3 ms·

> When I highlighted this to people in the field, they were quite open with another explanation: It helps them because they do not want their peers to know all

> When I highlighted this to people in the field, they were quite open with another explanation: It helps them because they do not want their peers to know all the details. That allows them to have an edge over their peers and they do not need to race with them to publish further studies. I have always suspected that, but I've never heard anyone be that open about it. At a previous job I had to implement various algorithms described in research papers, and in every case except one, the authors left out a key part of the algorithm by glossing over it in the laziest way possible. My favorite one cited an entire linear algebra textbook as "modern optimization techniques."

BeetleB 10y ago
>I have always suspected that, but I've never heard anyone be that open about it. Yes, they'll just say they expect their peers to be competent enough to reproduce, and a paper shouldn't be filled with such trivialities. To get the real answer, talk to their grad students. Especially those who are aspiring for academic careers. They tend to be quite frank on why they will act like their advisors. Oh, and citing a whole book for optimization - that kind of thing is quite common. "We numerically solved this complex PDE using the method of X" and then just give a reference to a textbook. But usually the algorithm to implement is sensitive to tiny details (e.g. techniques to ensure tiny errors don't grow to big ones, etc).