6 ms·

It's sad and annoying - another bunch of academics who can't be satisfied with using public research money to benefit the public. They just have to go ahead an

It's sad and annoying - another bunch of academics who can't be satisfied with using public research money to benefit the public. They just have to go ahead and patent mathematics too. It's pathetic.

kristopolous 11y ago
The crazier thing is that releasing the source code like this, at least to me, is quite unusual. I've read a number of academic papers where I had to email the authors and ask nicely for the source code; much of the time not getting a response. You'd think the academic community would be on the forefront of embracing the new open intellectual movement...
- jsprogrammer 11y ago
  The University of California is supposed to be copying and freely publishing all output of their researchers.
- lotsoflumens 11y ago
  I think that's changing very quickly. It's happening much more now because software is everywhere, and paper publication lags are still months and sometimes years out.
- paulmd 11y ago
  The problem is that survival and prestige in the academic community is directly related to publications. Also, journals don't accept non-novel research. So helping someone scoop your current or future research directly hurts you. Obviously that's not a good thing, but it's a pretty straightforward response to the circumstances of academic papers. It has all kinds of other side-effects too: salami slicing, non-reproducible results, publication bias, etc.
  - jrock08 11y ago
    Lets, be honest, it's not like academics is the only place this happens. CS labs are essentially small companies (1 CEO, 2-3 senior members, and 5-10 junior members). The only difference is that the company produces papers, producing usable code that you support is actually very hard and takes away from the work that actually matters. I'm actually much less worried about being scooped by releasing my code, and much more worried about having to answer emails asking me how to get the hacked together code to run on their machine or their dataset.
- Houshalter 11y ago
  See this comment: https://www.reddit.com/r/MachineLearning/comments/39yj8y/why_isnt_code_submission_mandatory_for_top_ml/cs7oca4 https://www.reddit.com/r/MachineLearning/comments/39yj8y/why... >The code is a mess - Most code is written by grad students, it's often sloppy scripts that are duck taped together to get the numbers and graphs needed for the paper. I know some students who essentially have to rebuild things from scratch if they need to expand on what they did for their thesis. Releasing this type of code is embarrassing to the dept, advisor, and student. >Don't want to support it - Even with disclaimers, there'll inevitably be someone who downloads the code, and emails asking for help/support. Depending on the quality of the code some may even claim that your results are false because they couldn't get it running on their application. I'm all for peer review and agree that code should be available, and further i know that the scenario is probably a rare occurrence, but still some would rather not publish it to avoid it entirely. >Simply don't know where or how - granted i'm in the engineering school (not cs) so milage may vary, but you'd be surprised how many students i've talked to that just don't know much about github or repositories (even svn). > There's no incentive - students are already overworked, what benefits do they gain from publishing their code? It helps academic research, yes. But most just want to finish their phd and move on to the next thing, anything else just takes time away from them accomplishing that goal. >Funding conflicts - part of the code i use was developed by another student who was funded by a particular grant where a deliverable was required at the end. Thus, anything i release cannot include that code, which inevitably breaks the rest. I do not know the particulars of the grant or why it is not allowed to be released, this is just the response i receive when i ask to put my code online.
  - OvidNaso 11y ago
    That is interesting, but really only the first point is outside the scope of issues that would be addressed or rectified if the academic community as a whole were to embrace an open culture.
enriquto 11y ago
Moreover, the algorithm is clearly bogus. The same results can be achieved by trivial contrast-enhancing filters.
- waiquoo 11y ago
  I don't understand this statement. I recently received a similar reaction after talking about some of my research, so I'm wondering if this is a common approach to new ideas in the startup world. How is the algorithm bogus (assuming that there isn't a mistake somewhere and that the results are validated)? Just because the output in the examples is similar to other edge detectors doesn't mean the work is 'bogus' or worthless. It's a new algorithm, a new way of doing things. It may have advantages in specific areas over your 'trivial contrast-enhancing filters'. For example, there are many sorting algorithms, but you can get the same results regardless of the algorithm. Does this mean that any sorting algorithm other than the most trivial is 'bogus'?
  - enriquto 11y ago
    Sorry, I didn't mean to say "bogus algorithm". What I wanted to say is that the results look equivalent as those that can be obtained by linear filtering and rescaling the input image (a standard retinex-like technique): Compute minus the laplacian of the image, smooth the result using a cauchy kernel, linearly adjust the dynamic range. You can see the interior of the light bulb and the texture of the wall at the same time. I teach image processing, this is a standard exercice.
  - dnautics 11y ago
    Well, in this case, enriquito's intuition is correct. The algorithm is very similar (if not identical[0]) to the algorithm found in the simplest edge-detection filter, which is to do isolate medium-band frequency contributions in phase space. https://github.com/JalaliLabUCLA/Image-feature-detection-using-Phase-Stretch-Transform/blob/master/PST.m https://github.com/JalaliLabUCLA/Image-feature-detection-usi... [0] I would be surprised if no one has ever used this exact arctangent kernel (with maybe different normalization and parametrization) in phase space.

