19 ms·

A Dishonest, Indifferent, and Toxic Culture

459 points by brzozowski 6y ago

lixtra 6y ago
From the suicide note: > Considering that this will have an impact on my career in the future and my reputation in the area of Computer Architecture, my future life will be worse than death and I will be totally in a dilemma. Maybe we also need to change academic culture to allow people to confess academic fraud, receive punishment and than be forgiven and continue academic careers. Currently once you started, there is no exit and fraudsters are incentivized to continue to sustain their building of lies. With financial debt we allow people to go bankrupt and be reborn free (after some time and a honest effort; not including American student debt). Why not with your past academic fraud?
- tticvs 6y ago
  This is similar to the advantage to amnesty for corrupt dictators proposed by Mesquita & White in The Dictators Handbook. Basically giving authoritarian regimes an alternative to fighting to the death might increase overall utility.
  - zaik 6y ago
    I think the authors are Bruce Bueno De Mesquita and Alastair Smith.
  - chii 6y ago
    but it also gives the moral hazard of someone wanting to start such a regime, because they know they can profit/garner personal wealth during their reign, then beg for amnesty after a while (when it looks like their grip on power is lowered), and possibly, hiding their wealth gained away somewhere secret. Where as, in a world where such amnesty doesn't exist, they may have to face the possibility of being executed when they lose power (which, if history is to be believed, they eventually do). Therefore, some who are more cowards but cunning won't want to be a dictator, and thus, you end up with a more democratic system.
    - marcosdumay 6y ago
      There must always be punishment. The comments above are too summarized to get into it, but when that kind of amnesty happens, it is never complete. But if the punishment is so crass that the people prefer to lose their lives instead, that's a clear signal that your society has a problem, and your new regime isn't all that good either.
      - tlringer 6y ago
        Students under abusive advisors like this should not be punished and in fact are currently not punished. The power structures are too fundamental. The problem is that if you cross your advisor, good luck getting a job later.
- murphyslab 6y ago
  Forgiveness definitely should have its place, particularly for minor offenses, however the consequences are often multifaceted and tangled. For example, as research often uses public (government) funds, there are sometimes criminal consequences attached. [0][1] A secondary issue is trying to determine what penalty is fair and trying to determine whether an error was intentional or unintentional. The boundaries are admitted by most to be fuzzy. Moreover there is a desire to exact punishment: > A recent survey of roughly 1,800 people in the United States found that 90 percent of those who responded believe that fabricating data is morally repugnant. Preferred punishments include being blacklisted from university positions and being banned from government funding for future research, but don’t end there. > “Most respondents who support criminalization prefer a sentence of incarceration, rather than a fine and/or probation,” according to the researchers, Justin Pickett and Sean Patrick Roche, both of the University at Albany. “The results indicate that slightly over half of all Americans would prefer both to criminalize data fraud and to sentence fraudsters to a period of incarceration.” [2] ... and then there's China, where the penalties sought seem even higher. [1][3] However, given the investment in most researchers and their specialized skills, it seems a huge waste to lock up that person in a way that prevents society from benefitting. Finally, you have the problem of coordinating the action. With criminal behaviour, society coordinates action (for the most part) in order to achieve reasonable justice: Otherwise every person willing to act independently (as a vigilante) to extract an additional pound of flesh. We would need everyone to agree, otherwise you have situations where there is no punishment because someone breaks an embargo or you have too much punishment because multiple agents inflict punishment separately. Your typical person breaking the law is stuck within one country. It's a bit more complicated for researchers, since most are highly mobile. A PhD in a STEM topic means visas are almost automatically granted, so it's relatively easy to get a position in a different country. (It would be really interesting to see a follow-up on all of the researchers featured in [1], since that was written back in 2007.) [0] http://navier.engr.colostate.edu/CH693/prot/Nature_445_244_2007.pdf http://navier.engr.colostate.edu/CH693/prot/Nature_445_244_2... [1] https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/1747016119898400 https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/1747016119898400 [2] https://www.statnews.com/2016/08/04/fraud-science-jail-time/ https://www.statnews.com/2016/08/04/fraud-science-jail-time/ [3] https://www.statnews.com/2017/06/23/china-death-penalty-research-fraud/ https://www.statnews.com/2017/06/23/china-death-penalty-rese...
- pm90 6y ago
  I don’t think that’s a good idea. The analogy with financial debt is misleading: people go bankrupt even if they don’t do anything “wrong”, things don’t pan out, or disasters hit. For people that do commit financial crimes, they are prosecuted and face criminal punishment and often lose their ability to continue to be involved in finance. Academia doesn’t have that kind of strict laws, likely because academic fraud doesn’t affect the general population and is limited in the damage it can do, or hasn’t received similar attention as financial fraud. So making it even more tempting to commit academic fraud isn’t something I would recommend. The really straightforward solution here seems to be to make these institutions recognize the professors (even the prestigious ones) are human and can commit fraud, and thus to create ways for students to give feedback on such kinds of frauds to the institution, based on which the institution must take action.
  - yowlingcat 6y ago
    > For people that do commit financial crimes, they are prosecuted and face criminal punishment and often lose their ability to continue to be involved in finance. Wealthy white-collar criminals often only face minor fines and are able to keep operating. The industry perception of people who get caught (who are known to still be only a small percentage of those who commit them) is almost universally "they were stupid enough to get caught." I wonder whether this is yet another tendril of the student loan debt bubble and the privatization of a public good (education) contributing to deep, structural rot in American society. Most of the quality academic talent gets picked off into the industry, where there are real opportunity costs for mis-execution, and a much more healthy and liquid market for labor supply and demand. Does that mean that maybe the only plausible end-state for academia is a market for lemons?
    - pm90 6y ago
      The low rate of prosecution doesn’t mean that the laws are useless. It has coerced the financial industry into behaving in more pro-public ways than it would have without them. In this case it would likely ensure that academic frauds are not engaged in lightly. I don’t think Research fraud specifically has much connection to student loan debts. Most PhD students are fully funded by their programs. Most of them are international students anyway and would likely not have access to the sweetest US based loans.
- MaxBarraclough 6y ago
  I'm reminded of this recent comment on the consequences of zero-tolerance policies in the military. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25506316 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25506316
- boublepop 6y ago
  > Maybe we also need to change academic culture to allow people to confess academic fraud, receive punishment and than be forgiven and continue academic careers. Are you suggesting we forgive the professor who’s pressure and influence seems to have cause the phd students suicide? If anything I think we need to stand firm on the harsh one direction only nature of academic misconduct, and simply provide better training and whistleblower options for students. There should never be any doubt in a students or professors mind that academic misconduct when discovered will be an end to their academic carrier.
  - s1artibartfast 6y ago
    > There should never be any doubt in a students or professors mind that academic misconduct when discovered will be an end to their academic carrier. This is a big part of the reason for the suicide. Reread the quote with this in mind
phendrenad2 6y ago
Really interesting story. This guy is a true hero, attacking corruption in a sad but powerful way. > “I hope this will make a change in this world. I hope you can keep simple and stay honest in this society. I will bless you in another world.”
- kvathupo 6y ago
