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This guy's antics were featured on Retraction Watch back in 2022 [0]. All of this apparently happened in plain sight—as illustrated by this (farcical, single-ca

This guy's antics were featured on Retraction Watch back in 2022 [0]. All of this apparently happened in plain sight—as illustrated by this (farcical, single-candidate) faculty vote getting 50% blank ballots–protest votes. Everyone there knew. "How can we design algorithms to detect..." is the wrong question in response to this scandal—it's completely in the wrong category. IMHO! These citation cliques are unsubtle and basically trivial to detect. It's the professional work culture of research universities that's the hard, unsolved problem. [0] https://retractionwatch.com/2022/03/25/how-critics-say-a-computer-scientist-in-spain-artificially-boosted-his-google-scholar-metrics/ https://retractionwatch.com/2022/03/25/how-critics-say-a-com... ("How critics say a computer scientist in Spain artificially boosted his Google Scholar metrics")

MrBuddyCasino 2y ago
[flagged]
- leereeves 2y ago
  The world is far more complex today, and many more professions require an advanced education. The vast expansion of academia has drawbacks, but it was necessary.
  - cmrdporcupine 2y ago
    Indeed, and just in population terms the scale isn't even comparable anymore. Consider the 1920s, 1930s etc when academia produced famous luminaries like e.g. Bertrand Russell or Tolkien or Wittgenstein or Gödel or Whitehead or Heidegger or etc. etc. etc. The population of the world was 1/4 of what it is now -- but even more so the world of academia was closed to probably 99% of that world population ... if you lived outside Europe or North America ... forget it. If you were a woman? Nope. Not from a northern European ethnic background? Not upper class? Also forget it. So in reality the pool of possible candidates was very small who could rise up through this "meritocracy." It was a very defined small fish tank. Easy to look into the tank and see the biggest fishes.
    - MrBuddyCasino 2y ago
      Note how you have no trouble enumerating famous academics from pre-1960s. Shouldn’t we have much more such famous people, if your theory is true that institutional obstacles kept a lot of geniuses out? What are the „luminaries like e.g. Bertrand Russell or Tolkien or Wittgenstein or Gödel or Whitehead or Heidegger“ of today? There should be many more! The progress of science should speed up, the number of groundbreaking papers should grow. Yet the opposite is true [0]. Could it instead be that progress in science is driven by a few geniuses, and 95% of academia nowadays is just a mechanism of turning grants into (often fraudulent) papers [1], suffocating the institution of university as a byproduct? [0] https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-022-05543-x https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-022-05543-x [1] https://youtu.be/LKiBlGDfRU8?si=JQmc17eb0v8oHRAH https://youtu.be/LKiBlGDfRU8?si=JQmc17eb0v8oHRAH
      - cmrdporcupine 2y ago
        You either didn't bother reading what I wrote, or you're just interested in hearing yourself speak or both.
        MrBuddyCasino 2y ago
        It seems to me you didn’t grasp what I wrote, which is unsurprising.
        cmrdporcupine 2y ago
        keep on with the fantasy, UberMensch. It's pretty funny.
  - efitz 2y ago
    Citation needed. Because of the glut of degrees, many jobs now use a college degree as a filtering mechanism. This is not at all indicative that a degree is needed to be successful at the job. Likewise some professions do the same. A doctor does not need a college degree; they need a medical school degree; medical schools force them to get both. Same for law school (side note: it is possible to practice law in a few US states without a law degree but you must effectively apprentice for a period of time). For most of human history the primary way people learned job skills was apprenticeships; I think we would be wise to return to this model.
    - MrBuddyCasino 2y ago
      College decrees are used as a filtering mechanism because that is one of the last remaining methods that have not been made illegal by Civil Rights Law. https://www.astralcodexten.com/p/book-review-the-origins-of-woke https://www.astralcodexten.com/p/book-review-the-origins-of-...
      - whoknowsidont 2y ago
        ...except for all the other methods that still exist and are quite excellent. It's the damn civil rights laws preventing us from using preconceived knowledge! That's definitely what's been holding us back.
- gilmore606 2y ago
  [flagged]
ajkjk 2y ago
Yeah, the problem is not that nobody can see a solution. There are a million solutions. The problem is someone having or finding the power to implement them. I think sometimes that people like algorithmic answers to problems because it is sort of replacement for actual power. If you can't imagine finding the power fix something that's bad yourself, at least you can contrive a logical structure that might fix it automatically. A lot of technologists would, I think, have a much larger impact if they concerned themselves with finding political power instead.
- aleph_minus_one 2y ago
  > A lot of technologists would, I think, have a much larger impact if they concerned themselves with finding political power instead. The problem is rather that many great programmers are "insanely bad politicians". Programming is about working hard against all the resistance to do "the right thing", wheras politics is about "reading the room", not antagonizing important people, making phoney compromises, corrupting yourself, ... So such programmers will hardly ever get the political power to change anything.
  - hotstickyballs 2y ago
    Programming can also be about finding the best way to solve for a problem with the lowest amount of work and resistance. How do you know what “the right thing” is before you have an MVP? Hubris, that’s how.
    - ajkjk 2y ago
      Well, "vision" or "wisdom" is what we call that when we're talking about it favorably.
  - _spduchamp 2y ago
    I'd like to shine a light on the electoral processes, everywhere. If there is a problem with power somewhere, you can often find First-Past-The-Post is being used for voting. The mechanisms applied to creating power are often flawed, and will exaggerate problems. Implementing voting systems like Single-Transferable-Vote, can work for forming governance condo-boards, committees, municipal to national governments. These electoral reforms, can limit consolidation of power, open the field to new challengers, and reduce voter apathy. Seeing things through an electoral reform lens, a lot of solutions seem clear. The big challenge is making progress when power doesn't want reform. (eg. Federal electoral reform in Canada)
throwaway982739 2y ago
Completely agree with your comment, and here you have some more examples in the Spanish university to support your thesis: - Rafael Luque was suspended of employment for 13 years not because of blatant dishonesty but because he was signing with the King Abdulaziz University as first affiliation and that bothered his university [1]. The KAU is known for buying citations this way [2]. - Another example is Francisco Herrera Triguero [3]. He's been signing with KAU as second affiliation for years and nothing happened to him even when the story about the other guy broke out. So yeah, maybe we don't need more algorithms but more public oversight over this stuff. [1] (Spanish): https://elpais.com/ciencia/2023-03-31/suspendido-de-empleo-y-sueldo-por-13-anos-uno-de-los-cientificos-mas-citados-del-mundo-el-espanol-rafael-luque.html https://elpais.com/ciencia/2023-03-31/suspendido-de-empleo-y... [2] https://liorpachter.wordpress.com/2014/10/31/to-some-a-citation-is-worth-3-per-year/ https://liorpachter.wordpress.com/2014/10/31/to-some-a-citat... [3] (Spanish): https://www.elsaltodiario.com/universidad/papers-y-mas-papers-las-sombras-en-la-industria-de-las-publicaciones-cientificas https://www.elsaltodiario.com/universidad/papers-y-mas-paper...
1oooqooq 2y ago
when people talk about "algorithms" today is like taking about specialist in the 70s: they know they are doing something illegal/immoral but they won't stop and nobody can stop them. they just need a way to spin public perception. in this case they wanted to keep on but putting out press release on how "they are leading the detection of the bad thing everyone knows they are doing" just like bakman-fried mom is stanford board of ethics. lol.

