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Comment by SeanLuke | Hacker News Reader

A colleague of mine told me a story about Roger Schank, whom he knew well. I'd like to think this was apocryphal but I suspect it is not!

As soon as Schank's PhD students graduated, he would start talking trash about them. The colleague asked Schank why in the world he would do something like this, and the response was that Schank had realized that whenever he bad-mouthed someone, others would come to assume that the person's work had to be impressive. So this was his approach to promote his students and increase their hiring prospects.

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Probably a bad sign?

It's concerning to see young scientists' job prospects being manipulated based on personal relationships rather than merit.

This form of tribalism goes against the principles of the academic system. If this behavior is deemed as "pragmatism," it's a sign of a larger issue within the academic community.

That's not surprising. The academic community has more issues than Reader's Digest.

The academia is a small, petty world full of inflated egos and prone to political hysteria, with people eternally locked into zero sum games. When I moved to the private sector, it felt like a breath of fresh air.

There, people will "only" try to rip you off, but given that their reputation precedes them, you will orient yourself pretty quickly and stop cooperating with the nasties, unless they are as dominant as Google or Microsoft are. You cannot do this in rigid hierarchies of the academic world.

wow, it's like academic system is some sort of divine intervention and not people doing people's stuff

> the principles of the academic system

Lmao. Those being what, signing one's name under as many bullshit papers and articles as physically possible to get tenure and then doing the bare minimum till you retire while your students hate you?

Today's academia has no principles left, it's a rat race to the bottom.

> It's concerning to see young scientists' job prospects being manipulated based on personal relationships rather than merit.

Try getting into post-grad at prestigious institution with a recommendation from a nobody who teaches at a virtually unknown university. Your actual merit won't mean anything against the recommendation of a big name in the field; even if the student they are recommending has less merit

That's hilarious. I guess it does seem that it is probably true that I would be impressed if somebody applying for a job had managed to elicit such great interest by their advisor that said advisor would publicly denounce them, in turn risking their own reputations and careers. At a certain point a bad reference becomes a good one I guess.

Why would you want to hire someone who the leading expert in their work says is wrong?

Certain decision makers are attracted (in a hiring sense) to contrarians or an underdog. Followers rarely revolutionize an industry (or so I’ve been told the thought process goes).

To rely on a leading expert as an appeal to authority might get you blindsided.

I'm struggling to grasp this logic still. An incompetent person is more likely to be admonished publicly

Researchers logic stops to their research, they are bad at HR

>At a certain point a bad reference becomes a good one I guess.

"There is no such thing as bad publicity."

Kind of the inverse of the Talmud's rule that the sin of speaking badly about someone also covers praising them excessively, on the theory that this will usually lead to pushback.

Ironically, this would be something that IA would not adapt too, i guess.

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