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Ethics researcher omits relevant research in paper to smuggle in a particular agenda. Company calls it out. Researcher realizes the limits of her narrative se

Ethics researcher omits relevant research in paper to smuggle in a particular agenda. Company calls it out. Researcher realizes the limits of her narrative setting powers. Non-vocal majority is happy to see runaway activism being curbed in corporate settings. Slow march through institutions is slowed down for a day.

freeone3000 6y ago
It's not "runaway activism" if you hire ethics researchers who find ethics problems. Reasons for not citing research, especially recent research, range from lack of relevance (since even though environmental improvements could have been done, they were not done! So the actual impact wasnt lessened by them at all!); To simply not having known about it. The correct reviewer response to this would be an "accept with corrections" to "revise and resubmit"; retraction is overboard. Moreover, that's the role of a conference reviewer, not the employer. Once your employer starts interfering with what you can and can't publish, it's time to find a new affiliation indeed.
- acituan 6y ago
  > It's not "runaway activism" if you hire ethics researchers who find ethics problems. The fundamental difference between activism and research is that activism sets the agenda ahead of time while research explores the knowledge space and reports findings. One helps us incrementally make better sense of the world, the other wants us to narrow on particular facts while omitting other relevant facts in the name of advancing a cause. > Reasons for not citing research, especially recent research, range from lack of relevance ... To simply not having known about it The omitted research is clearly relevant. Deciding what is relevant and what is not is precisely what narrative warfare is. If they did not know about the adjacent research, then they would simply be incompetent researchers (which I highly doubt is the case). > The correct reviewer response to this would be an "accept with corrections" to "revise and resubmit"; retraction is overboard. There is no retraction because there was no external publication. Jeff Dean states reviewer response as you stated was there but was ignored by the approver. > Once your employer starts interfering with what you can and can't publish, it's time to find a new affiliation indeed. Corporate researchers are still employees and are bound by a job description. Independent of the content of the research, it is also entirely within the rights of the employer to set a certain bar of quality being cleared. In this case it seems like Google didn't want affiliation with this paper, not the other way around.
  - freeone3000 6y ago
    You seem to have an exceptionally narrow view of research; notably, that you can't start with a thing you want to prove, which is in fact step 2 of the elementary-school scientific method. You disagree with the conclusions, so like Google, you have retroactively declared the research incompetent. You seem to think this is within their rights, but this renders any future research from them irrevocably tainted -- from now on, it's no more than Google PR.
    - acituan 6y ago
      > notably, that you can't start with a thing you want to prove, which is in fact step 2 of the elementary-school scientific method. On the contrary, I totally agree with you on this, researcher needs to pick a particular part of the combinatorially explosive knowledge space to explore, in that they get to be opinionated on what hypothesis they want to prove. What they can't do is however to ignore opponent research that conflict with their propositions. This is precisely what Jeff Dean is talking about in his second letter, you need opponent processing to overcome self-deception and bullshitting. You can't have opponent processing when you omit relevant research, try to steamroll the review process, throw a tantrum when your paper is found lacking, and ask names to further your agenda through social engineering. It is not onto me to prove if and why I disagree with the conclusions, it is onto the paper to prove that their assumptions and methods were sound to begin with, if they want their conclusions to be taken seriously. And they were not. > but this renders any future research from them irrevocably tainted -- from now on, it's no more than Google PR. On the contrary, this move increases trust in Google research and it would have lessened if they were to buckle under activist strong-arming. If folks think this was a sign of broken research machinery, they are free to ignore all future Google research, at their own risk for competitive disadvantage.
      - mostafab 6y ago
        Ignoring future Google research in ethics has low-risks, as top ethics talent will certainly avoid working for Google, and prefer academic freedom elsewhere (where reviewers are external, to avoid CoI).
- cbsmith 6y ago
  > It's not "runaway activism" if you hire ethics researchers who find ethics problems. Agreed, but there's obviously a difference of perspective about what transpired here and I don't think any of us knows with certainty what the truth is. Finding ethics problems is grand and all, but framing a narrative that misrepresents those problems is highly problematic, particularly if they are in a role that makes them the leading ethical voice of the company.

