4 ms·

One of the most fun (?) parts of academia is the unique blend of frustration and satisfaction that results when a shoddy paper somehow clears peer review only t

by yalue 4y ago

One of the most fun (?) parts of academia is the unique blend of frustration and satisfaction that results when a shoddy paper somehow clears peer review only to get eviscerated when it lands on the desk of an actual expert. "the detailed exploration of irrelevancies" LOL, if that isn't a "time-tested" method for making a paper sound academic, I don't know what is.

hannob 4y ago
It hasn't cleared peer review, it's a preprint (which is pretty common in cryptography, peer review usually happens when results are already old news).
cscurmudgeon 4y ago
> the detailed exploration of irrelevancies Also signals a bad reviewer who wanted their work cited. Not in this case though.
ramraj07 4y ago
This is not always the case. SA and Sabine, are the hyper rare outliers in this regard. Fields like biology have no such folks for variety of reasons (I’m counting out some celebrities involved in pointing out actual misconduct instead of sloppy work).
- lofatdairy 4y ago
  Who even are the big science communicators in for current research in bio? Nobody comes to mind, not even a non-professor.
  - dekhn 4y ago
    Eric Topol
    - faitswulff 4y ago
      Akiko Iwasaki aka @virusesimmunity on Twitter is also a good follow for, well, viruses and immunity. Ed Yong for excellent long form journalism.
- biomcgary 4y ago
  Biology has so many exceptions and idiosyncrasies compared to physics that being broadly competent is difficult. Physics found the "zoo" of diverse particles to be inelegant (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Particle_zoo https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Particle_zoo). In biology, actual zoos hold a small fraction of diversity at the organismal level. The diversity at the molecular level is insanely high and the vast majority of "rules" have exceptions. Even the Central Dogma of Molecular Biology (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Central_dogma_of_molecular_biology https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Central_dogma_of_molecular_bio...) is a bit messy, unless stated fairly carefully (e.g., https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/24965874/ https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/24965874/).

by yalue 4y ago

hannob 4y ago

It hasn't cleared peer review, it's a preprint (which is pretty common in cryptography, peer review usually happens when results are already old news).

cscurmudgeon 4y ago

> the detailed exploration of irrelevancies Also signals a bad reviewer who wanted their work cited. Not in this case though.

ramraj07 4y ago

This is not always the case. SA and Sabine, are the hyper rare outliers in this regard. Fields like biology have no such folks for variety of reasons (I’m counting out some celebrities involved in pointing out actual misconduct instead of sloppy work).

lofatdairy 4y ago
Who even are the big science communicators in for current research in bio? Nobody comes to mind, not even a non-professor.
- dekhn 4y ago
  Eric Topol
  - faitswulff 4y ago
    Akiko Iwasaki aka @virusesimmunity on Twitter is also a good follow for, well, viruses and immunity. Ed Yong for excellent long form journalism.
biomcgary 4y ago
Biology has so many exceptions and idiosyncrasies compared to physics that being broadly competent is difficult. Physics found the "zoo" of diverse particles to be inelegant (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Particle_zoo https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Particle_zoo). In biology, actual zoos hold a small fraction of diversity at the organismal level. The diversity at the molecular level is insanely high and the vast majority of "rules" have exceptions. Even the Central Dogma of Molecular Biology (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Central_dogma_of_molecular_biology https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Central_dogma_of_molecular_bio...) is a bit messy, unless stated fairly carefully (e.g., https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/24965874/ https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/24965874/).