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You mischaracterize. Fiske is not criticizing "people who pointed out statistical errors" and begins the entire essay by explicitly stating as such: "Our field

You mischaracterize. Fiske is not criticizing "people who pointed out statistical errors" and begins the entire essay by explicitly stating as such: "Our field has always encourages -- required, really -- peer critiques"! She is criticizing "unfiltered trash-talk [on social media]... [and] online vigilantes [who] are attacking individuals, their research programs, and their careers". It's the same tension the article is referring to, between civility and public discourse. On one hand, you'd really like an open dialog about the quality of evidence presented. On the other hand, there's a real price to be paid when people are too worried about public humiliation to risk doing science on certain questions or working with certain people. As the quote from Jay Van Bavel put it, "It's become like politics — we’ve created two camps of people who shouldn’t be in two camps in the first place" This point resonated with me even though I'm on your side of those politics. What effect would it have on the OSS community if any even slightly bad code you write could end up in a hit piece published by The Atlantic, and if fact you witnessed people on Facebook saying your colleague, who maybe did write some kinda bad code that one time but is on the whole competent, is a charlatan who doesn't deserve the title of "programmer"?

lovich 9y ago
Is that not the case anyway? I admit I have no experience contributing but that's from hearing things like how the linux development team runs and people like Sarah Sharp quitting over the abuse. It's given me the impression that if I don't create something that is up to a teams standard from commit 0 then I will be ridiculed in a public forum
- throwawayjava 9y ago
  Abuse from your own insular community re: a particular project is one thing; public abuse published in some of the most popular print media on the planet resulting in lost jobs/lost job opporunities is quite another.
  - lovich 9y ago
    People use their open source contributions as part of their resume when seeking jobs, correct? That sort of abuse would reach outside the group if you were showing off your contributions as a necessary part of your career. I don't see as wide of a gap in effect on career between open source contributions for engineers and published papers for scientists as you seem to be implying
    - throwawayjava 9y ago
      I think we are violently agreeing on the original question about whether that's bad for the OSS community, though?
  - lliamander 9y ago
    I certainly have a fair degree of sympathy for Cuddy's losses, but should she have been given the accolades (TED talk, tenure track at Harvard, etc.) in the first place? Her work was interesting no doubt, and in our scientific age we have always celebrated the novelty and originality of the scientific geniuses that have advanced our understanding. But the real value of science has always been novelty plus certainty. The scientists who we esteem should be known as much for their industrious management of the empirical process (recruiting replicators, statistical auditors, etc.) as they are for they are for their creative insight.
    - throwawayjava 9y ago
      As I indicated up-thread, I'm mostly on your side of these politics. geofft's comment hits the nail on the head when it comes to what effect this did vs. should've had on her tenure case, I think. A study that fails to replicate is no indication of malice or even incompetence. Some say she should've run self-replications, but how many years self-replication studies are you willing to run on $20k/yr (in fact, how many post-college years have you made 20k/yr for a full-time job)? At some point you get the quality of science you can pay for, and throwing the grad student under the bus by denying them tenure a decade later is as shitty and spineless as Equifax throwing an IT guy under the bus for what was pretty clearly an organizational failure. IMO. Re: TED talks, TED is not a scientific venue, and most of the things I hear in TED talks are a hell of a lot less scientific than even Cuddy's most flawed studies. Also, I don't think those sorts of things should weigh much in hiring and tenure cases either way (aside from e.g. a usually marginal "service/outreach" category). If Harvard hired Cuddy because she gave a popular TED talk, then that was an extremely poor hiring decision by Harvard. But that's a separate issue from the one we're discussing.