  I think the proof is in the mentioned 15 year ban that ACM handed down [1] [1] - https://twitter.com/sigarch/status/1358873198222311427 https://twitter.com/sigarch/status/1358873198222311427
  - phendrenad2 6y ago
    Wow, okay edited my comment.
ccs42762 6y ago
This is really shocking and heart breaking. Really angry that University of Florida did nothing and the professor is still in the position and giving speech.
- airhead969 6y ago
  University of Florida is a sheepskin factory. It's all about the Benjamins and politics. That they don't care shouldn't be a surprise to anyone.
deleted 6y ago
[deleted]
Animats 6y ago
The paper is "3D-based video recognition acceleration by leveraging temporal locality". Haven't found a copy online. I'd expect a paper like that to come with examples and a link to Github. Why fake something like that? Either the paper is ignored, or someone implements it and finds it doesn't work.
- rosstex 6y ago
  https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3307650.3322260 https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3307650.3322260
- black_puppydog 6y ago
  > I'd expect a paper like that to come with examples and a link to Github You'd expect that, but you'd probably be surprised in a lot of cases. One of the strong reasons why good conferences mandate code nowadays. The quality of the code, and whether it actually reproduces what you claim, isn't checked systematically though. That's down to the reviewers' enthusiasm, and whether they actually have the technical means to reproduce. That's not a given for more niche robotics or high-profile AI applications where hardware can be an issue.
- raverbashing 6y ago
  > Why fake something like that? Either the paper is ignored, or someone implements it and finds it doesn't work. The "formal" academic world does not care one bit about stuff working or not. It's all about self-promotion, papers and meaningless academic rituals and procedures. (And it's even worse outside of the US let me put it that way)
- kvathupo 6y ago
  As someone with a little experience in ML research, I feel like outside of the top 5-10 conferences, there rarely is a code repo [1]. I think an even bigger issue is that even when a repo is provided, it's often poorly documented, contains dead links, or _hard to reproduce on other machines_ without code-wrangling. Tangentially related, even popular repos can have implementations of models that differ from the paper cited. So, who knows how far errors can propagate ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ [1] - https://www.guide2research.com/topconf/ https://www.guide2research.com/topconf/
hellojasonjack 6y ago
The university of Florida is really loving toxic professors who can produce tons of fake papers to increase UF’s ranking.
hackerofhacker 6y ago
Sad story. An interesting question is if you were him, what to do? My intuitive thought is simply to quit, and start another academic pursuit (assuming you are really interesting in science and research); it could be rather hard, but that is life. LIFE never goes easy.
- sabujp 6y ago
  it's difficult to do unless you put yourself in that person's shoes. Basically forced to lie or be disgraced
- op03 6y ago
  I know someone who knew his prof was doing some weird shit. He came up with a story and took the summer off from working in the lab, and went and worked for another influential prof. Impressed the new folk (worked his ass off cuz he knew he had to get out) and it worked. He switched labs by the end of summer.
- bezout 6y ago
  Agree, I don’t think it’s worth it to end your life because of work. But, obviously, everyone is different. Also, we don’t know how he felt. He was under a ton of stress, for sure.
- tlringer 6y ago
  Things to consider: 1. When under an abuser, frequently you internalize their narrative. 2. Allegedly the professor threatened to kill him if he "ruined his reputation." 3. If he was an international student (I do not know if he was), he could quite literally lose his visa for losing his spot in the program. 4. If your advisor hates you and you haven't managed to safely switch advisors, good luck getting a letter for any future academic pursuits. (Unless you're willing to speak out about what happened, or you have someone willing to write an explanatory letter on your behalf.) 5. When you're being abused and threatened with retaliation for speaking out and so on, you aren't thinking rationally. It's really traumatic and scary, and sometimes it's hard to imagine a path out that is tolerable, and death sounds safer and easier. We in academia need to respond by setting up better systems to recognize and safely escape abusive situations without permanent harm to one's career and mental or physical wellbeing. And also by making those systems known to students and very easy to access and use.
ccsjavaccs 6y ago
Huixiang is a true hero. UF s*ks
adev_ 6y ago
I'm gonna get enemies for that .... But let's face it: the Academia peer review process is pretty rotten. - Many organisations could not care less about whatever crap you publish as long as you publish. And if possible a lot. - Many journal's reviewers are friend of friends and you can often easily guess their names, even in double blinded review. - Many reviewers care more about you quoting their own paper than giving any relevant feedback. - There is plenty "pay2publish" journals that care about quantity not quality that are commonly used by academia to "force" validate crappy researches/PHds - The publishing world is full of oversized-ego individuals that will destroy a paper just because it comes from a competing lab/department/professor and not because it is scientifically irrelevant. And that is only a little subset of the problems...
- dash2 6y ago
  My experience is different. Peer review is far from perfect but: * Most of my papers have had thoughtful comments. Typically, they improved the paper, sometimes a lot. * I have very rarely been asked to quote a specific paper from a specific author. Of course, pointing out important references that the paper has missed is part of peer review, so this would not necessarily be evidence of corruption. * There are loads of crap pay-to-publish predatory journals, but publishing in those journals would harm my career, not help it. Nobody cares about them. * I've not experienced people rejecting papers from rival labs or departments. I don't say it doesn't happen, but I haven't experienced it. * I myself try hard to give high-quality reviews that explore the paper's value in depth. I am from one particular discipline, country and subfield. Others may have very different experiences. Again, I am not claiming academic peer review and publishing doesn't need a lot of improvement. Removing the parasitic mainstream publishers like Elsevier and Springer would be a great start.
  - bjornsing 6y ago
    So how do you explain the information in the OP?
    - dash2 6y ago
      I don't know enough about the specific situation of computer science at the University of Florida to add anything useful. It sounds like a serious scandal.
aerovistae 6y ago
The sheer amount of typos here is....challenging. And I'm not one to pick on someone who's doing their best to communicate in a second language or anything but shoot this really could've used a copy editor.
- ylyn 6y ago
  Yes, the sheer number of wrongly-used words just makes it really hard to read.
  - dbos_friends 6y ago
    We are really sorry for these mistakes in langauge. Can you please send an email to huixiangvoice@gmail.com with details of these language mistakes so that we can try to fix it. Thanks
    - deleted 6y ago
      [deleted]
    - WWWWH 6y ago
      Sincerely, I wouldn't worry about it. This is a powerfully written, emotive, bombshell. Anyone who is genuinely worrying about apposite word choice and non-native syntax is missing the wood for the trees.
      - ylyn 6y ago
        Of course. It just makes it quite a bit more difficult to read; I need to spend some effort trying to figure out the exact nuance the author was trying to convey.
- thisrod 6y ago
  Doesn't a 15 year ban on publishing in ACM journals speak for itself, in any language?
- dbos_friends 6y ago
ithinkurwrong 6y ago
It is really heartbreaking. I hope all PhD students can find their dream professors who can help their careers.
tobmlt 6y ago
I want to express sympathies in a particular way: When I had a job I didn’t want, in a city i didn’t want, no kids, no wife, and prospects abounding, it was easy to speak truth to power. I did it, and I was right technically, businesswise, and morally. What a win...(?) Now, I have my dream job, my dream location, my own damn house, and my family. -Whole thing feels like a dream I might wake up from if I am not careful... and I feel totally weighed down when it comes to speaking up in a way I would have never countenanced a few years ago. All that to say, this poor kid... I can only imagine the incentive structures that led him to choose this route, but I know academia being f’ed is a big part of it, and it ticks me off.
- sn41 6y ago
  I agree, mate. I've decided to stop brooding over things less. I do still sniff the toxic sludge at my workplace, but turn away by thinking about technical and intense.
- xenihn 6y ago
