7 ms·

Well, scientists are people too, so they have feelings and are not perfect. I think there are polite ways provide criticism and corrections, hopefully without

Well, scientists are people too, so they have feelings and are not perfect. I think there are polite ways provide criticism and corrections, hopefully without humiliating people with good intentions. If it's a simple mistake, they can email the author and suggest an erratum. If it's more serious, then it's common to write a response in the journal. I think more public forms of criticism are perceived as bullying because a general audience can't typically judge the magnitude of the error, since they're not scientists working in the field, so it can be unjustly damaging to someone's reputation.

wyager 10y ago
If someone objectively screwed up a published study, there's no room for feelings or social consideration. People might be wasting their precious time and money pursuing impossible goals based on the incorrect study. Let's say someone finds a mistake in a math paper. Do they politely ask the author to fix it? What happens if the author ignores them? The scientific community doesn't have time to coddle and pursue every mistaken author. Everyone makes mistakes, and the scientific community knows that, but those mistakes need to be brought into then open, not (maybe) resolved behind closed doors.
- cortesoft 10y ago
  I think there is some nuance here; not all screw ups are equal, nor are all ways of correcting mistakes equal.
- cafebeen 10y ago
  It's not coddling as much as professional courtesy. Mistakes are often brought up at conferences and in peer review, but most scientists within a specific research area try to be on good terms with one another and don't see value in publicly shaming colleagues for their mistakes.
  - wyager 10y ago
    There are two options here: Use a bot to find tons of mistakes automatically and risk coming across as rude. Or Let social trivialities dominate scientific discourse and let most of those mistakes go unchecked forever because there's no feasible way to "politely" address hundreds of authors who made mistakes and keep checking back to make sure they actually fixed the mistake. The former is clearly the preferable choice. Some individual scientists will suffer for it, but the scientific community as a whole will benefit greatly.
    - danharaj 10y ago
      Science being a social activity, I think you have to justify the presumption that we are talking about social trivialities here.
      - wyager 10y ago
        >Science being a social activity Hoo boy. Research might be a social activity, but science is the application of probabilistic reasoning to evidence collection. Science isn't a "social activity" any more than topology is. Any social complications are entirely incidental.
        elbear 10y ago
        Yes, but that probabilistic reasoning is applied by humans with feelings which sometimes get in the way of their reason. Wanting to have those feelings simply go away is unrealistic.
        wyager 10y ago
        What does that have to do with calling out papers for being incorrect?
        elbear 10y ago
        Sorry for replying so late. Your findings have to be accepted by the others. If they're not accepted it's like they don't exist. Think of all the great theories that didn't take off at first, because nobody accepted them (for various reasons). When you attack someone, they are less likely to listen to you, even if you are offering valuable feedback. They care about saving face, so they will focus on defending themselves. I realize this can be frustrating, because it means truth doesn't always prevail. However, it's what we have to work with, our emotional brains.
1_listerine_pls 10y ago
I don't care about their reputations. It's not a school mascot contest. These are scientific papers.
- tormeh 10y ago
  Yes, and scientists don't care. Science, as it has been explained to me by scientists, is a penis length contest, where impact factor and prestige serve as ersatz penises.
  - deleted 10y ago
    [deleted]
  - apathy 10y ago
    The best part is that any fool can see that impact factors are a terrible proxy for real impact, and in fact the editors of several glam journals have pointed this out (disclosure: I have plenty of glam papers on my CV*). But since it props up a myth that senior faculty like to believe (i.e. their shitty old Cell paper is great because Cell is/was great) that's the yardstick. As the director of a CCC once told me, it takes too long to see the impact of papers (citations piling up) so the JIF is used as a proxy. Sort of like how it takes too long to do good science, so some people just publish whatever garbage they can sneak past the editors (ha fucking ha only serious). There is a LOT of crap in the literature as a result.
int_19h 10y ago
I find it hard to understand how something that is clearly an automated bot, posting comments that are 100% factual ("I checked this paper; N things looked wrong"), could be perceived as humiliating. I guess it would be the case if you assumed that all people are perfect and never make mistakes. I would hope that psychologists, of all people, would know better than that. So if it's not that, where's the humiliation part in pointing out math mistakes?
- jlarocco 10y ago
  I don't necessarily think this is bullying or humiliating, but it's silly to think that being done by a "bot" and being "factual" has anything to do with it. If a malware "bot" secretly posted people's porn viewing history to their facebook page, would that not be humiliating for those people? Or would it not because it was factual and done by a "bot"? Clearly it would be. Saying it was done by a bot is no excuse for anything. The bot didn't spontaneously pop into existence - somebody created it and decided what behavior it would have. In this particular case, whoever created the bot could easily have made it email the authors of the mistaken papers and given them a chance to correct the mistakes before outing everybody in public.
  - int_19h 10y ago
    Being done by a bot is not an excuse in general. However, when pointing out objective factual mistakes, I think there is a difference between your colleague pointing it out, and an automated tool pointing it out. Even if result is the same, the former can be embarrassing, hence why we learn to phrase negative responses in a roundabout way. But politeness cannot be expected of a brainless machine, and so it can deliver simple facts. So it seems that it boils down to public disclosure before private? Out of curiosity, how would you imagine the "correct the mistakes" procedure after private disclosure? The author cannot just edit the paper, it's already published. They would have to publish errata, which draws just as much attention. And, from an ethical perspective, if an author is notified of a mistake found by autonomous tool, wouldn't they be required to disclose the methodology when publishing errata? So I'm not sure how that whole situation is fundamentally different from just dumping it in the public.

