Sayre's Law: Academic Politics Are So Vicious Because the Stakes Are So Small
Maybe universities, tenure committees, and funding sources should stop measuring academics by vanity metrics such as H-Index and publication counts. And don't get me started on the tendency toward "minimum publishable units."
That said, abusing power as an editor deserves a special place in hell...
How should they be judged then? Any metric can be gamed. And if it will be kind of qualitative assessment then politics will be 10000x more important. The system is clearly broken but I’m not sure if alternative is not even worse.
The funny thing is, if the guy wasn't quite so greedy with this racket, probably no one would notice. Surely if the number of your publications and citations shoots up exponentially and surpasses those of much more well-known scientists, folks are bound to ask questions. I wonder if this got out of control or whether he really did think it's a good idea to collude his way to such prominence.
This is typical behavior from psychopaths when they get away with the crime for so long, they believe they are untouchable and start becoming sloppy and get caught.
Your comment is funny because it’s completely opposite - economics has generally great track record and fraudulent results typically do not survive for long. Citation cartels and paper mills exist in all disciplines.
I've literally got the NWS hourly forecast and radar open in the next tab over to watch when and where the rain will be clear as I plan my route home...
Does it, really? There haven't been any problematic issues since economists and their lore became a dominant influence over politics that could be attributed to this influence?
Elsevier has a history of 'promoting' successful millers to more or other journals, so they can 'drive growth', as it's sometimes put in IT, there as well.
Information for non-commercial purposes should be free for general social enrichment. Information for commercial purposes should have some path towards monetization but the one we've got right now is clearly a terrible fit.
For the future, though, usually if you just email one of the paper author's with even a hint of interest you'll get the full paper and often a neat discussion about how your specific interest relates to the paper. I think people assume researchers get hounded by fans like celebrities but they're usually folks that love to talk about their topics of interest.
I'm torn about your comment. On the one hand, the context is interesting. On the other hand, it's almost unrelated to the substance of this post of his. I suppose there's a general anti-mainstream-science bias propagating through national-conservative/far-right/alt-right circles, specifically about how the world of academia functions. However, the facts of this post about how a corner of academia functions ought to stand up or fall down independently of all that. 95-100% of this is facts (falsifiable, and maybe wrong, but stated as such), and a tiny percentage is opinion.
Oh yeah, it's a fine post! Interesting read. But I don't think it's that silly to say that success for a person who espouses these views is success for the views themselves, and that a tone-shift might arise if gradually, more and more posts about inoffensive topics written by "Mr. Don't Worry About It ;)" make their way onto the front page.
What troubling language and slurs are you referring to exactly?
I didn't see anything "troubling" (let alone "extremely troubling") or anything that would indicate that anyone other than the implicated authors have an integrity issue.
I didn't immediately see a red flag that would make me discount all of their work. It's clear what the author's general opinions are. They're entitled to them of course.
I don't any signs that it's a bot, or that the comment was LLM generated. It's pretty safe to assume they made an alt to make that comment, as they didn't want to take a negative opinion towards a conservative author on their main. i.e. trying to avoid controversy.
This website is slightly to the right of reddit these days; what exactly would expressing a negative opinion about a conservative blogger do to their main account?
My suspicion was some affiliation with a current or future implicated individual.
I figured it was someone who just cared enough to make an account.
Yeah, this article seems fine, but looking at some of chris brunet's other articles has me a bit O.O
First time I've run into this with a HN share in a good long while. Not that the article shouldn't have been shared, ofc, but.. it certainly puts me on guard.
I am not arguing against the facts expressed in the piece. This is not an area in which I have any expertise.
However, I am a bit uncomfortable with the pithy language used. It's possible (likely, even), that the fired editors deserve the pithiness, but it's still a bit weird to read that kind of prose, in a scientific context.
I'm with you on this. There's a difference between exposing wrongdoing and being antagonistic.
Doing them both together increases the amplitude of the signal at the cost of reducing the integrity of the signal.
If you wonder why the world is informationally too loud and too noisy these days, it's because everyone who does this is turning up the volume to be louder than others who are also, in turn, turning up the volume for the same reasons.
This is an investigative substack, not a piece of academic literature. God forbid the author home some (admittedly, strong) opinions and speaks negatively about fraudsters.
> This is an investigative substack, not a piece of academic literature.
Professional news is usually written without expressing judgement and minimizing opinion.
