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What personal benefit does this gain someone to publish it so quickly? Is it just social media attention?
by dmix 3y ago
What personal benefit does this gain someone to publish it so quickly? Is it just social media attention?
- jacquesm 3y agoThere are no prizes for being second in science.
- smallnix 3y agoExcept, most likely, in exactly this story with the second paper from the original Korean authors (if things can be proven to be true).
- podiki 3y agoThere's a long standing joke (but also true) that many things are named after the last person to find them. See, for instance, Stigler's Law https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stigler%27s_law_of_eponymy https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stigler%27s_law_of_eponymy (for the concept an example itself)
- rvba 3y agoThe list is interesting too: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_examples_of_Stigler%27s_law https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_examples_of_Stigler%27...
- xpe 3y ago>> What personal benefit does this gain someone to publish it so quickly? Is it just social media attention? > There are no prizes for being second in science. The reply (second quote above) fits in context, but there is more to it. 1. Publishing early at the expense of quality has a way of catching up to one's reputation. (Hopefully.) 2. History has many examples of scientists who were "too early" or not "in the right place at the right time" to get recognition. 3. A result may get little attention in one field but a lot in another. One example that comes to mind are string-matching algorithms. Sometimes they seem a dime-a-dozen in CS. But the "right" ones have transformed DNA sequencing.
- shortrounddev2 3y agoThere is intense pressure to publish as many papers as possible at Chinese universities. This has led to a big problem of faked or just bad research papers coming out of China, so people are generally skeptical of them
- Al-Khwarizmi 3y agoThis is a quite biased view. As a non-Chinese scientist, I can attest that there is intense pressure to publish as many papers as possible pretty much everywhere, and this leads to a problem of bad research across the world. China may be among the worst offenders in this respect, but the particular thing the OP is asking about doesn't strike me as a Chinese-specific thing at all. I see non-Chinese scientists rushing half-baked results to arXiv all the time.
- light_hue_1 3y agoIt's not biased, it's a fact. I see it all the time as PC/AC/reviwer/etc. There is deluge of terrible papers from China that are just a mess, below any imaginable standard. Ones that labs in the EU/US/Russia/Japan/etc. don't put out. Yes, everyone has to publish, and there are bad papers out there, but the volume and low quality from China is unmatched.
- davrosthedalek 3y agoCitations. The early papers will be cited more often. And citations are kind of a currency in science.
- zhynn 3y agoSome background on the drama (and the rush to publish): https://www.reddit.com/r/redscarepod/comments/15egs7i/avg_russian_twitter_anon_replicates_lk99_room/ https://www.reddit.com/r/redscarepod/comments/15egs7i/avg_ru... and https://twitter.com/8teAPi/status/1685294623449874432 https://twitter.com/8teAPi/status/1685294623449874432 The papers were totally rushed.
- fouc 3y ago8teAPi admitted they were essentially writing fiction generated from some of the known facts
- salty_biscuits 3y agoIt's just a preprint. I appreciate the fast update of progress on a new development. Just don't give it the same weight as a peer reviewed piece.
- Bombinator 3y agoFrom what I understand it was discovered in 1999, hence LK99. Doesn't seem very quick to me in that case.