  >Now, I have my dream job, my dream location, my own damn house, and my family. -Whole thing feels like a dream I might wake up from if I am not careful... and I feel totally weighed down when it comes to speaking up in a way I would have never countenanced a few years ago. I'm not at this point yet, but reading this makes me wonder why any employer would ever prefer younger employees with nothing tying them down, for any reasons other than the fact that we cost less. Sure, you'll save money on salary, but odds are that we're going to move on within a year or two if you're not a top-paying company. Even then, there's no guarantee. Meanwhile, someone who has dependents and a mortgage has more to lose and less leverage.
  - vinceguidry 6y ago
    I’m convinced that it’s because younger people are easier to control and less likely to speak up about messed up stuff. So while it would be in the company’s best interest to hire more experienced developers, it’s in the interest of individual managers to prefer younger folks.
csfighers_0 6y ago
Why did the University of Florida tolerant this and kind of keep protecting that professor?
- DSingularity 6y ago
  Same reason the conference allowed the professor to present the paper even though the first author committed suicide over it and left a suicide letter which blamed the misconduct and the professor —- nobody in academia gives a shit. Don’t mistake the penalty for integrity. These are the same guys that abuse vulnerable students to fuel their ego-trip (which they call careers).
  - airhead969 6y ago
    PhDComics needs a special dystopian subsidiary just for these sort of departments. Like a Charlie Hebdo.
- Vaslo 6y ago
  Because his papers get them tons of grant money.
logicchains 6y ago
"If you see one cockroach in your house, there are probably many more". It's great that this fraud was finally exposed, but sad that there are probably many more similar instances going on unnoticed.
- tester756 6y ago
  unfortunely world is full of shitty papers
sieste 6y ago
It's rather sad that you can guess from the title that this is probably about academia. I have to say though that I can't confirm any of this for my institutions, professors, and fields of research. I've always worked with honest and caring professors, who cared more about correctness of results than headlines and fame.
- zelphirkalt 6y ago
  I was not so sure, reading the title. At first I was thinking about whether it might be about the Internet or perhaps even society in general.
- Fomite 6y ago
  I read the title and assumed it was about a startup.
jzer0cool 6y ago
The story is sad. In both academia and corporate I've known many who find it difficult to stand up for themselves. It is already a difficult and yet courageous act to express a different view to your professor, boss, employer, etc. Things are never the same if speaking out. There are those who simply just do what is told. Simply Leave. Or fall through a deep hole when there is imbalance when taking on an action that is against what you stand up for.
rawland 6y ago
My condolences to the family & friends. Having read this article it made me sad. On a good note, ACM seems to have reacted in a proper way. Glad to see this. This student must have been very very alone and suffered immensely to take this decision. Sadly, I have witnessed this exact same thing at a very well known university in Germany. With great effort this was kept away from the public and blamed on the PhD student himself ('This guy had _other_ problems'). Even though he left a letter, which was also very explicit about his situation. This left me thinking, how often this actually happens but receives no publicity... I believe most people, who enter the world of academe have good principles and ideals. In German pedagogy this is called "Humboldtsches Bildungsideal" which translates unfortunately into this [1]. Humboldt's model was very much based on many ideas of the enlightenment, esp. concerning one's pursuit of intellectual growth for its own sake and the world citizen. Unfortunately the economic grip on the world of academe in many fields gets stronger and at one point in time ones sees these ideals destroyed. It's best witnessed with what happened to the internet. Wonder how many can remember how it 'felt' in the beginning after CERN opened it to the world... and now, look at it. [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Humboldtian_model_of_higher_education https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Humboldtian_model_of_higher_ed...
ded_fixer 6y ago
Really a sad story! the attitude of University of Florida made me angry!
- AtlasBarfed 6y ago
  University administrations are all in prairie dog mode. They are all run by fat unneeded administrative fat cats, charging wayyyyy tooooo much money, are all frightened of a bubble burst in higher ed that will cost an unknown number of institutions. In situations like that, it is ripe for scapegoating a single institution that gets in the news for the wrong reasons. Outside of the cream of the crop, large institutions in higher education are also tenuously tied to "reputation". A couple bad runs, and you go from, say the University of Florida's current reputation (which is pretty good as the SEC schools go) to, say, the Mississippi schools which are basically second-rate Cal State schools academically being propped up by football money. And then you might get dumped from your conference.
tlringer 6y ago
Someone really, really, really needs to get this professor's current students to safety immediately. Don't forget that shortly before the student's suicide, according to a screenshot of a conversation with the student who took his own life (same Medium account, earlier article), the professor threatened to kill the student if he "ruined his reputation." His students are not safe and the focus should be on making sure they are safe.
- tlringer 6y ago
  If any one of his current students are reading this, feel free to reach out to me (use ringertalia@gmail.com), and I will help you find resources that may help you while prioritizing your safety. I recommend doing this from a non-university email because university emails are not truly private.
Athas 6y ago
This is such a sad story. Nothing can bring back the dead, but we can try to prevent a repeat of the events, and ensure that their death was not in vain. It is heartening to see that ACM took the investigation seriously, and actually did discover and condemn serious academic fraud. However, while I can guess who is has been banned from submitting to ACM conferences for the next 15 years, apparently it is ACMs policy not to announce publicly! Just look at the report[0], it's completely anonymous. Am I mistaken? What is the justification for this? At a practical level, how am I as a co-chair of an ACM event supposed to enforce a ban if I don't know who is banned? [0]: https://www.sigarch.org/wp-content/uploads/2021/02/JIC-Public-Announcement-Feb-8-2021.pdf https://www.sigarch.org/wp-content/uploads/2021/02/JIC-Publi...
buildbot 6y ago
Definitely going to personally make sure to never use University of Florida based research again, it’s shocking that the prof is still there.
greatartiste 6y ago
I do some work in a certain field of digital signal processing. From time to time I look at the latest academic papers in that field and am always shocked by the poor quality. Probably 90% of the papers couldn't be repeated due to a lack of source code , the worse ones just have Simulink 'blocks' to illustrate the code. The techniques in this field used by industry for commercial products are never mentioned it's as if they exist on another planet. I can only presume anyone who knows what they are doing in this field works in industry while what remains in Universities have to produce a certain number of papers every year despite the quality. It really is a waste of everyones time and effort.
- alyizzet 6y ago
  Indeed, during my undergrad I have seen the exact same behaviour with the Electrical Engineering faculty(at one of the most prestigious in the EMEA region). Most of the so called academical output from my department was hidden source code simulink visual spaghettis closed for scrutiny. It seemed to me as the profs spun out a web of lies out of EE jargon plus matlab blackboxes.
deleted 6y ago
[deleted]
8bitsrule 6y ago
It's bad enough that ethical people find themselves in a situation like this. But when suicide is the result, it's tragic. Finding out you've thrown your lot in with - and been trapped by - scumbags that you thought you could trust - must be very difficult. But suicide is not a solution ... you lose all. The best choice is to walk away. Tomorrow will need you.
jdthedisciple 6y ago
I never understand why phd students who are going through mental torture don't just quit their phd program. I mean ... noone can force you to finish a shi*y phd right? Why not just drop out and pursue sth that actually fulfills you? With your Masters degree / diploma in your pocket and the vast theoretical knowledge you have all doors standjng eide open for you, don't you?
- iainmerrick 6y ago
