5 ms·
What drove Cannarella and Spechler, two mechanical engineering Ph.D. students, to prerelease a paper about network theory and epidemiology, without coauthoring/
by btown 13y ago
What drove Cannarella and Spechler, two mechanical engineering Ph.D. students, to prerelease a paper about network theory and epidemiology, without coauthoring/consulting with epidemiologists or people experienced in viral communications theories, is beyond me. But the title "Debunking Princeton" seems to suggest this should be considered representative of all of the quality of research Princeton outputs, which is certainly not the case. Many posts have been made questioning the strength of the paper in question, and the fact that one with such a link-bait title is rising on HN is unfortunate in my view.
Once again, a reminder to everyone that there are no peer review requirements for papers posted to arXiv. There is no evidence that the original paper was ever accepted by any journal or conference, and not surprisingly given the speculative nature of the study, the advisor of the two Ph.D.-candidate coauthors declined to place his name on the paper. So as an institution, Princeton is no more responsible for this paper than Obama is responsible for that drink machine being broken down the hallway (thanks Obama), even though it happens to be a drink machine affiliated with his country. In that regard, with all due respect towards Mr. Develin, I'm going to have to "debunk" "Debunking Princeton."
[Full disclosure: I am a Princeton alumnus.]
- yetanotherphd 13y agoI don't think that an expert is viral communications theory would have done any better. Almost everything involving networks is a fad. Networks are an interesting mathematical structure, but on their own, they rarely enable one to build a compelling statistical model. E.g. people join Facebook for very complex social reasons, that go beyond local interactions between individuals. The image of Facebook has changed significantly since it started, and new products have entered the market, like snapchat and kik.
- lbrandy 13y agoIs this a clever meta-troll? Or are you actually taking the title seriously? It should be obvious that the title itself is part of the self-parody. The whole thing is a giant exercise in reductio ad absurdum. In fact, the 'joke' only works based on Princeton's reputation as an excellent university, if that makes you feel any better. [Full disclosure: I am a facebook employee]
- 001sky 13y agoTL;DR two doses of stupid aren't the way forward.
- zhaodaxiong 13y ago2 princeton students write a paper on Facebook, declining 1 facebook employee write a post on Princeton, declining Perfect match... Dude, it's not about the scientific contribution of the paper... Do I need to emphasize this obvious thing to a Princeton alumni?... If I do, I do worry that Facebook post is speaking the truth...
- samatman 13y agoIt would seem the Harvard Face Book team is having a bit of fun with you, chum.
- RaSoJo 13y agotrue...Mike Devlin (the author of the post) is Harvard alum as well!
- judk 13y agoIt is comforting to see that Princeton's reputation as the most uptight Ivy was not mere prejudiced bigotry, but it borne out. ;-)