Comment by ninjin | Hacker News Reader

Comment by ninjin | Hacker News Reader

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I am a senior researcher in the same area. From the perspective of ethics enforcement on an institutional, state, or field level, it does not matter which author it was that committed the act. As a co-author you “sign off” on the paper as a whole and is expected to do due diligence to ensure that the paper in its entirety is up to the standards we expect. This is research ethics 101.

Now, in practice I would expect that you get off easier on a paper with a ridiculous number of authors such as this one as long as you find the perpetrator or a fall guy. Lastly, there is also the issue of papers at time being submitted without the consent of a co-author (possibly without them even knowing of the paper), which could complicate the matter further.

Shame on whoever did this, among the authors from prestigious institutions such as these there ought to be at least one to stop this kind of stupidity or at the very least be competent enough to write the very same text without copying.

It is probably a sloppy mistake, ineptness, and poor process controls by a contributing team, not pure malevolence. In a survey paper some people are sloppy and copy/paste source material directly into their file and edit it, or instruct others to do edits with notes. This creates a large risk that the edit never happens or the wrong version is submitted.

Edit: also take into account plenty of these researchers write English as second or third language. Copied text won't necessarily sound as obviously out of place and process becomes even more important.

To be frank, it does not really matter if it is pure malevolence or not. I am to be honest a bit more stringent than many of my colleagues, but even if I do not hold everyone to my standards I expect my fellow scientists to have high enough standards so that I can read (and most importantly trust) their writing and findings with confidence. Yes, the pressure to publish is insane and even more so in some countries than others (curse those in positions of power that cause this), but as it is impossible to verify every written statement or finding in any science, we must rely highly on honesty and high standards to maintain trust whether we want it or not as there is not (and should not) be a central point of authority to dictate good science. If we fail to do so – regardless whether by malevolence or not – we will be lost as our mode of consensus and communication will sooner or later be in tatters. Thus, screw behaviour like this, it should not happen and the senior academics on that paper should call for its retraction until it is in a state where it can be consumed by the community.

I agree retraction or correction is appropriate here. However, I would argue that correcting mistakes is a routine element of science -- whether due to a copy error or a miscalibrated instrument -- whereas malevolence is not.

Sure, the end result on the consumer's trust in the science is the same regardless of why the deficiency occurred, but the problem is far more tractable if it results from sloppy QA (or equivalently calibration error and calculation issues) rather than malevolence. In the first case the researchers can eat some crow and do better science next time; in the second you have people who flat out don't belong in science.

Your stance on ethics is correct. However, in practical terms, not all co-authors of a paper even read the whole paper. Most often, they contribute sections of the paper.

I don't think all co-authors are equally culpable in this. The paper should be retracted, but the punishment should be only to the actual perpetrator.

Frankly, if you do not have it in you to read through a paper you are co-authoring, maybe you should not be a co-author or maybe you should not author massive overview papers? Did someone hold a gun to their head forcing them to author a work that was so large in scope that they could not maintain sound academic standards? If you want the credit that comes with authorship, I expect you to “pay” by maintaining proper standards.

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