> fraudsters
It's an allegation.
The author only hurts themself: My impression is that they don't believet the fundamentals of truth and humanity: they are certainly partially wrong, could be very wrong, will never know the complete truth, and their judgment of others is too flawed to rely on. Also it seems they are acting more on their emotions and less on fact and reason.
I certainly apologize for hurting feelings. That was not my intent.
I've just learned (the hard way, of course, because how else do we learn?), that using this kind of terminology, even though we may be feeling quite pithy, gives ammo to those that wish to discount us.
This goes double, in my experience, for any context that prizes objectivity and articulate discussion.
There are few things I’m afraid of more than a man that thinks himself righteous, because there is very little that such a man would be unwilling to do.
So it makes sense to be cautious when I find myself feeling like one, or being pulled along by the emotions of another who does.
You're not wrong about the danger posed, but take a step back and consider who this attitude helps. The greatest beneficiaries of a culture in which good faith and civility are unconditionally granted for fear of misguided righteous anger is a paradise for fraudsters and bad faith actors. I think we're seeing that world now.
It helps the good people, who do good and influence their society to do the same, and live in a good society. The best societies give the accused the full protection of the law, and give them fair trials. The problematic ones have mob rule.
Much of what you write assumes the OP author and you know what evil is, with certainty. That is the critical and most dangerous flaw.
Spot on. Leaders in my company love to tout the line "assume good faith". If you say anything that indicates someone else is not operating in good faith, you are deemed the bad actor. This allows bad actors to run absolutely rampant.
This is a good point. I tend to be careful not to fall into this trap myself, but it doesn't really do any good to call it out in public. it ends up empowering the bad actors. Thank you for this awareness.
There's a depressingly common tactic of using the Holocaust to defend current genocide and atrocities, one that has been very effective until recently. It's exactly the kind of strategy that always assuming good faith allows for, and what I'm warning against. Unfortunately, the backlash against allowing bad actors to use victims as a shield is emboldening bigots. Another knock-on danger of the culture of unlimited civility is that it will eventually end and the overcorrection will see a lot undeserving people hurt.
Aw, that's too bad. My comment as originally drafted floated that you might be participating in that tactic, but I changed it because it could've been interpreted as accusatory. I offered you an assumption of good faith, and got burned for it again. Eventually this will train really bad behavior. I promise to try my best to keep it focused on the knowing defenders of genocide and fight the tide of antisemitism you're causing.
I've decided that it's a weird reversed counterpart to "impostor syndrome" (when you secretly think you're not that good while trying your best to maintain a professional standard.)
I think there's this sort of "moral impostor syndrome" where people who carefully work to present an image of themselves as good people are totally willing to participate in fraud or theft at any level - the only consideration is whether they will be caught, because they value the appearance of being good people (and of course, that appearance gives them more opportunities to commit fraud and theft safely.) If they want to do something and there's no way they'll be caught, they'll do it 100% of the time.
This is the only way I can understand people who refer to fraud as a "mistake." They see other people caught in a fraud that they can imagine that they themselves might have done, because they also wouldn't have thought that they would have ever been caught. The "mistake" was evaluating the chances of the success of a fraud badly.
The fact that they relate to these people also makes them want to give them a second chance, just as they would want to be able to recover their careers if any of their past (or future) frauds had become "mistakes."
"There but for the grace of God go I."
It's terrible. It incentivizes evil. The desperation to give people a second chance to expiate one's own secret sins by proxy creates a system where people only initially draw attention through frauds, then get caught, then get second chances. Meanwhile, people who didn't participate in fraud never get noticed. It's a perverse incentive that filters for trash. Do anything to get your name out there, then the fact that your name is out there gets you into the conversation.
Meanwhile, somebody is scolding you for being upset about it: "You're just perfect I guess. Never made a mistake." Fraud is not a mistake. You do it on purpose.
Maybe I'm just naive or dense, but I'm not seeing language I'd be concerned about in the article? Help me get calibrated, is there something in particular that bothers you? or just a general vibe?
Literally zero need for that; none. And it's that kind of language that calls into question the authors motives. I went from "Excellent reporting here" to "This guy is emotional and not a reliable source of information" in 6 words.
Maybe universities, tenure committees, and funding sources should stop measuring academics by vanity metrics such as H-Index and publication counts. And don't get me started on the tendency toward "minimum publishable units."
That said, abusing power as an editor deserves a special place in hell...
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