3 ms·

Blaming "culture" is a huge cop-out and often just a facade for racism. If you say "the financial incentives offered by the Chinese government for research publ

Blaming "culture" is a huge cop-out and often just a facade for racism. If you say "the financial incentives offered by the Chinese government for research publications encourage rampant fraud" you are getting much closer to the real issue.

BurningFrog 8y ago
Financial incentives is one strong factor in shaping a culture.
i_am_nomad 8y ago
Wrong. Cultural effects are very real, and they are exist independently of material incentives.
- javajosh 8y ago
  Indeed. If this weren't true, then there would be no basis to shape the culture, since culture wouldn't have a shape. Two groups can be compared on important values like "honesty" independent of group size. The comparison will look like overlapping normal distributions, usually with substantial overlap. Chinese students were famous for cheating at my school, especially in the pre-med biology track. I witnessed it myself. I also witnessed brilliant, hard-working non-cheating Chinese students in math and physics. Yeah, there's something cultural going on but it's a lot more complicated than "the Chinese are cheaters".
deleted 8y ago
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leftyted 8y ago
"The academic culture in China is such that cheating and lying is widespread" This statement doesn't "blame the culture". In this sentence, culture means "a set of behaviors". The sentence doesn't speculate about why that (speculated) culture exists, and it certainly isn't saying "Chinese culture promotes cheating". Actually, all it's really saying is, "Cheating and lying is widespread in academia in China". That statement is totally compatible with what you wrote. When having these discussions, it helps to interpret other people's perspectives charitably. Communication is hard. We don't need to make it harder by assuming that everyone who says something that could be interpreted as racism is actually a racist. Plus, I've found that if I interpret other perspectives charitably, I almost always end up closer to understanding what the other person actually meant.

BurningFrog 8y ago

Financial incentives is one strong factor in shaping a culture.

i_am_nomad 8y ago

Wrong. Cultural effects are very real, and they are exist independently of material incentives.

javajosh 8y ago
Indeed. If this weren't true, then there would be no basis to shape the culture, since culture wouldn't have a shape. Two groups can be compared on important values like "honesty" independent of group size. The comparison will look like overlapping normal distributions, usually with substantial overlap. Chinese students were famous for cheating at my school, especially in the pre-med biology track. I witnessed it myself. I also witnessed brilliant, hard-working non-cheating Chinese students in math and physics. Yeah, there's something cultural going on but it's a lot more complicated than "the Chinese are cheaters".

deleted 8y ago

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leftyted 8y ago

"The academic culture in China is such that cheating and lying is widespread" This statement doesn't "blame the culture". In this sentence, culture means "a set of behaviors". The sentence doesn't speculate about why that (speculated) culture exists, and it certainly isn't saying "Chinese culture promotes cheating". Actually, all it's really saying is, "Cheating and lying is widespread in academia in China". That statement is totally compatible with what you wrote. When having these discussions, it helps to interpret other people's perspectives charitably. Communication is hard. We don't need to make it harder by assuming that everyone who says something that could be interpreted as racism is actually a racist. Plus, I've found that if I interpret other perspectives charitably, I almost always end up closer to understanding what the other person actually meant.