[HN Gopher] I critiqued my past papers on social media
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I critiqued my past papers on social media
Author : r0n0j0y
Score : 51 points
Date : 2021-07-13 07:27 UTC (1 days ago)
(HTM) web link (www.nature.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.nature.com)
| anon_tor_12345 wrote:
| > Their discussions are largely of limitations, catalogues of
| failure. Their conclusions can be brutal.
|
| pov: me writing my first published paper and being honest about
| the shortcomings _and then_ having my advisor tell me that i
| should sell my results more enthusiastically.
| Sanguinaire wrote:
| I was described as "too scholarly" by my PhD advisor when
| writing up my first couple of papers. I'm in industry now.
|
| People doing a PhD/post-doc need to understand that there is no
| escape from "sales". Lots of academically leaning people,
| including myself, set out with a goal of avoiding becoming a
| seller and wanting to work in a space where data does the
| persuading rather than smooth talk. Unfortunately no such place
| exists. Even in the "purest" science-focused workplaces, you
| still need to sell your ideas to managers or funding agencies.
| To transcend "regular researcher" and become widely respected
| in your field, having thousands of Twitter followers will be
| more helpful than a paper in Nature.
| marcosdumay wrote:
| It's not about selling vs. not selling.
|
| The way to sell a scientific paper should be with precision
| and honesty about what conclusions you get. Academics should
| have the expertise to reject dishonest descriptions of the
| paper's object. That not happening on practice shows a
| failure on the education institutions.
| Sanguinaire wrote:
| "Should be" is the operative part of your statement - I
| totally agree there, and that the salesmanship requirement
| indicates a systemic failure. I'd say it goes much further
| than just the educational institution being at fault - they
| are responsible for playing the game, but funding sources
| do nothing to drive them more towards academic integrity.
| goldenkey wrote:
| This even extends to the hardest problems in mathematics and
| science. Solve the Riemann Hypothesis for real? Good luck
| getting the community to actually take a look at your paper
| and award you for it. Us problem solvers like these "pure"
| fields because we idealize a world where the work
| indisputably speaks for itself. Unfortunately without the
| sales and connection bullshido, no one will ever look at your
| profound work to see that it is world changing. Yeah, fuck
| everything about this. That's why Coq and Lean and all the
| other formal systems are ideal. I solve a problem, the system
| validates it. Now listen Clay, give me the motherfucking
| million!
| Penyngton wrote:
| That's not my experience at all. To be fair, I've never
| solved the Riemann Hypothesis, but in my experience it is
| possible to find professional academic mathematicians who
| were willing to meet me (as an outsider) to discuss their
| work and my ideas in a serious way.
|
| Obviously, you have to bear in mind that high-profile
| mathematicians do get contacted by cranks and they have to
| weigh up what's worth spending their time on, but I have no
| doubt that if I did chance upon a genuine proof of the
| Riemann Hypothesis, I'd be able to find a decently
| respected mathematician to look at it and help me to
| publish it in a form acceptable to the academic community.
|
| On the other hand, I agree with your comment about formal
| proof systems, and I'd love to use them in my (pure
| mathematical) research, but I've found the usability isn't
| there for me yet.
| derbOac wrote:
| I have mixed experience publishing in math and
| statistics. I've had some of the best and worst
| experiences there compared to more applied fields.
| There's just been much more variability.
|
| The comments and feedback, handled by the right editor,
| have been some of the most thoughtful, logical, and
| rigorous I've had of all my papers. The sort that, even
| when I disagree, think are very good questions to ask of
| the submission. Those that catch errors, and those that
| improve the paper in new, thoughtful directions.
|
| At the same time, my worst peer review experiences have
| also been in more "pure" math and statistics. When
| they're bad, they're bad. The worst corruption and
| obvious jealousy have been in publishing in these areas,
| so convoluted that it would almost take an entire blog
| post series to explain. Reviewers can get really caught
| up on missing the forest for the trees and not understand
| the applied utility of something, even if it's
| technically correct, if it's not part of standard
| procedure. Othertimes it's been obvious (in the sense
| that if I published the entire review publicly I'm
| confident public opinion would come to that conclusion)
| reviewers have been jealous, and have tanked submissions
| in journals by piling up small criticisms that have
| nothing to do with the primary theses being argued.
| Usually in these cases, the failure ultimately comes down
| to an editor not wanting to ruffle the feathers of
| someone prominent.
|
| These things all happen in applied fields too, but it
| seems like there, there's a softening around the edges of
| sorts, so the problematic behaviors aren't as extreme or
| obvious, and people sort of expect that fuzziness, so
| everything is taken with a grain of salt. I think the
| rigorousness of things like pure math can cut both ways,
| in that when it's correct, and everyone is behaving
| rationally, and the process is working with integrity, it
| produces very rigorous, solid work at the end. However,
| when it's incorrectly applied, and people are behaving
| irrationally (these are humans, it is inevitable), and
| the process is tainted, it can stifle novel work, or lead
| to really misleading conclusions.