freeone3000 6y ago

It's not "runaway activism" if you hire ethics researchers who find ethics problems. Reasons for not citing research, especially recent research, range from lack of relevance (since even though environmental improvements could have been done, they were not done! So the actual impact wasnt lessened by them at all!); To simply not having known about it. The correct reviewer response to this would be an "accept with corrections" to "revise and resubmit"; retraction is overboard. Moreover, that's the role of a conference reviewer, not the employer. Once your employer starts interfering with what you can and can't publish, it's time to find a new affiliation indeed.

acituan 6y ago
> It's not "runaway activism" if you hire ethics researchers who find ethics problems. The fundamental difference between activism and research is that activism sets the agenda ahead of time while research explores the knowledge space and reports findings. One helps us incrementally make better sense of the world, the other wants us to narrow on particular facts while omitting other relevant facts in the name of advancing a cause. > Reasons for not citing research, especially recent research, range from lack of relevance ... To simply not having known about it The omitted research is clearly relevant. Deciding what is relevant and what is not is precisely what narrative warfare is. If they did not know about the adjacent research, then they would simply be incompetent researchers (which I highly doubt is the case). > The correct reviewer response to this would be an "accept with corrections" to "revise and resubmit"; retraction is overboard. There is no retraction because there was no external publication. Jeff Dean states reviewer response as you stated was there but was ignored by the approver. > Once your employer starts interfering with what you can and can't publish, it's time to find a new affiliation indeed. Corporate researchers are still employees and are bound by a job description. Independent of the content of the research, it is also entirely within the rights of the employer to set a certain bar of quality being cleared. In this case it seems like Google didn't want affiliation with this paper, not the other way around.
- freeone3000 6y ago
  You seem to have an exceptionally narrow view of research; notably, that you can't start with a thing you want to prove, which is in fact step 2 of the elementary-school scientific method. You disagree with the conclusions, so like Google, you have retroactively declared the research incompetent. You seem to think this is within their rights, but this renders any future research from them irrevocably tainted -- from now on, it's no more than Google PR.
  - acituan 6y ago
    > notably, that you can't start with a thing you want to prove, which is in fact step 2 of the elementary-school scientific method. On the contrary, I totally agree with you on this, researcher needs to pick a particular part of the combinatorially explosive knowledge space to explore, in that they get to be opinionated on what hypothesis they want to prove. What they can't do is however to ignore opponent research that conflict with their propositions. This is precisely what Jeff Dean is talking about in his second letter, you need opponent processing to overcome self-deception and bullshitting. You can't have opponent processing when you omit relevant research, try to steamroll the review process, throw a tantrum when your paper is found lacking, and ask names to further your agenda through social engineering. It is not onto me to prove if and why I disagree with the conclusions, it is onto the paper to prove that their assumptions and methods were sound to begin with, if they want their conclusions to be taken seriously. And they were not. > but this renders any future research from them irrevocably tainted -- from now on, it's no more than Google PR. On the contrary, this move increases trust in Google research and it would have lessened if they were to buckle under activist strong-arming. If folks think this was a sign of broken research machinery, they are free to ignore all future Google research, at their own risk for competitive disadvantage.
    - mostafab 6y ago
      Ignoring future Google research in ethics has low-risks, as top ethics talent will certainly avoid working for Google, and prefer academic freedom elsewhere (where reviewers are external, to avoid CoI).
cbsmith 6y ago
> It's not "runaway activism" if you hire ethics researchers who find ethics problems. Agreed, but there's obviously a difference of perspective about what transpired here and I don't think any of us knows with certainty what the truth is. Finding ethics problems is grand and all, but framing a narrative that misrepresents those problems is highly problematic, particularly if they are in a role that makes them the leading ethical voice of the company.