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> everyone knows it and we complain about it over some beers all the time. Then why not speak out publicly against it? Obviously because you know that there a

> everyone knows it and we complain about it over some beers all the time. Then why not speak out publicly against it? Obviously because you know that there are still a significant number of individuals that want the system to work this way. Your fear of those individuals is why you don't speak out against it. So who are they? Who are you scared of?

bonoboTP 5y ago
Well, I'm not talking about outright fraud but the more subtler forms mentioned in the article. I think it's probably harder for outsiders to understand the nuance. It's not "who are they", its everyone. The incentives are set up wrong. Blaming individuals is insufficient. It's like dreaming if only politicians stopped lying. Academia is a hierarchy and a power system. People have interests, reputation, prestige and it often directly translates to money. Again, I'm not talking about blatant outright lies or fudging numbers. Thing is, after some rejections or sabotaging yourself a few times by being too critical with your own research and not having publications you will imitate what you see around you or you drop out due to a lack of publications. It's rewarded to be less critical with yourself. And ultimately you want to graduate after all that sunk cost. Even switching to industry isn't so easy without publications in prestigious venues to show for those years.
- StandardFuture 5y ago
  > I think it's probably harder for outsiders to understand the nuance. No, it's simple. It's called game theory. So, who benefits from the publish or perish system that drives this profoundly fraudulent behavior and outcomes in science? You are avoiding the "who" question. Why not maybe, perhaps, identify the who and get them removed from their position? It may or may not even be a fellow scientist. > lack of publications uh huh, science is not and never was a stationary process. It's absolutely disgusting that modern academia is filled with so many cowards and buffoons that the state of modern science has reached such a low. > Even switching to industry isn't so easy without publications Well, this is stupid. The only thing useful to corporations is your training and not your novelty. Any novelty is a cherry on top, cream-of-the-crop pick and has nothing to do with being "hirable". But, that is also just an unchangeable aspect of our competitive reality and is thus entirely irrelevant to this discussion.
  - bonoboTP 5y ago
    I disagree that this is for the lizardmen, the leftists, the woke or whoever. No, it's us all. We need publications because otherwise research is hard to evaluate for outsiders. If it's evaluated by peers, it's politics again. There's a generic problem in academia and there is a specific one in the explosively growing and lucrative ones like AI. We can't think clearly if we blur all sorts of complaints against academia into a generic complaint against elites or something. Publish or perish also comes from the desire to measure, quantify things objectively etc. It's a generic trend in the management community. It's easier to hide behind mechanistic procedures, we live the age of the bureaucrat and not of the strong leader, for various historic reasons. Of the doctrine of equality, not of Great Men theories. But it all leads too far. I recommend the SSC articles on Moloch for thinking deeper about this. Why do parents chase extracurriculars and test drilling for their kid? Because it's competitive. With lower stakes, backwater academia can have lower pressure amd perhaps more attention and care. We cannot abstract away the human. This is not a mere technical problem of a problem of morals in a few individuals. Read some novels, drama etc. We in the technical fields would benefit a lot from learning more from the humanities, literature, even classics from Antiquity. Man has not changed, our nature is still rich and complex and the same lesson that power corrupts. Re training: outside the US, PhD programs have no explicit training. Training stops at the master level. From day one you just work on methods in the hope to publish the results. Advisors usually don't have a lot of time for each individual PhD student. Maybe let's call it experience, not training.

bonoboTP 5y ago

Well, I'm not talking about outright fraud but the more subtler forms mentioned in the article. I think it's probably harder for outsiders to understand the nuance. It's not "who are they", its everyone. The incentives are set up wrong. Blaming individuals is insufficient. It's like dreaming if only politicians stopped lying. Academia is a hierarchy and a power system. People have interests, reputation, prestige and it often directly translates to money. Again, I'm not talking about blatant outright lies or fudging numbers. Thing is, after some rejections or sabotaging yourself a few times by being too critical with your own research and not having publications you will imitate what you see around you or you drop out due to a lack of publications. It's rewarded to be less critical with yourself. And ultimately you want to graduate after all that sunk cost. Even switching to industry isn't so easy without publications in prestigious venues to show for those years.

StandardFuture 5y ago
> I think it's probably harder for outsiders to understand the nuance. No, it's simple. It's called game theory. So, who benefits from the publish or perish system that drives this profoundly fraudulent behavior and outcomes in science? You are avoiding the "who" question. Why not maybe, perhaps, identify the who and get them removed from their position? It may or may not even be a fellow scientist. > lack of publications uh huh, science is not and never was a stationary process. It's absolutely disgusting that modern academia is filled with so many cowards and buffoons that the state of modern science has reached such a low. > Even switching to industry isn't so easy without publications Well, this is stupid. The only thing useful to corporations is your training and not your novelty. Any novelty is a cherry on top, cream-of-the-crop pick and has nothing to do with being "hirable". But, that is also just an unchangeable aspect of our competitive reality and is thus entirely irrelevant to this discussion.
- bonoboTP 5y ago
  I disagree that this is for the lizardmen, the leftists, the woke or whoever. No, it's us all. We need publications because otherwise research is hard to evaluate for outsiders. If it's evaluated by peers, it's politics again. There's a generic problem in academia and there is a specific one in the explosively growing and lucrative ones like AI. We can't think clearly if we blur all sorts of complaints against academia into a generic complaint against elites or something. Publish or perish also comes from the desire to measure, quantify things objectively etc. It's a generic trend in the management community. It's easier to hide behind mechanistic procedures, we live the age of the bureaucrat and not of the strong leader, for various historic reasons. Of the doctrine of equality, not of Great Men theories. But it all leads too far. I recommend the SSC articles on Moloch for thinking deeper about this. Why do parents chase extracurriculars and test drilling for their kid? Because it's competitive. With lower stakes, backwater academia can have lower pressure amd perhaps more attention and care. We cannot abstract away the human. This is not a mere technical problem of a problem of morals in a few individuals. Read some novels, drama etc. We in the technical fields would benefit a lot from learning more from the humanities, literature, even classics from Antiquity. Man has not changed, our nature is still rich and complex and the same lesson that power corrupts. Re training: outside the US, PhD programs have no explicit training. Training stops at the master level. From day one you just work on methods in the hope to publish the results. Advisors usually don't have a lot of time for each individual PhD student. Maybe let's call it experience, not training.