- zipfle 9y ago
  I find it amazing and heartening to see this kind of humanistic, self-reflective discourse on hn, where I generally expect to find macho posturing.
- srtjstjsj 9y ago
  Before deciding that Linux (the most successful open source projecting history?) is poorly run. you have to weigh people quitting over the abuse against all the other contributors and maintainers building something that relies in part on that abuse. > It's given me the impression that if I don't create something that is up to a teams standard from commit 0 Linus has said that he reserves his abuse for senior people who should know better. It's his antidote to a complacent overclass that mistreats the kernel development process.
  - lovich 9y ago
    I never stated that it was poorly run, acting like this might get better results. I was replying to the poster who postulated what could happen if a hit piece was ran in a public setting against someone for their OSS contributions and how it seemed like reality wasn't already too far off from that to me
lliamander 9y ago
> You mischaracterize. Fiske is not criticizing "people who pointed out statistical errors" and begins the entire essay by explicitly stating as such: "Our field has always encourages -- required, really -- peer critiques"! > She is criticizing "unfiltered trash-talk [on social media]... [and] online vigilantes [who] are attacking individuals, their research programs, and their careers". Let me quote Gelman regarding the subject of her criticism: > The other thing that’s sad here is how Fiske seems to have felt the need to compromise her own principles here. She deplores “unfiltered trash talk,” “unmoderated attacks” and “adversarial viciousness” and insists on the importance of “editorial oversight and peer review.” According to Fiske, criticisms should be “most often in private with a chance to improve (peer review), or at least in moderated exchanges (curated comments and rebuttals).” And she writes of “scientific standards, ethical norms, and mutual respect.” > But Fiske expresses these views in an unvetted attack in an unmoderated forum with no peer review or opportunity for comments or rebuttals, meanwhile referring to her unnamed adversaries as “methological terrorists.” Sounds like unfiltered trash talk to me. But, then again, I haven’t seen Fiske on the basketball court so I really have no idea what she sounds like when she’s really trash talkin’. > I bring this up not in the spirit of gotcha, but rather to emphasize what a difficult position Fiske is in. She’s seeing her professional world collapsing—not at a personal level, I assume she’ll keep her title as the Eugene Higgins Professor of Psychology and Professor of Public Affairs at Princeton University for as long as she wants—but her work and the work of her friends and colleagues is being questioned in a way that no one could’ve imagined ten years ago. It’s scary, and it’s gotta be a lot easier for her to blame some unnamed “terrorists” than to confront the gaps in her own understanding of research methods. > To put it another way, Fiske and her friends and students followed a certain path which has given them fame, fortune, and acclaim. Question the path, and you question the legitimacy of all that came from it. And that can’t be pleasant.
- throwawayjava 9y ago
  Gelman has forged his own path to "fame, fortune, and acclaim". It's not clear to me that this path has actually improved (this particular branch of) science. In fact, by the sound of it, that path may've been at least as destructive as he claims Fiske et al's was. Which isn't an indict of Gelman, as I hardly intuit anything but positive intentions on his part. I'm less concerned with Fiske vs. Gelman and much more concerned with Jay Van Bavel's observation that either way, science loses. Confining scientific critique to scientific venues seems like a reasonable bulwark against this sort of thing. If it had been Reviewer #3 in a program committee or editorial board, or a well-received letter to the editor, instead of a blog post picked up by thousands of internet warriors with no stats training, perhaps the result could've been refined or thrown out without expelling someone from research. If the feud hadn't been picked up by pop science press, then maybe a bad piece of science could've been questioned without poisoning the well for further inquiry.