MrBuddyCasino 2y ago

[flagged]

leereeves 2y ago
The world is far more complex today, and many more professions require an advanced education. The vast expansion of academia has drawbacks, but it was necessary.
- cmrdporcupine 2y ago
  Indeed, and just in population terms the scale isn't even comparable anymore. Consider the 1920s, 1930s etc when academia produced famous luminaries like e.g. Bertrand Russell or Tolkien or Wittgenstein or Gödel or Whitehead or Heidegger or etc. etc. etc. The population of the world was 1/4 of what it is now -- but even more so the world of academia was closed to probably 99% of that world population ... if you lived outside Europe or North America ... forget it. If you were a woman? Nope. Not from a northern European ethnic background? Not upper class? Also forget it. So in reality the pool of possible candidates was very small who could rise up through this "meritocracy." It was a very defined small fish tank. Easy to look into the tank and see the biggest fishes.
  - MrBuddyCasino 2y ago
    Note how you have no trouble enumerating famous academics from pre-1960s. Shouldn’t we have much more such famous people, if your theory is true that institutional obstacles kept a lot of geniuses out? What are the „luminaries like e.g. Bertrand Russell or Tolkien or Wittgenstein or Gödel or Whitehead or Heidegger“ of today? There should be many more! The progress of science should speed up, the number of groundbreaking papers should grow. Yet the opposite is true [0]. Could it instead be that progress in science is driven by a few geniuses, and 95% of academia nowadays is just a mechanism of turning grants into (often fraudulent) papers [1], suffocating the institution of university as a byproduct? [0] https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-022-05543-x https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-022-05543-x [1] https://youtu.be/LKiBlGDfRU8?si=JQmc17eb0v8oHRAH https://youtu.be/LKiBlGDfRU8?si=JQmc17eb0v8oHRAH
    - cmrdporcupine 2y ago
      You either didn't bother reading what I wrote, or you're just interested in hearing yourself speak or both.
      - MrBuddyCasino 2y ago
        It seems to me you didn’t grasp what I wrote, which is unsurprising.
        cmrdporcupine 2y ago
        keep on with the fantasy, UberMensch. It's pretty funny.
- efitz 2y ago
  Citation needed. Because of the glut of degrees, many jobs now use a college degree as a filtering mechanism. This is not at all indicative that a degree is needed to be successful at the job. Likewise some professions do the same. A doctor does not need a college degree; they need a medical school degree; medical schools force them to get both. Same for law school (side note: it is possible to practice law in a few US states without a law degree but you must effectively apprentice for a period of time). For most of human history the primary way people learned job skills was apprenticeships; I think we would be wise to return to this model.
  - MrBuddyCasino 2y ago
    College decrees are used as a filtering mechanism because that is one of the last remaining methods that have not been made illegal by Civil Rights Law. https://www.astralcodexten.com/p/book-review-the-origins-of-woke https://www.astralcodexten.com/p/book-review-the-origins-of-...
    - whoknowsidont 2y ago
      ...except for all the other methods that still exist and are quite excellent. It's the damn civil rights laws preventing us from using preconceived knowledge! That's definitely what's been holding us back.
gilmore606 2y ago
[flagged]

