Only positive reinforcement for researchers in some fields
statmodeling.stat.columbia.edu
statmodeling.stat.columbia.edu
I think this is spot on. This is the norm, and it’s seeping in everywhere. You see it in the corporate environment too.
Perhaps it can even be generalized one more step: People increasingly expect to be able to react completely instinctively to stimuli, outside of a few clearly defined contexts such as the Q&A after a scientific talk where they will “brace themselves”.
This is a good framing, and one that fits a cluster of related behaviors and emerging cultural norms I've witnessed. One of these is hardly original: the tendency to speak about what one "feels" versus what one "thinks". We should be careful, because "I feel" is often used as a synonym of "I think", but I am increasingly under the impression that American culture has become more accepting of unarticulated, unreasoned, stream-of-consciousness thought.
But this is now ratcheting up a notch. Not only is this kind of impulsive speech acceptable in the workplace (no big deal, in and of itself), there is now an emerging social norm such that we may no longer expect more. That, I think, is detrimental.
Politicians speaking about grave matters will spout absolute gibberish with a straight face, and nobody calls them out or asks them to explain what they mean. I think it is because the individual words and phrases used, and the intonation they are spoken with convey the right feelings and emotions.
What seems to matter is that they are feeling appropriately happy, sad, angry, about something. After that, people don't care too much or maybe don't even realize that what is being said does not actually mean anything or provide them with any real information.
It's bizarre, but it must work. Lots of politicians do it on all sides of politics, I'm not talking about the thing where they say a lot of words without answering a difficult question, and it's not just occasional mis-speaking or conversation taken out of context, because they do this in their speeches too.
A relevant presentation will be followed by a critical discussion. If there is no discussion or only positive comments, the presentation was is very likely irrelevant, or shallow at best.
I would consider an academic environment without critical discussion as broken.
In this article the problem was the new "weapons" people have created by which the person being criticized can automatically win that argument based on emotion basically.
I think this is true. If we're doing hypothesis about human behavior, you might be able to argue that our methods of communication, always forever online, have spawned this approach as an adaptation to stress of having to embody more personas for more numerous interaction. ( You can take it a step further and question the origin of 'acting' out a persona but i belief that in itself is extremely valuable )
On a further tangent, i still sometimes think about an Asian person commenting on the traits of US society to be obsessed with behaving as 'your true self' everywhere and all the time, whereas their culture it was noticeably less so.
In a small enough community, it seems reasonable to go to the researcher and say, "we're going to make this statement about that research -- do you have a comment". Almost like a newspaper -- both mediums are trying to present truth, rather than create a narrative, so that's probably why it's so similar.
Why, though? If you present your work in front of audience, it is extremely reasonable to expect the audience offer questions or criticism. If the mere fact of people criticizing your work after your presentation makes you feel blindsided, it’s simply a matter of adjusting expectations: you simply should expect criticism.
Then, if you expect criticism, but feel blindsided by the contents of the criticism, this means that you failed your job as a researcher. If someone can come up with a point after listening to your presentation for a few minutes, that you didn’t have thought of in advance and prepared answer for it, it means that you’re doing bad job, and should do better. You should actually thank the critic for bringing the issue to your attention, because in doing so, he helped you.
The one place I’d be more OK with it is in another paper. But even then if the criticism is rather scathing, I think there is a courtesy to them reaching out and saying — “we’re planning on showing how your method was wrong and your results misleading for this reason in our forthcoming paper”.
Because once the argument goes public people tend to dig in their heels and true progress is not likely to be made.
Heckling is not "helping." Nobody wants to be humiliated by public criticism they weren't prepared for, which may or may not itself be valid-- but a poor response from the presenter makes one look incompetent in front of their peers nonetheless.
Callouts are sadistic and unprofessional. That anyone should thank someone for punching them in the face as criticism for not seeing it coming is ludicrous. It's bully logic.
An academic must be prepared to defend his research. An academic must be willing to change their mind when information warrants it. A researcher must expect and even welcome queries, challenges, and deep questions. A member of the academic community must politely but rigorously criticise presented research or theories because science is based on cordial mutual doubt, that’s why we insist on independent replication and verification.
Play fair but don’t be deferential. And don’t tarry every critic with the epithets of heckling. It’s called academic debate, without it you have progress, just polite mutually-reinforcing deference that advances human knowledge and technology one iota.
It's easy for those with the loudest microphone to promote the work of the researchers they like or are connected to, or research that confirms their preexisting beliefs. This risks making the field insular by excluding new voices with new perspectives and without such preexisting interpersonal ties.
I think that you need criticism to be able to overcome this issue: to allow disinterested parties to push back on praise given by biased sources, and to ensure that current researchers aren't always elevated above newer ones.
One environment discourages research in certain fields while the other encourages it in certain fields. It’s similar, but not the same. And I think the former is worse.
I don't think that it really encourages research to create an environment that makes people uncomfortable voicing criticism of those with the greatest power and influence.
Everyone says they want constructive feedback. But most people actively avoid it. If I told you as a young scientist you can go into a field where you will never get praised, just criticized or Vice versa where do you think even most of the top young scientists would go?