  It’s tough to make the jump. Part of the trouble is that pure science and research is what interests and fulfills you -- in principle. It just doesn’t pay enough, and only a tiny fraction of researchers see real success. To make the jump into industry, you have to admit to yourself that a) the academic life isn’t what you hoped for and never will be; and b) you, personally, will never make the kind of scientific breakthrough you still dream about. For all that you may be able to go from a tiny salary to a six-figure salary, you still need to admit failure at some level, and that’s hard.
- ojnabieoot 6y ago
  As someone who quit a graduate program: - it looks really really really bad on your CV to not finish a graduate degree. I dropped out for health reasons with an A+ GPA and still have to delicately explain what happened to interviewers. It looks worse than just having a masters degree. - “just one more year of misery and then your career prospects will increase dramatically” is a very powerful argument and not just a sunk-cost fallacy. - young people in PhD programs tend to have a lot of identity and psychological investment in getting their PhD and working as a researcher. For most PhD students, the occupation that most fulfills them is their research. It strikes me as very strange that you think PhD students have some secret marketable passion that they would pursue but instead they somehow got stuck in graduate school. Speaking for myself: a PhD program was the only feasible part for me to do something fulfilling. My current work as a software developer is tedious and boring by comparison and, frankly, not at all what I wanted to do with my life. - PhD students rarely have any savings and their meager stipends are the only income they have. So “pursue [something] that actually fulfills you” is most likely impossible, since that ‘something’ is probably not a routine office/engineering job.
timwaagh 6y ago
I just want to note that nothing caused suicide other than his decision to kill himself. I don't condone suicide as a method of protest. The damage to the family and the person are too severe. He talked about another world in his letter. That doesn't happen and I hope he meant that metaphorically, because otherwise he really did not know what he was doing. I wish media stopped reporting on suicides except in statistics. Not that I'm saying academic fraud is okay, it's not, it's evil and I would hope they get jail. But the media should not put suicide on a pedestal.
- Vhano 6y ago
  yea I hope he reads this
mbar84 6y ago
If you see Moloch, don't let it eat you, run!
fireattack 6y ago
Disgusting. Can you (the family) sue UF/the professor over this? I feel like this is the only way now to make them to take the responsibility after almost two years of nothingness.
baybal2 6y ago
IEEE must purge him. Such conduct is infectious. If you don't oppose it, it invites other to both try, and ignore it.
- pbzcnepu 6y ago
  the IEEE probably won't do anything. We've been trying for 2 years to even get an e-mail reply from them on the issue, let alone say anything useful. See the whole story here: https://pbzcnepu.net/isca/timeline.html https://pbzcnepu.net/isca/timeline.html
coldtea 6y ago
Don't let the Chinese name of the professor fool you. This happens all the time with Americans, Europeans, Chinese, Indian, etc professors and "peer" reviews. It's just that usually there's no conscience to take it bad from the student, on the contrary, it's the thrill of being published that prevails.
dariosalvi78 6y ago
It's a sad story. The action of the student is difficult to understand in my opinion, and may have been the consequence of some other underlying issue. However, even if he suffered from of mental issues, the fact that he didn't get support speaks very badly for the university and the supervisor. The lack of reaction from the university is also hard to justify. Even if one doesn't want to jump to conclusions about the professor, some temporary measure should have been taken, at least to reassure the family that due investigations were being done.
jrochkind1 6y ago
> Finally, the paper with academic misconduct got retracted by ACM as Huixiang’s last wish. The ACM imposed a penalty of a 15-year ban on participation in any ACM Conference or Publication to the offenders. Wow. It does sound like the student discovered suicide as one of the only known effective methods of triggering accountability for research misconduct. That's awfully depressing. I can't now find the article I remember reading, perhaps from HN, of someone who came across then spent a lot of time demonstrating/reporting apparently falsified data to journals, to pretty much no consequence. (except teaching the researcher how to falsify data better to evade the particular tests the exposer used in that case).
- karagenit 6y ago
  Probably this one: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25922799 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25922799
pbzcnepu 6y ago
ISCA is a particularly horrible "top" conference. We've been trying to reproduce some papers with questionable methodology from ISCA'20 (including using "1 cycle access L1 cache" in simulations, something that's not really possible on modern CPUs). Of 5 paper groups contacted, 4 have not responded despite repeated requests, even when VPs of research at the university contacted. One group eventually replied, said that they were "too busy" to release their simulator changes, and then also saying they weren't going to because they were worried about it being classified as a munitions export.
- pbzcnepu 6y ago
  also, at ISCA'19, over half the papers were PC papers, meaning they were papers where one of the authors was on the committee that picked which papers get in. It's probably why the highers ups have been so reluctant to change the culture at the conference because it would so negatively effect all the higher-ups' publication counts
- andi999 6y ago
  What I believe one problem with a lot of conference papers is: - It is very important to go to conferences, to meet your (international) peers, see what is new, what interesting results have been achieved/are work in progress and to forge the next collaboration So far so good. Now, all academic institution I know of, only allow you (means paying) to attend a conference if you present a paper. I guess this might be universal. So since you want/need to go, a lot of people just write up what the current status about a problem is, and this leads to a lot of half-baked presentations. (of course fraud is something different)
charliebrownau 6y ago
If your actually willing to research differences in RACE Check out RACE REALISM Goverment, Authorians, mainstream have lied on purpose about Race Race Differences IQ differences Ethnic Nationalism
Vaslo 6y ago
I’m shocked at how little I can find about this. Maybe I’m naive but I thought there would be more coverage on what’s going on. Sadly it’s just this blogger, the school doesn’t seem to be commenting. What could take so long?
AtlasBarfed 6y ago
Meanwhile, I'd guess this will be branded a "bad apple", but of course the worst apple in the bunch is more of a sign of issues in the whole farm/system. Of course colleges are overloaded with managerial vampires that are supposed to be overseeing this better than the old days where there wasn't as much tuition/loan money flowing through the system. Higher ed administration is broken, financing is broken, research is broken, phd programs are broken, adjunct professorship is broken, there is corruption everywhere. Edit: and I totally forgot... college sports.
sampo 6y ago
In a way, you have respect the integrity of the PhD student. But also, publishing a fraudulent conference paper in this field (neural networks), the real damage to anything is minimal. Nobody expects a random paper in this field to be particularly true or useful. A lot of papers are trivial applications of old ideas, obfuscated behind complicated word soup. Or false good results due to buggy code, which you can never check because they don't publish the source code. Or useless or irreproducible due to many other reasons. The field produces also good results, but you need to follow bigger trends, as individual publications are mostly just noise.
andi999 6y ago
The article is all over the place with a lot of innuendo. I mean I do not want to play detective, I want the case served on a silver platter
- pbzcnepu 6y ago
  for more details than you possibly want go here: https://pbzcnepu.net/isca/timeline.html https://pbzcnepu.net/isca/timeline.html though it is more about the ACM/IEEE side of things rather than what was going on in Florida. Many researchers seemed to know there was weird stuff going on with peer-review at ISCA, but if you asked the researchers they'd just shrug and more or less say something to the effect of "don't hate the player, hate the game"
  - andi999 6y ago
    I read it and the thing doesn't make sense: so the author is complaining that the victim knew the names of the reviewers? Who cares? What does this have to do with anything? Also there seems to be almost no relation to the conference with the suicide except for the pressure his supervisor put on him. The other thing from the web page is murky, they basically found breached confidential info on the victims laptop. Ok, this is more serious, but again, this is seems to me also a total sideshow;what am I missing here.