wyager 10y ago

If someone objectively screwed up a published study, there's no room for feelings or social consideration. People might be wasting their precious time and money pursuing impossible goals based on the incorrect study. Let's say someone finds a mistake in a math paper. Do they politely ask the author to fix it? What happens if the author ignores them? The scientific community doesn't have time to coddle and pursue every mistaken author. Everyone makes mistakes, and the scientific community knows that, but those mistakes need to be brought into then open, not (maybe) resolved behind closed doors.

cortesoft 10y ago
I think there is some nuance here; not all screw ups are equal, nor are all ways of correcting mistakes equal.
cafebeen 10y ago
It's not coddling as much as professional courtesy. Mistakes are often brought up at conferences and in peer review, but most scientists within a specific research area try to be on good terms with one another and don't see value in publicly shaming colleagues for their mistakes.
- wyager 10y ago
  There are two options here: Use a bot to find tons of mistakes automatically and risk coming across as rude. Or Let social trivialities dominate scientific discourse and let most of those mistakes go unchecked forever because there's no feasible way to "politely" address hundreds of authors who made mistakes and keep checking back to make sure they actually fixed the mistake. The former is clearly the preferable choice. Some individual scientists will suffer for it, but the scientific community as a whole will benefit greatly.
  - danharaj 10y ago
    Science being a social activity, I think you have to justify the presumption that we are talking about social trivialities here.
    - wyager 10y ago
      >Science being a social activity Hoo boy. Research might be a social activity, but science is the application of probabilistic reasoning to evidence collection. Science isn't a "social activity" any more than topology is. Any social complications are entirely incidental.
      - elbear 10y ago
        Yes, but that probabilistic reasoning is applied by humans with feelings which sometimes get in the way of their reason. Wanting to have those feelings simply go away is unrealistic.
        wyager 10y ago
        What does that have to do with calling out papers for being incorrect?
        elbear 10y ago
        Sorry for replying so late. Your findings have to be accepted by the others. If they're not accepted it's like they don't exist. Think of all the great theories that didn't take off at first, because nobody accepted them (for various reasons). When you attack someone, they are less likely to listen to you, even if you are offering valuable feedback. They care about saving face, so they will focus on defending themselves. I realize this can be frustrating, because it means truth doesn't always prevail. However, it's what we have to work with, our emotional brains.

1_listerine_pls 10y ago

I don't care about their reputations. It's not a school mascot contest. These are scientific papers.

tormeh 10y ago
Yes, and scientists don't care. Science, as it has been explained to me by scientists, is a penis length contest, where impact factor and prestige serve as ersatz penises.
- deleted 10y ago
  [deleted]
- apathy 10y ago
  The best part is that any fool can see that impact factors are a terrible proxy for real impact, and in fact the editors of several glam journals have pointed this out (disclosure: I have plenty of glam papers on my CV*). But since it props up a myth that senior faculty like to believe (i.e. their shitty old Cell paper is great because Cell is/was great) that's the yardstick. As the director of a CCC once told me, it takes too long to see the impact of papers (citations piling up) so the JIF is used as a proxy. Sort of like how it takes too long to do good science, so some people just publish whatever garbage they can sneak past the editors (ha fucking ha only serious). There is a LOT of crap in the literature as a result.

int_19h 10y ago

I find it hard to understand how something that is clearly an automated bot, posting comments that are 100% factual ("I checked this paper; N things looked wrong"), could be perceived as humiliating. I guess it would be the case if you assumed that all people are perfect and never make mistakes. I would hope that psychologists, of all people, would know better than that. So if it's not that, where's the humiliation part in pointing out math mistakes?

jlarocco 10y ago
I don't necessarily think this is bullying or humiliating, but it's silly to think that being done by a "bot" and being "factual" has anything to do with it. If a malware "bot" secretly posted people's porn viewing history to their facebook page, would that not be humiliating for those people? Or would it not because it was factual and done by a "bot"? Clearly it would be. Saying it was done by a bot is no excuse for anything. The bot didn't spontaneously pop into existence - somebody created it and decided what behavior it would have. In this particular case, whoever created the bot could easily have made it email the authors of the mistaken papers and given them a chance to correct the mistakes before outing everybody in public.
- int_19h 10y ago
  Being done by a bot is not an excuse in general. However, when pointing out objective factual mistakes, I think there is a difference between your colleague pointing it out, and an automated tool pointing it out. Even if result is the same, the former can be embarrassing, hence why we learn to phrase negative responses in a roundabout way. But politeness cannot be expected of a brainless machine, and so it can deliver simple facts. So it seems that it boils down to public disclosure before private? Out of curiosity, how would you imagine the "correct the mistakes" procedure after private disclosure? The author cannot just edit the paper, it's already published. They would have to publish errata, which draws just as much attention. And, from an ethical perspective, if an author is notified of a mistake found by autonomous tool, wouldn't they be required to disclose the methodology when publishing errata? So I'm not sure how that whole situation is fundamentally different from just dumping it in the public.