5 ms·
Back in 2012, I worked with a guy in grad school. He was then a grad student as well--just one year senior than me. He would recruit new incoming grads to 'coll
by programmertote 8y ago
Back in 2012, I worked with a guy in grad school. He was then a grad student as well--just one year senior than me. He would recruit new incoming grads to 'collaborate' with him on his current projects or whatnot.
The way he operates usually goes like this: he has a hypothesis (something that is usually trivial in my opinion). Then he recruits grad or undergrad students to work with him on it. After that, he let his teammates to do all the development work (coding) and experimentation (recruiting subjects and sitting with them in the lab to run the experiments). We needed to recruit human subjects because our work was related to usability of assistive technologies. By the time the data was collected and analyzed, the guy would show up with a vague draft of the paper, in which he has liberally cited his own (and his grad school mentor's) old publications, without knowing a damn thing about what his teammates did. Then we, as his teammates who ran the experiments, fill out the experiment and results sections. He then would write up the conclusion and fill up the rest of the holes. After that, he submits the paper taking the first authorship (because he came up with the hypothesis). That's the way he was able to publish >25 papers during 5 years of grad school (until he got his PhD).
Now that guy is an assistant professor--with ~50 publications--at a well-known University in one of the midwest states (of the US) at the very young age (I think he's just above 30 years old). If you look at his publications, he liberally cites himself and his mentors.
Kudos to him, he knows how to play the game.
- scabarott 8y agoI'm in awe of his skills and intelligence. Sounds like someone who knows how to work smarter. I would have taken that as a learning opportunity. *edit: Getting a few down-votes on this one. I was being mildly sarcastic but on the other hand it takes some skill and smart thinking to pull this kind of thing off. Also in my experience, bull-shitting is a very valuable and necessary skill at work and in life in general. Arguably it gets you to a position where you can do work of actual substance and get recognition for it.
- badpun 8y agoIf he’s ok with doing bullshit work (as opposed to real research) just for the sake of gaming the system, why not just do it in the private sector? Is about the impressing people with a Professor title?
- frickinLasers 8y agoMaybe he's waiting for tenure to start doing real research. That's the only winning strategy for this game, as far as I can tell.
- yourbandsucks 8y agoYou are what you repeatedly do. It's very unlikely that someone who's spent their entire professional life being one way flips a switch after tenure.
- icebraining 8y agoMaybe he's already doing real research, and that stuff is a side "business" to allow him to continue to do so.
- joelx 8y agoOr maybe he's just a scammer.
- mr_overalls 8y agoSounds like you're in awe of someone who has learned to play a game to his own benefit, but to the detriment of the larger institution (i.e. science) of which he is a part.
- throwaway5752 8y agoThis seems to be a common thread of "lifehack" types
- kiriakasis 8y agoFrom the original description "detriment of the larger institution" might be inappropriate. After all he gave more than 25 other people a chance to publish. And if we assume that some of those experiment involved master students then for a few of them that was their first publication. It look like he was kind of a unmoral presence from many point of view, but you cannot ignore that he probably helped many people get more experience. Again I am not claiming that what he did was right, but it is neither necessarily a detriment to science.
- hnuser355 8y agoMy understanding is that most labs cite themselves over and over in general, but perhaps this is more advanced.
- tnecniv 8y agoYes, they do, and it makes sense to do so. You want to point others to the related work that has been done in the topic and it's likely that your lab has done a lot of this work. Of course other groups have also done related things, and you should cite them as well to create an honest image of the research landscape. In the case the OP mentioned, this is how a lot of research is carried out. The main part that sticks out to me as as scuzzy is that he took first author without being closely involved in the work.
- klipt 8y agoIsn't he roughly doing what PIs do? Except they usually take last author.