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A Dishonest, Indifferent, and Toxic Culture
71–80 of 196 posts
Re: A Dishonest, Indifferent, and Toxic Culture
#72I 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…
> I know academia being f’ed is a big part of it
I'm sorry, but I have to strongly disagree with the way you've ended your comment. This lets the people responsible off the hook. The guilty party is an individual (and perhaps several individuals). Academia, peer review, conferences, and organizations didn't cause this. The professor was responsible. He wasn't just a cog in the system.
Re: A Dishonest, Indifferent, and Toxic Culture
#73The sheer amount of typos here is....challenging. And I'm not one to pick on someone who's doing their best to communicate in a second language or anything but shoot this really could've used a copy editor.
It’s a blog, not the New York Times. I could understand it just fine.
Re: A Dishonest, Indifferent, and Toxic Culture
#74It's bad enough that ethical people find themselves in a situation like this. But when suicide is the result, it's tragic.
Finding out you've thrown your lot in with - and been trapped by - scumbags that you thought you could trust - must be very difficult. But suicide is not a solution ... you lose all. The best choice is to walk away.
Tomorrow will need you.
Re: A Dishonest, Indifferent, and Toxic Culture
#75I'm gonna get enemies for that .... But let's face it: the Academia peer review process is pretty rotten. - Many organisations could not care less about whatever crap you publish as long as you publish. And if possible a lot. - Many journal's reviewers are friend of friends and you can often easily guess their names, even in double blinded review. - Many reviewers care more about you quoting their own paper than givi…
But the problem is, apart from peer review process, what measures can be used to ensure the quality of the paper being published? And what should be used as the metric for academics?
Re: A Dishonest, Indifferent, and Toxic Culture
#76I'm gonna get enemies for that .... But let's face it: the Academia peer review process is pretty rotten. - Many organisations could not care less about whatever crap you publish as long as you publish. And if possible a lot. - Many journal's reviewers are friend of friends and you can often easily guess their names, even in double blinded review. - Many reviewers care more about you quoting their own paper than givi…
My experience is different. Peer review is far from perfect but: * Most of my papers have had thoughtful comments. Typically, they improved the paper, sometimes a lot. * I have very rarely been asked to quote a specific paper from a specific author. Of course, pointing out important references that the paper has missed is part of peer review, so this would not necessarily be evidence of corruption. * There are loads…
So how do you explain the information in the OP?
Re: A Dishonest, Indifferent, and Toxic Culture
#77I 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…
> I know academia being f’ed is a big part of it I'm sorry, but I have to strongly disagree with the way you've ended your comment. This lets the people responsible off the hook. The guilty party is an individual (and perhaps several individuals). Academia, peer review, conferences, and organizations didn't cause this. The professor was responsible. He wasn't just a cog in the system.
I went to MIT. MIT has procedures involving NDAs and non-disparage agreements to cover up academic fraud. Academic fraud widespread, at least in the departments I worked with, and the Institute can apply *a lot* of pressure to get people to shut up. Except for anonymous web forums, I did.
I'm sorry, but this isn't letting the individuals off the hook, any more than accusing the KKK of being racist isn't letting a particular KKK member off the hook, or a mafia of engaging in extortion letting any particular member off-the-hook.
There are no effective, enforceable structures for stopping academic fraud. Most people who've engaged in it did not become persona non grata, let alone been fired; most continue to hold tenured academic jobs. Worst-case outcomes are a multiyear slap-on-the-wrist of some kind. That, combined with intense competition, led some people to cheat. Eventually, when it turned out to work okay, it became a culture of cheating.
Yes, the individuals involved should be punished, but much more important are:
1) Procedures for getting crooks out of the academy
2) Reducing competition, so there aren't the intense incentives to cheat
3) Implementing transparency. Why do universities get to use taxpayer dollars (grant / tuition overhead) and charitable contributions to cover up this stuff? Governance should be transparent and open. Data should be transparent and open whenever possible. NDAs and non-disparage agreements should be off-bounds.
4) Big money should be out. Yes, I know how much the typical professor gets paid, but the million-dollar salaries for presidents, Nobel laureates, and similar high-ranked positions distort things.
5) Related to the prior, conflict-of-interest provisions should be just a couple orders of magnitude more enforceable. The industryacademia and especially startupacademia pipelines help ground things and prevent things from getting detached, but if you're doing research to start a startup to make a few million dollars, that tends to apply extreme pressure to bake data.
6) Hiring and promotion structures shouldn't be so impact-focused. The easiest way to have impact is to tell politically-popular lies. P-hunt for data that shows liberals are smarter than conservatives, atheists are more open-minded than evangelicals, racism is wholesale, wokeness is the way to solve it, and so on. On this list, the really most harmful is when you reach correct conclusions from false data (much more so, even, than false conclusions from false data).
... and so on. This should happen wholesale, across academia, to be eligible for federal grants or tuition subsidies.
Re: A Dishonest, Indifferent, and Toxic Culture
#78I'm gonna get enemies for that .... But let's face it: the Academia peer review process is pretty rotten. - Many organisations could not care less about whatever crap you publish as long as you publish. And if possible a lot. - Many journal's reviewers are friend of friends and you can often easily guess their names, even in double blinded review. - Many reviewers care more about you quoting their own paper than givi…
My experience is different. Peer review is far from perfect but: * Most of my papers have had thoughtful comments. Typically, they improved the paper, sometimes a lot. * I have very rarely been asked to quote a specific paper from a specific author. Of course, pointing out important references that the paper has missed is part of peer review, so this would not necessarily be evidence of corruption. * There are loads…
It varies field-by-field. In my field, peer review is a joke. I'm glad it's not a joke in your field yet, but incentive structures say it eventually will be. If incentives don't change, it's a question of when, not if.
Re: A Dishonest, Indifferent, and Toxic Culture
#79I 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?
Re: A Dishonest, Indifferent, and Toxic Culture
#80I 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?
It’s tough to make the jump. Part of the trouble is that pure science and research is what interests and fulfills you -- in principle. It just doesn’t pay enough, and only a tiny fraction of researchers see real success. To make the jump into industry, you have to admit to yourself that a) the academic life isn’t what you hoped for and never will be; and b) you, personally, will never make the kind of scientific breakthrough you still dream about.
For all that you may be able to go from a tiny salary to a six-figure salary, you still need to admit failure at some level, and that’s hard.