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More South Korean academics caught naming kids as co-authors

nature.com

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Re: More South Korean academics caught naming kids as co-authors

#41

Post by topspin »

yabadabadoes wrote: post #37
notjesse wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If the kids made serious contributions, that is one thing. However, that really doesn’t seem to be the case here. Nepotism is majorly harmful. If their kids go into academia, they already have a huge leg up from having academic parents. Let alone if they already have a strong publishing record which they did not merit. You really harm those who don’t come from that background, which of course, is how class divide can…

Yes, but I actually think primary authors in title actually being grant proposal writers and middle managers is far more destructive to academia itself. I think it is the norm that a lot of people get primary credit on papers for doing what managers in every field do every day, and academia is busy obscuring their own processes as a result.

> Yes, but

One fraud doesn't justify the other.

Re: More South Korean academics caught naming kids as co-authors

#43

Post by mountainofdeath »

sithadmin wrote: post #24
starpilot wrote: post #15

I've heard of this happening in the US as well.

I've seen this happen in the US among my peers when I was in high school (mid 2000's). Parents with roles in medical / biomed research were by far the most prevalent offenders.

I can confirm this as well and my experience was circa 2009. The two cases where a) parent(s) or other close family were researchers or b) Non-researcher parent leveraged network to get some menial job (washing dishes) and in exchange they get listed somewhere in the research.

Re: More South Korean academics caught naming kids as co-authors

#44

Post by saagarjha »

qrian wrote: post #40
Nasrudith wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It is run by a non-profit as opposed to a government. Granted the SAT would also qualify as non-public so that just confuses things further.

Sorry I meant the Korean one (CSAT?) which is indeed run by the government. That's interesting that American SAT is not run by the government directly.

As is common in the United States, we have a number of pseudo-monopolies on certain things that are run by mismanaged “nonprofits”. In this case that’s the College Board and the ETS.

Re: More South Korean academics caught naming kids as co-authors

#45

Post by nemonemo »

qrian wrote: post #32
cortesoft wrote: post #22

Who thought it was a good idea to use academic paper authorship as a selection criteria for university!? There can't be enough high school kids writing academic papers for it to be that helpful, and certainly encourages this kind of cheating.

They don't have it as a selection criteria. Some context: South Korean educational system recently had a crackdown on private academy(hakwon), and in their infinite wisdom, decided to ban every non-public educational experiences (including things like international olympiad awards) when applying for the university. Which means that the only thing you can submit in the application is SAT scores, some public education…

As a South Korean, I think most of the things described here are not exactly true, but I might be wrong. Could you provide any source?

AFAIK the history of Korean educational system is the history of Hakwon superiority in adapting to new rules. A hakwon crackdown was something the gov did in 80s and failed miserably.

Also there are now very diverse channels for univ entrance. I would think some channels still allow many of those banned criteria. Maybe they cannot be used in some prestigious public ones?

Re: More South Korean academics caught naming kids as co-authors

#46

Post by skissane »

SkyBelow wrote: post #31
antognini wrote: post #18

When I was in grad school our department had a meeting every morning where we could get together to discuss the latest papers which we called "Morning Coffee" (or also Astro Coffee). These discussions were pretty fruitful and regularly would inspire new papers. After writing a new paper based on one of these discussions one of the professors decided to commemorate the contribution of Morning Coffee to the paper and a…

Coffee, M. has published 7 different papers. https://ui.adsabs.harvard.edu/search/q=author%3A%22Coffee%2C...

Most of the M. Coffee papers are actually by two real medical researchers with that surname, one called Megan and the other called Michelle.

Re: More South Korean academics caught naming kids as co-authors

#47

Post by wayoutthere »

saagarjha wrote: post #44
qrian wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sorry I meant the Korean one (CSAT?) which is indeed run by the government. That's interesting that American SAT is not run by the government directly.

As is common in the United States, we have a number of pseudo-monopolies on certain things that are run by mismanaged “nonprofits”. In this case that’s the College Board and the ETS.

From what I understand, much of the actual operations of CB / ETS are contracted out to Pearson Education (massive educational publisher).

Re: More South Korean academics caught naming kids as co-authors

#48

Post by foobar_fighter »

cortesoft wrote: post #22

Who thought it was a good idea to use academic paper authorship as a selection criteria for university!? There can't be enough high school kids writing academic papers for it to be that helpful, and certainly encourages this kind of cheating.

It's not uncommon for individuals at elite universities to have published research in high school - especially in mathematics.

Re: More South Korean academics caught naming kids as co-authors

#50

Post by choonway »

qwerty456127 wrote: post #30

> The practice was probably used to improve the children’s chances of securing a university place. The fact the competition to get into a university is so hard you need to co-author a scientific paper for this is the problem. Education should be accessible for everybody.

Not education, you mean accreditation.
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