ajkjk 2y ago

Yeah, the problem is not that nobody can see a solution. There are a million solutions. The problem is someone having or finding the power to implement them. I think sometimes that people like algorithmic answers to problems because it is sort of replacement for actual power. If you can't imagine finding the power fix something that's bad yourself, at least you can contrive a logical structure that might fix it automatically. A lot of technologists would, I think, have a much larger impact if they concerned themselves with finding political power instead.

aleph_minus_one 2y ago
> A lot of technologists would, I think, have a much larger impact if they concerned themselves with finding political power instead. The problem is rather that many great programmers are "insanely bad politicians". Programming is about working hard against all the resistance to do "the right thing", wheras politics is about "reading the room", not antagonizing important people, making phoney compromises, corrupting yourself, ... So such programmers will hardly ever get the political power to change anything.
- hotstickyballs 2y ago
  Programming can also be about finding the best way to solve for a problem with the lowest amount of work and resistance. How do you know what “the right thing” is before you have an MVP? Hubris, that’s how.
  - ajkjk 2y ago
    Well, "vision" or "wisdom" is what we call that when we're talking about it favorably.
- _spduchamp 2y ago
  I'd like to shine a light on the electoral processes, everywhere. If there is a problem with power somewhere, you can often find First-Past-The-Post is being used for voting. The mechanisms applied to creating power are often flawed, and will exaggerate problems. Implementing voting systems like Single-Transferable-Vote, can work for forming governance condo-boards, committees, municipal to national governments. These electoral reforms, can limit consolidation of power, open the field to new challengers, and reduce voter apathy. Seeing things through an electoral reform lens, a lot of solutions seem clear. The big challenge is making progress when power doesn't want reform. (eg. Federal electoral reform in Canada)

throwaway982739 2y ago

Completely agree with your comment, and here you have some more examples in the Spanish university to support your thesis: - Rafael Luque was suspended of employment for 13 years not because of blatant dishonesty but because he was signing with the King Abdulaziz University as first affiliation and that bothered his university [1]. The KAU is known for buying citations this way [2]. - Another example is Francisco Herrera Triguero [3]. He's been signing with KAU as second affiliation for years and nothing happened to him even when the story about the other guy broke out. So yeah, maybe we don't need more algorithms but more public oversight over this stuff. [1] (Spanish): https://elpais.com/ciencia/2023-03-31/suspendido-de-empleo-y-sueldo-por-13-anos-uno-de-los-cientificos-mas-citados-del-mundo-el-espanol-rafael-luque.html https://elpais.com/ciencia/2023-03-31/suspendido-de-empleo-y... [2] https://liorpachter.wordpress.com/2014/10/31/to-some-a-citation-is-worth-3-per-year/ https://liorpachter.wordpress.com/2014/10/31/to-some-a-citat... [3] (Spanish): https://www.elsaltodiario.com/universidad/papers-y-mas-papers-las-sombras-en-la-industria-de-las-publicaciones-cientificas https://www.elsaltodiario.com/universidad/papers-y-mas-paper...

1oooqooq 2y ago

when people talk about "algorithms" today is like taking about specialist in the 70s: they know they are doing something illegal/immoral but they won't stop and nobody can stop them. they just need a way to spin public perception. in this case they wanted to keep on but putting out press release on how "they are leading the detection of the bad thing everyone knows they are doing" just like bakman-fried mom is stanford board of ethics. lol.