459 points by brzozowski 6y ago

From the suicide note: > Considering that this will have an impact on my career in the future and my reputation in the area of Computer Architecture, my future life will be worse than death and I will be totally in a dilemma. Maybe we also need to change academic culture to allow people to confess academic fraud, receive punishment and than be forgiven and continue academic careers. Currently once you started, there is no exit and fraudsters are incentivized to continue to sustain their building of lies. With financial debt we allow people to go bankrupt and be reborn free (after some time and a honest effort; not including American student debt). Why not with your past academic fraud?

tticvs 6y ago
This is similar to the advantage to amnesty for corrupt dictators proposed by Mesquita & White in The Dictators Handbook. Basically giving authoritarian regimes an alternative to fighting to the death might increase overall utility.
- zaik 6y ago
  I think the authors are Bruce Bueno De Mesquita and Alastair Smith.
- chii 6y ago
  but it also gives the moral hazard of someone wanting to start such a regime, because they know they can profit/garner personal wealth during their reign, then beg for amnesty after a while (when it looks like their grip on power is lowered), and possibly, hiding their wealth gained away somewhere secret. Where as, in a world where such amnesty doesn't exist, they may have to face the possibility of being executed when they lose power (which, if history is to be believed, they eventually do). Therefore, some who are more cowards but cunning won't want to be a dictator, and thus, you end up with a more democratic system.
  - marcosdumay 6y ago
    There must always be punishment. The comments above are too summarized to get into it, but when that kind of amnesty happens, it is never complete. But if the punishment is so crass that the people prefer to lose their lives instead, that's a clear signal that your society has a problem, and your new regime isn't all that good either.
    - tlringer 6y ago
      Students under abusive advisors like this should not be punished and in fact are currently not punished. The power structures are too fundamental. The problem is that if you cross your advisor, good luck getting a job later.
murphyslab 6y ago
Forgiveness definitely should have its place, particularly for minor offenses, however the consequences are often multifaceted and tangled. For example, as research often uses public (government) funds, there are sometimes criminal consequences attached. [0][1] A secondary issue is trying to determine what penalty is fair and trying to determine whether an error was intentional or unintentional. The boundaries are admitted by most to be fuzzy. Moreover there is a desire to exact punishment: > A recent survey of roughly 1,800 people in the United States found that 90 percent of those who responded believe that fabricating data is morally repugnant. Preferred punishments include being blacklisted from university positions and being banned from government funding for future research, but don’t end there. > “Most respondents who support criminalization prefer a sentence of incarceration, rather than a fine and/or probation,” according to the researchers, Justin Pickett and Sean Patrick Roche, both of the University at Albany. “The results indicate that slightly over half of all Americans would prefer both to criminalize data fraud and to sentence fraudsters to a period of incarceration.” [2] ... and then there's China, where the penalties sought seem even higher. [1][3] However, given the investment in most researchers and their specialized skills, it seems a huge waste to lock up that person in a way that prevents society from benefitting. Finally, you have the problem of coordinating the action. With criminal behaviour, society coordinates action (for the most part) in order to achieve reasonable justice: Otherwise every person willing to act independently (as a vigilante) to extract an additional pound of flesh. We would need everyone to agree, otherwise you have situations where there is no punishment because someone breaks an embargo or you have too much punishment because multiple agents inflict punishment separately. Your typical person breaking the law is stuck within one country. It's a bit more complicated for researchers, since most are highly mobile. A PhD in a STEM topic means visas are almost automatically granted, so it's relatively easy to get a position in a different country. (It would be really interesting to see a follow-up on all of the researchers featured in [1], since that was written back in 2007.) [0] http://navier.engr.colostate.edu/CH693/prot/Nature_445_244_2007.pdf http://navier.engr.colostate.edu/CH693/prot/Nature_445_244_2... [1] https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/1747016119898400 https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/1747016119898400 [2] https://www.statnews.com/2016/08/04/fraud-science-jail-time/ https://www.statnews.com/2016/08/04/fraud-science-jail-time/ [3] https://www.statnews.com/2017/06/23/china-death-penalty-research-fraud/ https://www.statnews.com/2017/06/23/china-death-penalty-rese...
pm90 6y ago
I don’t think that’s a good idea. The analogy with financial debt is misleading: people go bankrupt even if they don’t do anything “wrong”, things don’t pan out, or disasters hit. For people that do commit financial crimes, they are prosecuted and face criminal punishment and often lose their ability to continue to be involved in finance. Academia doesn’t have that kind of strict laws, likely because academic fraud doesn’t affect the general population and is limited in the damage it can do, or hasn’t received similar attention as financial fraud. So making it even more tempting to commit academic fraud isn’t something I would recommend. The really straightforward solution here seems to be to make these institutions recognize the professors (even the prestigious ones) are human and can commit fraud, and thus to create ways for students to give feedback on such kinds of frauds to the institution, based on which the institution must take action.
- yowlingcat 6y ago
  > For people that do commit financial crimes, they are prosecuted and face criminal punishment and often lose their ability to continue to be involved in finance. Wealthy white-collar criminals often only face minor fines and are able to keep operating. The industry perception of people who get caught (who are known to still be only a small percentage of those who commit them) is almost universally "they were stupid enough to get caught." I wonder whether this is yet another tendril of the student loan debt bubble and the privatization of a public good (education) contributing to deep, structural rot in American society. Most of the quality academic talent gets picked off into the industry, where there are real opportunity costs for mis-execution, and a much more healthy and liquid market for labor supply and demand. Does that mean that maybe the only plausible end-state for academia is a market for lemons?
  - pm90 6y ago
    The low rate of prosecution doesn’t mean that the laws are useless. It has coerced the financial industry into behaving in more pro-public ways than it would have without them. In this case it would likely ensure that academic frauds are not engaged in lightly. I don’t think Research fraud specifically has much connection to student loan debts. Most PhD students are fully funded by their programs. Most of them are international students anyway and would likely not have access to the sweetest US based loans.
MaxBarraclough 6y ago
I'm reminded of this recent comment on the consequences of zero-tolerance policies in the military. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25506316 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25506316
boublepop 6y ago
> Maybe we also need to change academic culture to allow people to confess academic fraud, receive punishment and than be forgiven and continue academic careers. Are you suggesting we forgive the professor who’s pressure and influence seems to have cause the phd students suicide? If anything I think we need to stand firm on the harsh one direction only nature of academic misconduct, and simply provide better training and whistleblower options for students. There should never be any doubt in a students or professors mind that academic misconduct when discovered will be an end to their academic carrier.
- s1artibartfast 6y ago
  > There should never be any doubt in a students or professors mind that academic misconduct when discovered will be an end to their academic carrier. This is a big part of the reason for the suicide. Reread the quote with this in mind

phendrenad2 6y ago

Really interesting story. This guy is a true hero, attacking corruption in a sad but powerful way. > “I hope this will make a change in this world. I hope you can keep simple and stay honest in this society. I will bless you in another world.”

kvathupo 6y ago
I think the proof is in the mentioned 15 year ban that ACM handed down [1] [1] - https://twitter.com/sigarch/status/1358873198222311427 https://twitter.com/sigarch/status/1358873198222311427
- phendrenad2 6y ago
  Wow, okay edited my comment.