It's sad and annoying - another bunch of academics who can't be satisfied with using public research money to benefit the public. They just have to go ahead and patent mathematics too. It's pathetic.

kristopolous 11y ago

The crazier thing is that releasing the source code like this, at least to me, is quite unusual. I've read a number of academic papers where I had to email the authors and ask nicely for the source code; much of the time not getting a response. You'd think the academic community would be on the forefront of embracing the new open intellectual movement...

jsprogrammer 11y ago
The University of California is supposed to be copying and freely publishing all output of their researchers.
lotsoflumens 11y ago
I think that's changing very quickly. It's happening much more now because software is everywhere, and paper publication lags are still months and sometimes years out.
paulmd 11y ago
The problem is that survival and prestige in the academic community is directly related to publications. Also, journals don't accept non-novel research. So helping someone scoop your current or future research directly hurts you. Obviously that's not a good thing, but it's a pretty straightforward response to the circumstances of academic papers. It has all kinds of other side-effects too: salami slicing, non-reproducible results, publication bias, etc.
- jrock08 11y ago
  Lets, be honest, it's not like academics is the only place this happens. CS labs are essentially small companies (1 CEO, 2-3 senior members, and 5-10 junior members). The only difference is that the company produces papers, producing usable code that you support is actually very hard and takes away from the work that actually matters. I'm actually much less worried about being scooped by releasing my code, and much more worried about having to answer emails asking me how to get the hacked together code to run on their machine or their dataset.
Houshalter 11y ago
See this comment: https://www.reddit.com/r/MachineLearning/comments/39yj8y/why_isnt_code_submission_mandatory_for_top_ml/cs7oca4 https://www.reddit.com/r/MachineLearning/comments/39yj8y/why... >The code is a mess - Most code is written by grad students, it's often sloppy scripts that are duck taped together to get the numbers and graphs needed for the paper. I know some students who essentially have to rebuild things from scratch if they need to expand on what they did for their thesis. Releasing this type of code is embarrassing to the dept, advisor, and student. >Don't want to support it - Even with disclaimers, there'll inevitably be someone who downloads the code, and emails asking for help/support. Depending on the quality of the code some may even claim that your results are false because they couldn't get it running on their application. I'm all for peer review and agree that code should be available, and further i know that the scenario is probably a rare occurrence, but still some would rather not publish it to avoid it entirely. >Simply don't know where or how - granted i'm in the engineering school (not cs) so milage may vary, but you'd be surprised how many students i've talked to that just don't know much about github or repositories (even svn). > There's no incentive - students are already overworked, what benefits do they gain from publishing their code? It helps academic research, yes. But most just want to finish their phd and move on to the next thing, anything else just takes time away from them accomplishing that goal. >Funding conflicts - part of the code i use was developed by another student who was funded by a particular grant where a deliverable was required at the end. Thus, anything i release cannot include that code, which inevitably breaks the rest. I do not know the particulars of the grant or why it is not allowed to be released, this is just the response i receive when i ask to put my code online.
- OvidNaso 11y ago
  That is interesting, but really only the first point is outside the scope of issues that would be addressed or rectified if the academic community as a whole were to embrace an open culture.

enriquto 11y ago

Moreover, the algorithm is clearly bogus. The same results can be achieved by trivial contrast-enhancing filters.

waiquoo 11y ago
I don't understand this statement. I recently received a similar reaction after talking about some of my research, so I'm wondering if this is a common approach to new ideas in the startup world. How is the algorithm bogus (assuming that there isn't a mistake somewhere and that the results are validated)? Just because the output in the examples is similar to other edge detectors doesn't mean the work is 'bogus' or worthless. It's a new algorithm, a new way of doing things. It may have advantages in specific areas over your 'trivial contrast-enhancing filters'. For example, there are many sorting algorithms, but you can get the same results regardless of the algorithm. Does this mean that any sorting algorithm other than the most trivial is 'bogus'?
- enriquto 11y ago
  Sorry, I didn't mean to say "bogus algorithm". What I wanted to say is that the results look equivalent as those that can be obtained by linear filtering and rescaling the input image (a standard retinex-like technique): Compute minus the laplacian of the image, smooth the result using a cauchy kernel, linearly adjust the dynamic range. You can see the interior of the light bulb and the texture of the wall at the same time. I teach image processing, this is a standard exercice.
- dnautics 11y ago
  Well, in this case, enriquito's intuition is correct. The algorithm is very similar (if not identical[0]) to the algorithm found in the simplest edge-detection filter, which is to do isolate medium-band frequency contributions in phase space. https://github.com/JalaliLabUCLA/Image-feature-detection-using-Phase-Stretch-Transform/blob/master/PST.m https://github.com/JalaliLabUCLA/Image-feature-detection-usi... [0] I would be surprised if no one has ever used this exact arctangent kernel (with maybe different normalization and parametrization) in phase space.