lovich 9y ago

Is that not the case anyway? I admit I have no experience contributing but that's from hearing things like how the linux development team runs and people like Sarah Sharp quitting over the abuse. It's given me the impression that if I don't create something that is up to a teams standard from commit 0 then I will be ridiculed in a public forum

throwawayjava 9y ago
Abuse from your own insular community re: a particular project is one thing; public abuse published in some of the most popular print media on the planet resulting in lost jobs/lost job opporunities is quite another.
- lovich 9y ago
  People use their open source contributions as part of their resume when seeking jobs, correct? That sort of abuse would reach outside the group if you were showing off your contributions as a necessary part of your career. I don't see as wide of a gap in effect on career between open source contributions for engineers and published papers for scientists as you seem to be implying
  - throwawayjava 9y ago
    I think we are violently agreeing on the original question about whether that's bad for the OSS community, though?
- lliamander 9y ago
  I certainly have a fair degree of sympathy for Cuddy's losses, but should she have been given the accolades (TED talk, tenure track at Harvard, etc.) in the first place? Her work was interesting no doubt, and in our scientific age we have always celebrated the novelty and originality of the scientific geniuses that have advanced our understanding. But the real value of science has always been novelty plus certainty. The scientists who we esteem should be known as much for their industrious management of the empirical process (recruiting replicators, statistical auditors, etc.) as they are for they are for their creative insight.
  - throwawayjava 9y ago
    As I indicated up-thread, I'm mostly on your side of these politics. geofft's comment hits the nail on the head when it comes to what effect this did vs. should've had on her tenure case, I think. A study that fails to replicate is no indication of malice or even incompetence. Some say she should've run self-replications, but how many years self-replication studies are you willing to run on $20k/yr (in fact, how many post-college years have you made 20k/yr for a full-time job)? At some point you get the quality of science you can pay for, and throwing the grad student under the bus by denying them tenure a decade later is as shitty and spineless as Equifax throwing an IT guy under the bus for what was pretty clearly an organizational failure. IMO. Re: TED talks, TED is not a scientific venue, and most of the things I hear in TED talks are a hell of a lot less scientific than even Cuddy's most flawed studies. Also, I don't think those sorts of things should weigh much in hiring and tenure cases either way (aside from e.g. a usually marginal "service/outreach" category). If Harvard hired Cuddy because she gave a popular TED talk, then that was an extremely poor hiring decision by Harvard. But that's a separate issue from the one we're discussing.
zipfle 9y ago
I find it amazing and heartening to see this kind of humanistic, self-reflective discourse on hn, where I generally expect to find macho posturing.
srtjstjsj 9y ago
Before deciding that Linux (the most successful open source projecting history?) is poorly run. you have to weigh people quitting over the abuse against all the other contributors and maintainers building something that relies in part on that abuse. > It's given me the impression that if I don't create something that is up to a teams standard from commit 0 Linus has said that he reserves his abuse for senior people who should know better. It's his antidote to a complacent overclass that mistreats the kernel development process.
- lovich 9y ago
  I never stated that it was poorly run, acting like this might get better results. I was replying to the poster who postulated what could happen if a hit piece was ran in a public setting against someone for their OSS contributions and how it seemed like reality wasn't already too far off from that to me

lliamander 9y ago

> You mischaracterize. Fiske is not criticizing "people who pointed out statistical errors" and begins the entire essay by explicitly stating as such: "Our field has always encourages -- required, really -- peer critiques"! > She is criticizing "unfiltered trash-talk [on social media]... [and] online vigilantes [who] are attacking individuals, their research programs, and their careers". Let me quote Gelman regarding the subject of her criticism: > The other thing that’s sad here is how Fiske seems to have felt the need to compromise her own principles here. She deplores “unfiltered trash talk,” “unmoderated attacks” and “adversarial viciousness” and insists on the importance of “editorial oversight and peer review.” According to Fiske, criticisms should be “most often in private with a chance to improve (peer review), or at least in moderated exchanges (curated comments and rebuttals).” And she writes of “scientific standards, ethical norms, and mutual respect.” > But Fiske expresses these views in an unvetted attack in an unmoderated forum with no peer review or opportunity for comments or rebuttals, meanwhile referring to her unnamed adversaries as “methological terrorists.” Sounds like unfiltered trash talk to me. But, then again, I haven’t seen Fiske on the basketball court so I really have no idea what she sounds like when she’s really trash talkin’. > I bring this up not in the spirit of gotcha, but rather to emphasize what a difficult position Fiske is in. She’s seeing her professional world collapsing—not at a personal level, I assume she’ll keep her title as the Eugene Higgins Professor of Psychology and Professor of Public Affairs at Princeton University for as long as she wants—but her work and the work of her friends and colleagues is being questioned in a way that no one could’ve imagined ten years ago. It’s scary, and it’s gotta be a lot easier for her to blame some unnamed “terrorists” than to confront the gaps in her own understanding of research methods. > To put it another way, Fiske and her friends and students followed a certain path which has given them fame, fortune, and acclaim. Question the path, and you question the legitimacy of all that came from it. And that can’t be pleasant.

throwawayjava 9y ago
Gelman has forged his own path to "fame, fortune, and acclaim". It's not clear to me that this path has actually improved (this particular branch of) science. In fact, by the sound of it, that path may've been at least as destructive as he claims Fiske et al's was. Which isn't an indict of Gelman, as I hardly intuit anything but positive intentions on his part. I'm less concerned with Fiske vs. Gelman and much more concerned with Jay Van Bavel's observation that either way, science loses. Confining scientific critique to scientific venues seems like a reasonable bulwark against this sort of thing. If it had been Reviewer #3 in a program committee or editorial board, or a well-received letter to the editor, instead of a blog post picked up by thousands of internet warriors with no stats training, perhaps the result could've been refined or thrown out without expelling someone from research. If the feud hadn't been picked up by pop science press, then maybe a bad piece of science could've been questioned without poisoning the well for further inquiry.