ccs42762 6y ago

This is really shocking and heart breaking. Really angry that University of Florida did nothing and the professor is still in the position and giving speech.

airhead969 6y ago
University of Florida is a sheepskin factory. It's all about the Benjamins and politics. That they don't care shouldn't be a surprise to anyone.

deleted 6y ago

[deleted]

Animats 6y ago

The paper is "3D-based video recognition acceleration by leveraging temporal locality". Haven't found a copy online. I'd expect a paper like that to come with examples and a link to Github. Why fake something like that? Either the paper is ignored, or someone implements it and finds it doesn't work.

rosstex 6y ago
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3307650.3322260 https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3307650.3322260
black_puppydog 6y ago
> I'd expect a paper like that to come with examples and a link to Github You'd expect that, but you'd probably be surprised in a lot of cases. One of the strong reasons why good conferences mandate code nowadays. The quality of the code, and whether it actually reproduces what you claim, isn't checked systematically though. That's down to the reviewers' enthusiasm, and whether they actually have the technical means to reproduce. That's not a given for more niche robotics or high-profile AI applications where hardware can be an issue.
raverbashing 6y ago
> Why fake something like that? Either the paper is ignored, or someone implements it and finds it doesn't work. The "formal" academic world does not care one bit about stuff working or not. It's all about self-promotion, papers and meaningless academic rituals and procedures. (And it's even worse outside of the US let me put it that way)
kvathupo 6y ago
As someone with a little experience in ML research, I feel like outside of the top 5-10 conferences, there rarely is a code repo [1]. I think an even bigger issue is that even when a repo is provided, it's often poorly documented, contains dead links, or _hard to reproduce on other machines_ without code-wrangling. Tangentially related, even popular repos can have implementations of models that differ from the paper cited. So, who knows how far errors can propagate ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ [1] - https://www.guide2research.com/topconf/ https://www.guide2research.com/topconf/

hellojasonjack 6y ago

The university of Florida is really loving toxic professors who can produce tons of fake papers to increase UF’s ranking.

hackerofhacker 6y ago

Sad story. An interesting question is if you were him, what to do? My intuitive thought is simply to quit, and start another academic pursuit (assuming you are really interesting in science and research); it could be rather hard, but that is life. LIFE never goes easy.

sabujp 6y ago
it's difficult to do unless you put yourself in that person's shoes. Basically forced to lie or be disgraced
op03 6y ago
I know someone who knew his prof was doing some weird shit. He came up with a story and took the summer off from working in the lab, and went and worked for another influential prof. Impressed the new folk (worked his ass off cuz he knew he had to get out) and it worked. He switched labs by the end of summer.
bezout 6y ago
Agree, I don’t think it’s worth it to end your life because of work. But, obviously, everyone is different. Also, we don’t know how he felt. He was under a ton of stress, for sure.
tlringer 6y ago
Things to consider: 1. When under an abuser, frequently you internalize their narrative. 2. Allegedly the professor threatened to kill him if he "ruined his reputation." 3. If he was an international student (I do not know if he was), he could quite literally lose his visa for losing his spot in the program. 4. If your advisor hates you and you haven't managed to safely switch advisors, good luck getting a letter for any future academic pursuits. (Unless you're willing to speak out about what happened, or you have someone willing to write an explanatory letter on your behalf.) 5. When you're being abused and threatened with retaliation for speaking out and so on, you aren't thinking rationally. It's really traumatic and scary, and sometimes it's hard to imagine a path out that is tolerable, and death sounds safer and easier. We in academia need to respond by setting up better systems to recognize and safely escape abusive situations without permanent harm to one's career and mental or physical wellbeing. And also by making those systems known to students and very easy to access and use.

ccsjavaccs 6y ago

Huixiang is a true hero. UF s*ks

adev_ 6y ago

I'm gonna get enemies for that .... But let's face it: the Academia peer review process is pretty rotten. - Many organisations could not care less about whatever crap you publish as long as you publish. And if possible a lot. - Many journal's reviewers are friend of friends and you can often easily guess their names, even in double blinded review. - Many reviewers care more about you quoting their own paper than giving any relevant feedback. - There is plenty "pay2publish" journals that care about quantity not quality that are commonly used by academia to "force" validate crappy researches/PHds - The publishing world is full of oversized-ego individuals that will destroy a paper just because it comes from a competing lab/department/professor and not because it is scientifically irrelevant. And that is only a little subset of the problems...

dash2 6y ago
My experience is different. Peer review is far from perfect but: * Most of my papers have had thoughtful comments. Typically, they improved the paper, sometimes a lot. * I have very rarely been asked to quote a specific paper from a specific author. Of course, pointing out important references that the paper has missed is part of peer review, so this would not necessarily be evidence of corruption. * There are loads of crap pay-to-publish predatory journals, but publishing in those journals would harm my career, not help it. Nobody cares about them. * I've not experienced people rejecting papers from rival labs or departments. I don't say it doesn't happen, but I haven't experienced it. * I myself try hard to give high-quality reviews that explore the paper's value in depth. I am from one particular discipline, country and subfield. Others may have very different experiences. Again, I am not claiming academic peer review and publishing doesn't need a lot of improvement. Removing the parasitic mainstream publishers like Elsevier and Springer would be a great start.
- bjornsing 6y ago
  So how do you explain the information in the OP?
  - dash2 6y ago
    I don't know enough about the specific situation of computer science at the University of Florida to add anything useful. It sounds like a serious scandal.

aerovistae 6y ago

The sheer amount of typos here is....challenging. And I'm not one to pick on someone who's doing their best to communicate in a second language or anything but shoot this really could've used a copy editor.

ylyn 6y ago
Yes, the sheer number of wrongly-used words just makes it really hard to read.
- dbos_friends 6y ago
  We are really sorry for these mistakes in langauge. Can you please send an email to huixiangvoice@gmail.com with details of these language mistakes so that we can try to fix it. Thanks
  - deleted 6y ago
    [deleted]
  - WWWWH 6y ago
    Sincerely, I wouldn't worry about it. This is a powerfully written, emotive, bombshell. Anyone who is genuinely worrying about apposite word choice and non-native syntax is missing the wood for the trees.
    - ylyn 6y ago
      Of course. It just makes it quite a bit more difficult to read; I need to spend some effort trying to figure out the exact nuance the author was trying to convey.
thisrod 6y ago
Doesn't a 15 year ban on publishing in ACM journals speak for itself, in any language?
dbos_friends 6y ago

ithinkurwrong 6y ago

It is really heartbreaking. I hope all PhD students can find their dream professors who can help their careers.

tobmlt 6y ago

I want to express sympathies in a particular way: When I had a job I didn’t want, in a city i didn’t want, no kids, no wife, and prospects abounding, it was easy to speak truth to power. I did it, and I was right technically, businesswise, and morally. What a win...(?) Now, I have my dream job, my dream location, my own damn house, and my family. -Whole thing feels like a dream I might wake up from if I am not careful... and I feel totally weighed down when it comes to speaking up in a way I would have never countenanced a few years ago. All that to say, this poor kid... I can only imagine the incentive structures that led him to choose this route, but I know academia being f’ed is a big part of it, and it ticks me off.

sn41 6y ago
I agree, mate. I've decided to stop brooding over things less. I do still sniff the toxic sludge at my workplace, but turn away by thinking about technical and intense.
xenihn 6y ago
>Now, I have my dream job, my dream location, my own damn house, and my family. -Whole thing feels like a dream I might wake up from if I am not careful... and I feel totally weighed down when it comes to speaking up in a way I would have never countenanced a few years ago. I'm not at this point yet, but reading this makes me wonder why any employer would ever prefer younger employees with nothing tying them down, for any reasons other than the fact that we cost less. Sure, you'll save money on salary, but odds are that we're going to move on within a year or two if you're not a top-paying company. Even then, there's no guarantee. Meanwhile, someone who has dependents and a mortgage has more to lose and less leverage.
- vinceguidry 6y ago
  I’m convinced that it’s because younger people are easier to control and less likely to speak up about messed up stuff. So while it would be in the company’s best interest to hire more experienced developers, it’s in the interest of individual managers to prefer younger folks.

csfighers_0 6y ago

Why did the University of Florida tolerant this and kind of keep protecting that professor?