No one wants to have their career be “I think I did good work, but pretty much everyone just found issues so it never really made traction”.
Suppose, for instance, that somebody in HCI proposed a new system that would be horribly inaccessible to people with disabilities, to the point that widespread adoption would cause actual harm. Wouldn't it be best for society if the rest of the field felt empowered to criticize their work?
Furthermore, people often feel pressured to praise the works of their friends and colleagues; in doing so, they elevate the most connected members of the field above those doing breakthrough research.
If you think they are wrong you are expected and encouraged to respond publicly with why. Perhaps many people misread your work just same as that person so would benefit from the debate.
EDIT: and by the way, if you think they are wrong you should thank them for the same reason.
Would you thank your colleague for raising your bug to the CEO or posting a LinkedIn article about your bug before talking to you about it?
If it's some minor code bug from a typo or something, your embarrassment should be correspondingly tiny. And still the right thing to do is say "thanks" or "nice catch".
Reasonable etiquette in science is critiquing the expressed ideas and methods rather than the person (or what has been inferred).
I do really like that newspaper comparison, especially because it could prevent misunderstanding what an author was trying to say.
And that’s the thing: if you go into a conversation only to ‘right’ the other person’s views and are unwilling to revise/question yours then you’re not debating, you’re preaching… and there’s way too much of that already. Furthermore some of people are very ‘polite’ (in that they let you expound your views) but I’ve noticed many just wait for an option to lunch into their monologue. That isn’t debate either. It’s socially less jarring but in a way intellectually dishonest.
Understanding the main angle of critique on the spot is hard enough, coming up with a rebuttal even harder, especially when the critique comes from a senior researcher.
Accepting points of critique that are valid as opportunities to improve the research, or at least as limitations to the generality of the findings reported is highly valued.
I always tended to think that a PhD is awarded for the ability to accept and counter critique towards work that one has spent years of their life with.
1. legit criticism, e.g. you missed something or did something incorrectly
2. reveals an opportunity to communicate better on your part
3. self-promotion by the criticizer
1 and 2 are directly valuable. Distinguishing between 1, 2, and 3 is a skill, especially since 3 is so common.
All the people I know who were not so fortunate experienced unduly harsh, personalized, and non-constructive criticism. I'm not sure whether or not that's worse than never being critical, but they are kind of equivalent in that they create barriers to students engaging with the science.
What is described in the article is not at all ubiquitous as some commenters are implying, and afaik is essentially unknown in the hard sciences and math.
"not possible to be both an inclusive field and a field that embraces criticism."
Hm. Over time, will the field will stop producing useful new results?
A comment from an actor, years ago: "In New York, they tell you if you suck. In LA, they don't call you back if you suck. In SF, nobody tells you that you suck. So you suck forever."
Human Computer Interaction: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human%E2%80%93computer_interac...
i.e., the sort of research that gets presented at CHI: https://chi2022.acm.org/
But not all authors like being critiqued. This is even worse when competing interests are involved, e.g. patents, or an author is employed at a research-active company that sponsored that paper.
This is particularly bad when a paper is accompanied by press releases that dramatically oversell the findings. Unfortunately many researchers seem to read press releases and confuse their content with the actual science reported in the paper.
In that case it must be possible to critique a paper and set things right, if only to have a citable record for the next time a reviewer tries to shoot down a paper or grant based on a skewed understanding of prior research.
I knew a researcher who publicly challenged some obviously bullshit research, and basically got absolutely nothing out of it, apart from a certain reputation. The correct thing to do is just ignore the bullshit. If you want to challenge good work with some gaps, there certainly are ways to do it without appearing critical.
Some people derive ego out of criticizing, some are angry, spiteful, ideological, personal - and frankly, I think all criticism have a least small hints of all of these things.
But as someone suggested 'etiquette' with a hint of self-awareness, even as simple as 'Do I need to do this?' 'How can I make this about the work and not about either of us?' etc. might help.
Wrapped in a bit of 'tone shifting' to make it feel a bit nicer ... then debate ought to be encouraged.
On the receiving end, I really think that a bit of 'adversity training' would go a long way. I think people are incredibly resilient, and you can 'pretend expose' people to all sorts of stuff (even some personal attacks) and they will get used to it very quickly. In sports, even in the military, you see people develop certain kinds of resiliency that I think comes from doing challenging things, camaraderie, teammates chirping you when you get to big for yourself (or for any other reason). Confident people don't perceive questions as threats, even if they are reactionary in the moment.
Perhaps, and I speculate, it is our culture of dunking on targets. My personal favourite is that I disregard anything regarding Colin Powell. Someone might say "Well, he was quite the X" or "he would have made a good Y" and I cannot resist but say "But the mindless clown will just repeat nonsense if you give him nonsense". Others might decide that errors I consider insignificant in others are the equivalent of Colin Powell's.
Consequently, it is important to never state that another has erred.
... Unless of course someone is critiquing it to gain some sort of notoriety.
If it's about the fundamental science, then make the critique on fundamental grounds and do it anonymously.
It seemed that, from his point of view, I was breaking the rules by publicly criticizing published work. The whole thing seemed so ridiculous to me, but to him it was all about good guys and bad guys. So frustrating.”