Comment by blub | Hacker News Reader

Comment by blub | Hacker News Reader

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Who funds a research should be written in bold on the first page together with their interest in the topic and any potential conflicts of interest.

The fact that the contributions were not disclosed is highly suspicious. Google is also not merely funding works that aligns with what they do, it's apparently "helped finance hundreds of research papers to DEFEND against regulatory challenges of its market dominance", which puts this in a completely different perspective. Care to comment on that?

I found another quote which is frankly mind-boggling (http://www.foxbusiness.com/features/2017/07/11/paying-profes...):

"""In some years, Google officials in Washington compiled wish lists of academic papers that included working titles, abstracts and budgets for each proposed paper -- then they searched for willing authors, according to a former employee and a former Google lobbyist.

Google promotes the research papers to government officials, and sometimes pays travel expenses for professors to meet with congressional aides and administration officials, according to the former lobbyist. The research has been used, for instance, to deflect antitrust accusations against Google by the Federal Trade Commission in 2012, according to a letter Google attorneys sent to the FTC chairman and viewed by the Journal."""

WTF? They're basically lobbying and paying professors to deflect antitrust accusations and there are people here DEFENDING them?!

This is pretty standard practice for all companies, isn't it?

I mean would we be surprised if an oil company or tobacco company were doing this?

I think the problem here is Google's attempt to position themselves as being one of the "good" companies. They tried to have their cake and eat it too.

Frankly, I've been skeptical of Google for a few years now, not because I think they're inherently evil, but because any large, powerful institution is going to be blind to the ways its interest conflicts with the public's interest.

So in a way, I would defend Google here. They're simply doing what any organization does - defend its own interests. The problem is that the rest of us have not been sufficiently skeptical and critical of Google. We've been too wowed by Google's supposed technological wizardry.

I'm talking about CS research. I don't really consider law research and public policy research as real research -- that's lobbying and conflating the two is just for a headline.

Edited to add: the WSJ went on a fishing expedition -- while the story is on a few law grant tidbits that they could make into a headline, they actually were trying to get access to the private email of many CS professors. What probably happened is that they got some of that email (which I don't think they should have access to, but that's another story) and found there was nothing interesting to write about, so they found a few lobbying tidbits and painted it all with a broad brush.

> law research and public policy research as real research

some would argue that this is the most important research Google sponsors these days as protecting their monopoly will preserve/create more value than most any new fangled CS thing they can come up with.

Google allegedly requires disclosing its support, and it does transparency reports about who they fund/funded.

So, are they doing this or not?

If yes, good. Then this is just a NewsCorp hit piece. Again.

If not. Google is being shitty. Again.

Those travelling salesmans/professors should have to register as lobbyists.

I am not sure I understand the outrage. We are, I assume, talking about peer reviewed research papers here? Regardless of who has funded the research and for what motives, the work has passed the community's filter for quality, significance and correctness. You might raise questions about the effectiveness of that filter, but that is a separate issue.

In fact, it much worse to dismiss research just because of who funded it or what their assumed motives were -- which is a strong human instinct, and which seems to be implicitly behind this outrage.

It's pretty standard to include your funding sources in your publications, and some see it as morally imperative. That it was not included is suspicious. But yes, it's an additional safeguard on that filter. And I think you give the whole system a little more credit than it deserves. At the end of the day, the publishers need to make money and they need papers to publish. Don't just assume that just because something is published in a peer reviewed journal that it meets the highest standards of quality. It's very often not the case.

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