DSingularity 6y ago
Same reason the conference allowed the professor to present the paper even though the first author committed suicide over it and left a suicide letter which blamed the misconduct and the professor —- nobody in academia gives a shit. Don’t mistake the penalty for integrity. These are the same guys that abuse vulnerable students to fuel their ego-trip (which they call careers).
- airhead969 6y ago
  PhDComics needs a special dystopian subsidiary just for these sort of departments. Like a Charlie Hebdo.
Vaslo 6y ago
Because his papers get them tons of grant money.

logicchains 6y ago

"If you see one cockroach in your house, there are probably many more". It's great that this fraud was finally exposed, but sad that there are probably many more similar instances going on unnoticed.

tester756 6y ago
unfortunely world is full of shitty papers

sieste 6y ago

It's rather sad that you can guess from the title that this is probably about academia. I have to say though that I can't confirm any of this for my institutions, professors, and fields of research. I've always worked with honest and caring professors, who cared more about correctness of results than headlines and fame.

zelphirkalt 6y ago
I was not so sure, reading the title. At first I was thinking about whether it might be about the Internet or perhaps even society in general.
Fomite 6y ago
I read the title and assumed it was about a startup.

jzer0cool 6y ago

The story is sad. In both academia and corporate I've known many who find it difficult to stand up for themselves. It is already a difficult and yet courageous act to express a different view to your professor, boss, employer, etc. Things are never the same if speaking out. There are those who simply just do what is told. Simply Leave. Or fall through a deep hole when there is imbalance when taking on an action that is against what you stand up for.

rawland 6y ago

My condolences to the family & friends. Having read this article it made me sad. On a good note, ACM seems to have reacted in a proper way. Glad to see this. This student must have been very very alone and suffered immensely to take this decision. Sadly, I have witnessed this exact same thing at a very well known university in Germany. With great effort this was kept away from the public and blamed on the PhD student himself ('This guy had _other_ problems'). Even though he left a letter, which was also very explicit about his situation. This left me thinking, how often this actually happens but receives no publicity... I believe most people, who enter the world of academe have good principles and ideals. In German pedagogy this is called "Humboldtsches Bildungsideal" which translates unfortunately into this [1]. Humboldt's model was very much based on many ideas of the enlightenment, esp. concerning one's pursuit of intellectual growth for its own sake and the world citizen. Unfortunately the economic grip on the world of academe in many fields gets stronger and at one point in time ones sees these ideals destroyed. It's best witnessed with what happened to the internet. Wonder how many can remember how it 'felt' in the beginning after CERN opened it to the world... and now, look at it. [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Humboldtian_model_of_higher_education https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Humboldtian_model_of_higher_ed...

ded_fixer 6y ago

Really a sad story! the attitude of University of Florida made me angry!

AtlasBarfed 6y ago
University administrations are all in prairie dog mode. They are all run by fat unneeded administrative fat cats, charging wayyyyy tooooo much money, are all frightened of a bubble burst in higher ed that will cost an unknown number of institutions. In situations like that, it is ripe for scapegoating a single institution that gets in the news for the wrong reasons. Outside of the cream of the crop, large institutions in higher education are also tenuously tied to "reputation". A couple bad runs, and you go from, say the University of Florida's current reputation (which is pretty good as the SEC schools go) to, say, the Mississippi schools which are basically second-rate Cal State schools academically being propped up by football money. And then you might get dumped from your conference.

tlringer 6y ago

Someone really, really, really needs to get this professor's current students to safety immediately. Don't forget that shortly before the student's suicide, according to a screenshot of a conversation with the student who took his own life (same Medium account, earlier article), the professor threatened to kill the student if he "ruined his reputation." His students are not safe and the focus should be on making sure they are safe.

tlringer 6y ago
If any one of his current students are reading this, feel free to reach out to me (use ringertalia@gmail.com), and I will help you find resources that may help you while prioritizing your safety. I recommend doing this from a non-university email because university emails are not truly private.

Athas 6y ago

This is such a sad story. Nothing can bring back the dead, but we can try to prevent a repeat of the events, and ensure that their death was not in vain. It is heartening to see that ACM took the investigation seriously, and actually did discover and condemn serious academic fraud. However, while I can guess who is has been banned from submitting to ACM conferences for the next 15 years, apparently it is ACMs policy not to announce publicly! Just look at the report[0], it's completely anonymous. Am I mistaken? What is the justification for this? At a practical level, how am I as a co-chair of an ACM event supposed to enforce a ban if I don't know who is banned? [0]: https://www.sigarch.org/wp-content/uploads/2021/02/JIC-Public-Announcement-Feb-8-2021.pdf https://www.sigarch.org/wp-content/uploads/2021/02/JIC-Publi...

buildbot 6y ago

Definitely going to personally make sure to never use University of Florida based research again, it’s shocking that the prof is still there.

greatartiste 6y ago

I do some work in a certain field of digital signal processing. From time to time I look at the latest academic papers in that field and am always shocked by the poor quality. Probably 90% of the papers couldn't be repeated due to a lack of source code , the worse ones just have Simulink 'blocks' to illustrate the code. The techniques in this field used by industry for commercial products are never mentioned it's as if they exist on another planet. I can only presume anyone who knows what they are doing in this field works in industry while what remains in Universities have to produce a certain number of papers every year despite the quality. It really is a waste of everyones time and effort.

alyizzet 6y ago
Indeed, during my undergrad I have seen the exact same behaviour with the Electrical Engineering faculty(at one of the most prestigious in the EMEA region). Most of the so called academical output from my department was hidden source code simulink visual spaghettis closed for scrutiny. It seemed to me as the profs spun out a web of lies out of EE jargon plus matlab blackboxes.

deleted 6y ago

[deleted]

8bitsrule 6y ago

It's bad enough that ethical people find themselves in a situation like this. But when suicide is the result, it's tragic. Finding out you've thrown your lot in with - and been trapped by - scumbags that you thought you could trust - must be very difficult. But suicide is not a solution ... you lose all. The best choice is to walk away. Tomorrow will need you.

jdthedisciple 6y ago

I never understand why phd students who are going through mental torture don't just quit their phd program. I mean ... noone can force you to finish a shi*y phd right? Why not just drop out and pursue sth that actually fulfills you? With your Masters degree / diploma in your pocket and the vast theoretical knowledge you have all doors standjng eide open for you, don't you?

