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She's also not publishing this as just herself, she works for Google and is publishing on their behalf. Of course they have veto power over what she publishes.

She's also not publishing this as just herself, she works for Google and is publishing on their behalf. Of course they have veto power over what she publishes. You take issue with that; quit. Which, I believe she did (she didn't get fired AFAIK)

geofft 6y ago
Yes, there exist review processes by peers, and yes, your institution can choose to exercise veto power. The scientific process of "peer review" is a very specific thing. (My code is not "peer reviewed" in the scientific sense simply because a teammate, a peer, reviewed my pull request.) So saying the paper was not good enough for peer review is misleading. And yes, Google can veto any paper. That's not the issue. The issue is they chose to use their veto power to block a paper that did not sufficiently praise Google. That means no paper coming out of Google can be trusted, because it's not the output of researchers but also management. Does Spanner work? Maybe there were some negative examples that were deemed too embarrassing to Google and removed. I don't know, maybe you already acted as if no paper coming out of Google could be trusted, and you were smarter than the rest of is in that regard. But a lot of people act as if their papers are trustworthy and not propaganda (e.g., https://blog.acolyer.org/2015/01/08/spanner-googles-globally-distributed-database/ https://blog.acolyer.org/2015/01/08/spanner-googles-globally... takes the Spanner paper as if it were a legitimate scientific paper). Want to tell them they need to stop?
- prepend 6y ago
  My organization includes a peer review process before it is submitted to journals. It makes sense because how would an organization be able to do this without peers. There are multiple types of peer review, not just from formal journals. Your statement of a narrowly scoped peer review being the only kind is incorrect. I’m not talking about Google specifically, but I imagine any institution creating scientific knowledge will have multiple phases of peer review before the literature. Separately your logic of “no paper coming out of Google can be trusted” is faulty. It’s not that it can’t be trusted at all, it just can’t be trusted for some things. Peer review outside Google should identify if Spanner has bugs or whatnot. I think it’s safe to say that work of Google should not be estimated to only exist based on what’s published. So while Google published things should be true since they are reviewed outside of Google, we’ll never know the things not published. Also this is sort of the point of science right, you shouldn’t blindly trust things based on institution, but need to review critically based on your own experience and expertise.

geofft 6y ago

Yes, there exist review processes by peers, and yes, your institution can choose to exercise veto power. The scientific process of "peer review" is a very specific thing. (My code is not "peer reviewed" in the scientific sense simply because a teammate, a peer, reviewed my pull request.) So saying the paper was not good enough for peer review is misleading. And yes, Google can veto any paper. That's not the issue. The issue is they chose to use their veto power to block a paper that did not sufficiently praise Google. That means no paper coming out of Google can be trusted, because it's not the output of researchers but also management. Does Spanner work? Maybe there were some negative examples that were deemed too embarrassing to Google and removed. I don't know, maybe you already acted as if no paper coming out of Google could be trusted, and you were smarter than the rest of is in that regard. But a lot of people act as if their papers are trustworthy and not propaganda (e.g., https://blog.acolyer.org/2015/01/08/spanner-googles-globally-distributed-database/ https://blog.acolyer.org/2015/01/08/spanner-googles-globally... takes the Spanner paper as if it were a legitimate scientific paper). Want to tell them they need to stop?

prepend 6y ago
My organization includes a peer review process before it is submitted to journals. It makes sense because how would an organization be able to do this without peers. There are multiple types of peer review, not just from formal journals. Your statement of a narrowly scoped peer review being the only kind is incorrect. I’m not talking about Google specifically, but I imagine any institution creating scientific knowledge will have multiple phases of peer review before the literature. Separately your logic of “no paper coming out of Google can be trusted” is faulty. It’s not that it can’t be trusted at all, it just can’t be trusted for some things. Peer review outside Google should identify if Spanner has bugs or whatnot. I think it’s safe to say that work of Google should not be estimated to only exist based on what’s published. So while Google published things should be true since they are reviewed outside of Google, we’ll never know the things not published. Also this is sort of the point of science right, you shouldn’t blindly trust things based on institution, but need to review critically based on your own experience and expertise.