[HN Gopher] The AI expert who cited himself thousands of times o...
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       The AI expert who cited himself thousands of times on scientific
       paper
        
       Author : belter
       Score  : 65 points
       Date   : 2024-04-28 17:21 UTC (5 hours ago)
        
 (HTM) web link (english.elpais.com)
 (TXT) w3m dump (english.elpais.com)
        
       | hilux wrote:
       | This guy, David Sinclair at Harvard, Marc T-L at Stanford ...
       | disappointing but not entirely surprising that even in academia
       | the spoils go to the scammers.
        
         | iknowstuff wrote:
         | What's up with Sinclair? Saw his name pop up in a multitude of
         | aging/longevity content on youtube and my spidey senses were
         | tingling.
        
           | chrispeel wrote:
           | I couldn't finish Sinclair's book on aging [1]; even in a
           | book that he co-authored he comes across as a scammer
           | 
           | [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lifespan:_Why_We_Age_%E2%80
           | %93...
        
         | thyrox wrote:
         | I have been seeing this guy David Sinclair a lot in my Youtube
         | feed lately with raving reviews. But after reading your comment
         | did a bit of research and my god what a scam(1).
         | 
         | There is so much misinformation and gaming going on in every
         | industry and with A.I. generated content it's going to get so
         | much easier.
         | 
         | (1) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Xn0EJQPyxkA
        
           | hilux wrote:
           | For every person like you who is on HN and willing to do
           | followup research and change their mind, there are at least a
           | hundred who will accept the first thing they're told at face
           | value.
           | 
           | I mean, how could a Harvard Professor be a scammer ...
           | right?!
        
       | HeatrayEnjoyer wrote:
       | Thousands of times? Seems like the kind of thing a machine would
       | do...
       | 
       | (!_!)
        
         | mindcrime wrote:
         | _It can 't be true!_
         | 
         |  _Why not? One sentinel for every man, woman, and child in
         | Zion. That sounds exactly like the thinking of a machine to
         | me._
        
       | readthenotes1 wrote:
       | "Only one person has presented his candidacy for rector of one of
       | the oldest academic institutions in the world, the University of
       | Salamanca. "
       | 
       | There's a lot of focus on the scumminess of that one person, but
       | there is no mention of why only one villain has thrown his hat
       | into that ring.
       | 
       | It is one of the oldest universities in this world, and it
       | deserves better...
        
         | jacksonrya wrote:
         | The article describes a rushed election, preventing due time
         | for fair campaigning
        
       | vinni2 wrote:
       | Which is why you should ask people to exclude self citations when
       | reporting h-index. First of all Google scholar should fix this.
        
         | riedel wrote:
         | Relying just on h-index is bad in the first places. I habe
         | colleagues in experimental physics who are on papers with tens
         | of coauthors, working only on a small bit that enabled multiple
         | experiments and have an amazing hindex. you cannot compare that
         | to a theoretically working niche field. In the end it is about
         | wrong incentives in science. See also this article on rising
         | self citations [0] . Having said that h-index is a good KPI to
         | track for myself.
         | 
         | [0] https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-024-00090-z
        
           | staunton wrote:
           | I know lots of people who are authors on papers they've never
           | even looked at. (They implicitly agreed to be authors and
           | know that there's _some_ such papers, they just didn 't even
           | read the tiles)
        
         | Heidaradar wrote:
         | you could get a friend/family member to do the same thing
         | though (they cite each other thousands of times)
        
           | jgalt212 wrote:
           | Yes, but the bar is higher. No safe is impenetrable, or alarm
           | system foolproof, but they do make undesirable actions more
           | difficult.
        
       | limaoscarjuliet wrote:
       | When a measure becomes a target, it ceases to be a good measure.
       | 
       | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Goodhart%27s_law
        
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       (page generated 2024-04-28 23:01 UTC)