|
| I suspect that, if it's not already happening, I think
| one of the next phases in documentation of the
| reproducibility crisis and academic problems is in the
| areas of math, stats, and computer science. These fields
| have a veneer of rigor which can be true, but can also
| lead to false assumptions about the process that produces
| results. I think you're already seeing this a bit on HN
| with posts about reproducibility of AI findings, and with
| things like Taleb's criticism of academic models (FWIW
| Taleb has his own problems, but I think as a public
| figure he's correct to point out these things), but
| there's a lot more going on behind the curtain.
| Penyngton wrote:
| Yes, certainly things like corruption, jealousy and ego
| games do exist in pure maths, but I just wanted to
| contest the other comment's assertion that pure
| mathematics is completely closed to outsiders, let alone
| ones who could resolve the Riemann Hypothesis.
|
| Furthermore, I could believe that the above issues and,
| as you also mention, reproducibility, are worse in pure
| mathematics or theoretical CS than in other fields
| because so little is at stake. Which is not to say I
| think most maths papers are false, but just that they're
| not all _entirely_ true either. Their audience is so
| small and the readers/reviewers "know what they mean"
| anyway, most of the time. And others are just false and
| no-one noticed because they couldn't be bothered to check
| the details, because the result was inconsequential to
| their own work and the author was a nice enough chap...
| hyperpallium2 wrote:
| Also no escape from market analysis.
|
| Sales and marketing have more integrity in the real world
| when it comes down to meeting needs, not what a group
| decides.
| nixpulvis wrote:
| Why is my impression of academics drifting from an image of
| intellectual curiosity, deep thinking, and excellent
| communication; to a scene from a bad movie where I'm supposed
| to like the car salesman.
|
| Maybe it's good I didn't go back to grad school...
|
| P.S. this article appeared in Nature, so I guess I should take
| it with the required amount of salt.
| ta988 wrote:
| Because all the good ones are flocking away to industry or
| other less ego-intensive careers. In my field it is gross,
| and if you are not talking on twitter you are not "active".
| And you have the same kind of citation rings you could (and
| still see) in papers but now with retweets... It is all about
| making it look-like science. We are really deep into the
| cargo cult... And at many levels, the grants, the papers, the
| presentations...
| mattgreenrocks wrote:
| Do academics really take Twitter that seriously? Can't tell
| if this is a hot take or the culture eating itself.
| Carl1B wrote:
| Thanks for the step by step tutorial. Works like a charm!
|
| https://www.omegle.kim/
| ackbar03 wrote:
| >Every year in June, I discover that the most self-critical
| scientists are final-year undergraduates
|
| I'm in the middle of a PhD. It's kind of sad to say this but if I
| rediscover my inner final-year undergrad I'm pretty sure I'd have
| trouble graduating
| known wrote:
| "There are only two ways of telling the complete truth--
| anonymously and posthumously." --Thomas Sowell (b. 1930)
| trompetenaccoun wrote:
| This is all well and good but the author seems to still naively
| assume best and honest intentions. Sadly all kinds of people have
| all sorts of motivations for writing papers.
| lazyjeff wrote:
| I think that even for each person, their motivation varies and
| depends on the paper. I tried to document my own backstory
| behind writing my papers, and would be interested to hear
| others about this:
| https://jeffhuang.com/struggle_for_each_paper/
| tremon wrote:
| Realistically, what's the alternative? A lifetime spent in
| bitterness and mistrust?
| trompetenaccoun wrote:
| Realism? One of the core jobs of science is understanding the
| world as it is, not as we wish it to be. That does not mean
| bitterness but mistrust is absolutely essential. The very
| fact that people use terms like 'trust' and 'believe' when it
| comes to science questions shows how deep this problem goes.
|
| Btw, when it comes to how much science is influenced by
| social pressures and politics I can say from personal
| experience it's hard to know how serious the problem is until
| you see it yourself from the inside.
| ta988 wrote:
| You need to believe and trust in science, you cannot verify
| everything. You have to use a model for a part of your
| experiment, or a machine, you'd better trust that. You
| can't spend more time checking everything again from first
| principles...
| trompetenaccoun wrote:
| >You need to believe and trust in science
|
| Guess I'm a heretic then, because I do not believe.
|
| With the argument it's to complicated to check one could
| justify believing in anything. Shouldn't people rather
| admit they don't actually know things in such cases?
| Someone who doesn't understand and only follows majority
| opinion doesn't add anything to the conversation, in fact
| it can be dangerous is they fall for charlatans.
| [deleted]
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