iainmerrick 6y ago
It’s tough to make the jump. Part of the trouble is that pure science and research is what interests and fulfills you -- in principle. It just doesn’t pay enough, and only a tiny fraction of researchers see real success. To make the jump into industry, you have to admit to yourself that a) the academic life isn’t what you hoped for and never will be; and b) you, personally, will never make the kind of scientific breakthrough you still dream about. For all that you may be able to go from a tiny salary to a six-figure salary, you still need to admit failure at some level, and that’s hard.
ojnabieoot 6y ago
As someone who quit a graduate program: - it looks really really really bad on your CV to not finish a graduate degree. I dropped out for health reasons with an A+ GPA and still have to delicately explain what happened to interviewers. It looks worse than just having a masters degree. - “just one more year of misery and then your career prospects will increase dramatically” is a very powerful argument and not just a sunk-cost fallacy. - young people in PhD programs tend to have a lot of identity and psychological investment in getting their PhD and working as a researcher. For most PhD students, the occupation that most fulfills them is their research. It strikes me as very strange that you think PhD students have some secret marketable passion that they would pursue but instead they somehow got stuck in graduate school. Speaking for myself: a PhD program was the only feasible part for me to do something fulfilling. My current work as a software developer is tedious and boring by comparison and, frankly, not at all what I wanted to do with my life. - PhD students rarely have any savings and their meager stipends are the only income they have. So “pursue [something] that actually fulfills you” is most likely impossible, since that ‘something’ is probably not a routine office/engineering job.

timwaagh 6y ago

I just want to note that nothing caused suicide other than his decision to kill himself. I don't condone suicide as a method of protest. The damage to the family and the person are too severe. He talked about another world in his letter. That doesn't happen and I hope he meant that metaphorically, because otherwise he really did not know what he was doing. I wish media stopped reporting on suicides except in statistics. Not that I'm saying academic fraud is okay, it's not, it's evil and I would hope they get jail. But the media should not put suicide on a pedestal.

Vhano 6y ago
yea I hope he reads this

mbar84 6y ago

If you see Moloch, don't let it eat you, run!

fireattack 6y ago

Disgusting. Can you (the family) sue UF/the professor over this? I feel like this is the only way now to make them to take the responsibility after almost two years of nothingness.

baybal2 6y ago

IEEE must purge him. Such conduct is infectious. If you don't oppose it, it invites other to both try, and ignore it.

pbzcnepu 6y ago
the IEEE probably won't do anything. We've been trying for 2 years to even get an e-mail reply from them on the issue, let alone say anything useful. See the whole story here: https://pbzcnepu.net/isca/timeline.html https://pbzcnepu.net/isca/timeline.html

coldtea 6y ago

Don't let the Chinese name of the professor fool you. This happens all the time with Americans, Europeans, Chinese, Indian, etc professors and "peer" reviews. It's just that usually there's no conscience to take it bad from the student, on the contrary, it's the thrill of being published that prevails.

dariosalvi78 6y ago

It's a sad story. The action of the student is difficult to understand in my opinion, and may have been the consequence of some other underlying issue. However, even if he suffered from of mental issues, the fact that he didn't get support speaks very badly for the university and the supervisor. The lack of reaction from the university is also hard to justify. Even if one doesn't want to jump to conclusions about the professor, some temporary measure should have been taken, at least to reassure the family that due investigations were being done.

jrochkind1 6y ago

> Finally, the paper with academic misconduct got retracted by ACM as Huixiang’s last wish. The ACM imposed a penalty of a 15-year ban on participation in any ACM Conference or Publication to the offenders. Wow. It does sound like the student discovered suicide as one of the only known effective methods of triggering accountability for research misconduct. That's awfully depressing. I can't now find the article I remember reading, perhaps from HN, of someone who came across then spent a lot of time demonstrating/reporting apparently falsified data to journals, to pretty much no consequence. (except teaching the researcher how to falsify data better to evade the particular tests the exposer used in that case).

karagenit 6y ago
Probably this one: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25922799 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25922799

pbzcnepu 6y ago

ISCA is a particularly horrible "top" conference. We've been trying to reproduce some papers with questionable methodology from ISCA'20 (including using "1 cycle access L1 cache" in simulations, something that's not really possible on modern CPUs). Of 5 paper groups contacted, 4 have not responded despite repeated requests, even when VPs of research at the university contacted. One group eventually replied, said that they were "too busy" to release their simulator changes, and then also saying they weren't going to because they were worried about it being classified as a munitions export.

pbzcnepu 6y ago
also, at ISCA'19, over half the papers were PC papers, meaning they were papers where one of the authors was on the committee that picked which papers get in. It's probably why the highers ups have been so reluctant to change the culture at the conference because it would so negatively effect all the higher-ups' publication counts
andi999 6y ago
What I believe one problem with a lot of conference papers is: - It is very important to go to conferences, to meet your (international) peers, see what is new, what interesting results have been achieved/are work in progress and to forge the next collaboration So far so good. Now, all academic institution I know of, only allow you (means paying) to attend a conference if you present a paper. I guess this might be universal. So since you want/need to go, a lot of people just write up what the current status about a problem is, and this leads to a lot of half-baked presentations. (of course fraud is something different)

charliebrownau 6y ago

If your actually willing to research differences in RACE Check out RACE REALISM Goverment, Authorians, mainstream have lied on purpose about Race Race Differences IQ differences Ethnic Nationalism

Vaslo 6y ago

I’m shocked at how little I can find about this. Maybe I’m naive but I thought there would be more coverage on what’s going on. Sadly it’s just this blogger, the school doesn’t seem to be commenting. What could take so long?

AtlasBarfed 6y ago

Meanwhile, I'd guess this will be branded a "bad apple", but of course the worst apple in the bunch is more of a sign of issues in the whole farm/system. Of course colleges are overloaded with managerial vampires that are supposed to be overseeing this better than the old days where there wasn't as much tuition/loan money flowing through the system. Higher ed administration is broken, financing is broken, research is broken, phd programs are broken, adjunct professorship is broken, there is corruption everywhere. Edit: and I totally forgot... college sports.

sampo 6y ago

In a way, you have respect the integrity of the PhD student. But also, publishing a fraudulent conference paper in this field (neural networks), the real damage to anything is minimal. Nobody expects a random paper in this field to be particularly true or useful. A lot of papers are trivial applications of old ideas, obfuscated behind complicated word soup. Or false good results due to buggy code, which you can never check because they don't publish the source code. Or useless or irreproducible due to many other reasons. The field produces also good results, but you need to follow bigger trends, as individual publications are mostly just noise.

andi999 6y ago

The article is all over the place with a lot of innuendo. I mean I do not want to play detective, I want the case served on a silver platter

pbzcnepu 6y ago
for more details than you possibly want go here: https://pbzcnepu.net/isca/timeline.html https://pbzcnepu.net/isca/timeline.html though it is more about the ACM/IEEE side of things rather than what was going on in Florida. Many researchers seemed to know there was weird stuff going on with peer-review at ISCA, but if you asked the researchers they'd just shrug and more or less say something to the effect of "don't hate the player, hate the game"
- andi999 6y ago
  I read it and the thing doesn't make sense: so the author is complaining that the victim knew the names of the reviewers? Who cares? What does this have to do with anything? Also there seems to be almost no relation to the conference with the suicide except for the pressure his supervisor put on him. The other thing from the web page is murky, they basically found breached confidential info on the victims laptop. Ok, this is more serious, but again, this is seems to me also a total sideshow;what am I missing here.