31, 2021, 3:14 PM UTC

loup-vaillant wrote: post #333

wpietri wrote: post #202

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I would encourage you to think more about the social use of "jokes". Once we get past the level of knock-knocks, jokes very often have social meaning. Look at people like George Carlin, for example. His "7 dirty words" routine was deeply political. It was a full-on assault on American government censorship and the cultural elements that demanded it. And looking at history, he's won. Humor can be very powerful. Jokes…

Taking the Wikipedia article at face value, and taking for granted the exact word it cites, I fail to see anything sexist in what Tim Hunt said in that conference. If anything, he was joking about sexism itself. The people who say are offended by his words either read a quote out of context, or did the cherry picking themselves. Assuming you followed the same Wikipedia link I did, it would seam you are guilty of cher…

He did literally both use rank sexist stereotypes and suggest women should be pushed out of men's labs. There's just no denying that. He did that as part of what he may have intended to be a joke. But when your audience doesn't laugh, it's a bad joke. If one is going to joke about a fraught topic, there's a strong obligation to succeed.

Even taking it as entirely sincere and well meant, something I don't think women in science are obliged to do, his "solution" is apparently for women to just ignore the sexism, something that places the burden for men's sexism on women. That is also sexist. So again, this looks like a failure to me.

I therefore think your theory this is a false positive is incorrect. I think the most that you can claim is that the level of outrage is disproportionate to the particular offense. But that analysis ignores the extent to which sexism is utterly commonplace in a society that has oppressed women for centuries and is still working its way out of it. So you can argue that this wasn't perfectly fair to this one guy, but it's not disproportionate to the problem this guy was part of. And a) that rings of himpathy to me, b) that ignores the much, much greater degree of unfairness caused by sexism, and c) that focus itself helps protect sexism. If fairness is really what's motivating you, your time is better spent on the many early-career women continually being harmed and pushed out of the sciences, not one old white guy who is already back doing what he wants to.

Re: Please commit more blatant academic fraud

#357

Post by loup-vaillant » Mon, May 31, 2021, 5:39 PM UTC

wpietri wrote: post #356

loup-vaillant wrote: post #333

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Taking the Wikipedia article at face value, and taking for granted the exact word it cites, I fail to see anything sexist in what Tim Hunt said in that conference. If anything, he was joking about sexism itself. The people who say are offended by his words either read a quote out of context, or did the cherry picking themselves. Assuming you followed the same Wikipedia link I did, it would seam you are guilty of cher…

He did literally both use rank sexist stereotypes and suggest women should be pushed out of men's labs. There's just no denying that. He did that as part of what he may have intended to be a joke. But when your audience doesn't laugh, it's a bad joke. If one is going to joke about a fraught topic, there's a strong obligation to succeed. Even taking it as entirely sincere and well meant, something I don't think women…

> his "solution" is apparently for women to just ignore the sexism, something that places the burden for men's sexism on women. That is also sexist. So again, this looks like a failure to me.

That I can concede.

> If fairness is really what's motivating you, your time is better spent on the many early-career women continually being harmed and pushed out of the sciences, not one old white guy who is already back doing what he wants to.

Agreed. This cuts both ways, though. Attention directed at slandering the guy on Twitter is attention not devoted to actually help discriminated women.

Re: Please commit more blatant academic fraud

#358

Post by QuinnWilton » Mon, May 31, 2021, 5:40 PM UTC

rscho wrote: post #266

QuinnWilton wrote: post #264

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Plenty of us have absolutely no problem working in same-sex environments, and plenty of straight people have no issues working in coed environments. This is very clearly a case of the professor being unprofessional and exploitative of his position of power.

Plenty and plenty, yes. Now, what's a solution that would work for everyone, males females and others alike? This is very clearly a professor acknowledging the problems that arise due to interindividual biology in work environments. Unlike PC supporters hiding the issue under the blanket of professionalism.

I think an obvious solution would be to exclude anyone who is incapable of managing the bare minimum level of professionalism that's required in a workplace.

If someone is incapable of managing their feelings in a workplace then maybe they don't belong in one, and their colleagues should not be the ones who are punished for that.

I don't expect you to agree with me here.

Re: Please commit more blatant academic fraud

#359

Post by wpietri » Mon, May 31, 2021, 9:55 PM UTC

loup-vaillant wrote: post #357

wpietri wrote: post #356

Earlier quoted context omitted.

He did literally both use rank sexist stereotypes and suggest women should be pushed out of men's labs. There's just no denying that. He did that as part of what he may have intended to be a joke. But when your audience doesn't laugh, it's a bad joke. If one is going to joke about a fraught topic, there's a strong obligation to succeed. Even taking it as entirely sincere and well meant, something I don't think women…

> his "solution" is apparently for women to just ignore the sexism, something that places the burden for men's sexism on women. That is also sexist. So again, this looks like a failure to me. That I can concede. > If fairness is really what's motivating you, your time is better spent on the many early-career women continually being harmed and pushed out of the sciences, not one old white guy who is already back doing…

If slander were the point, sure. But for a lot of the people calling out sexism, etc, the point is not really the one offending guy. It's the caste of guys who have been supporting and benefiting from the problem that the current focus is symptomatic of. It's the system itself. But humans mostly don't think in systemic terms act to solve systemic issues. They work in terms of narrative, of example.

Re: Please commit more blatant academic fraud

#360

Post by teachingassist » Tue, Jun 01, 2021, 11:36 AM UTC

bonoboTP wrote: post #128

teachingassist wrote: post #121

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It's already difficult to do if your subfield is a different niche. It's not that difficult, at least in science and science-adjacent fields. The scientific method still follows the same principles. If you are used to reading papers, you can tell when someone has elided important detail, or not included the evidence for their claims - or, if someone [or a whole subfield] is using technical language to obfuscate the…

There are many levels of analysis to a paper. Yours is part of it but not the full picture. One other thing is the novelty aspect. To assess that, you need to know the current state of the field. Also the best practices, known methodological pitfalls, judge what is a valid chain of reasoning and what is too speculative etc. It's far from simple and I often see outsiders online criticizing largely irrelevant things wh…

A journal could follow a set of statistical standards that could be examined and approved by experts outside of its narrow field.

I don't claim that paper reviews have to be or can be perfect - only that they could be held to a better standard than they are now.

We see plenty of avenues for publishing to a worse standard (self-publishing on an internet aggregator, for example). Let's see some avenues for a better standard.

Why isn't this a science in itself? We could trial some different standards and statistically compare them.

[It was not my claim that scientific papers must be understandable by laypeople, although I think this is an ideal case. If not, it should at least be understandable by people in an adjacent subfield - otherwise, it's just a small group of people talking amongst themselves]