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Comment by ljhsiung | Hacker News Reader

The article mentions a student taking his own life. I remember this was huge news a couple years ago at ISCA '19 and something that really shook my decision to pursue academia.

After that event, SIGARCH launched an investigation. After a couple years, here were the results of that investigation.

https://www.sigarch.org/other-announcements/isca-19-joint-in...

Worth noting is that the investigation actually initially found __no__ misconduct. Imagine that? A student kills himself, and you conclude it was the victim's fault, and not the environment that drove him.

It was only until this post [1] emerged that they relaunched the investigation.

[1] https://huixiangvoice.medium.com/evidence-put-doubts-on-the-...

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That is very good work from the ACM. They don't whitewash anything, in fact they even keep the option open to re-assess their position should further details come to light. Impressed.

From the medium article

> It should have been unnecessary that we expose these evidence and challenge the result of the investigation, if the committee can drive a responsible, transparent and thorough investigation

An interesting question : Did ACM require the followup Medium article to update their position? I don't know the details of the case. However, merely updating positions when situations are black and white are some of the easiest scenarios. I wouldn't be impressed if black and white situations are assessed as black and white. This doesn't mean that one shouldn't do so. I'd expect those scenarios to be a bare minimum requirement.

Yes, but you can't really fault them for that because without any evidence to go on it would have been a fishing expedition. So compared to some of these other investigations that I'm familiar with I think they did it by the book.

It’s hardly reasonable to ignore the evidence of a students suicide note making a specific and detailed accusation of academic misconduct. It’s not a fishing expedition when you’re looking for something that you have reason to believe exists.

> They don't whitewash anything, in fact they even keep the option open to re-assess their position should further details come to light.

Did I miss something? All I can gather from the announcement PDF is that “several individuals” have been disciplined to varying degrees, the least severe being just a warning letter. No names named, no other details. Most of the announcement was just reiterating they took the investigation seriously. Kind of hard to determine from the announcement what details have and have not been considered, and whether certain individuals have been punished too lightly, no?

The announcement does mention a confidential report has been submitted for further review. Did anything concrete ever come out?

(I suppose it would at least be relatively obvious after a while which individuals are subject to a 15-year ban.)

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