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Comment by BSEdlMMldESB | Hacker News Reader

at the end of the day, all of academia is part of the larger "publishing industry"...

though I think that to keep up with the scale, maybe I should call it "publishing institution" (alongside, government institutions, organized crime institutions (arguably blended with the government in some places), industrial institutions, and merchant institutions like banks)

so then, journalism was the first to be redrawn by the internet technology when tech companies became the biggest advertisers in the world. then music, even 'BIG entertainment' is on strike.

and now academia is having its moment, and so many things are unraveling as well

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When people talk about stories like this they're invariably discussing the numerator without the denominator. Count up every story about research malpractice that has ever been on HN, and you're not even in the vicinity of 1% of all the research done every year; a truly huge amount of research is published every year, in every field.

The question is how much of that stuff is fraudulent or at least suspect: you'll find that most scientists are skeptical of a large fraction of papers published in their field, there is a lot of crap that gets through peer review, and most will not get openly questioned because it's a lot of effort and quite high-risk, especially if it's a result that's of low importance.

I am probably even crazier

I see that the mathematics ultimately provide the basis for a lot of that research, which can be summed up as measuring various things, recording the measurements, and publishing the whole thing. But it's all built on the same essential math at the foundation.

and the mathematics is duplicated a lot to, but this is hard to see, you'd need a 'real' expert, of the kind that can be hand counted

Yes, the label "peer review" is meaningless. There are good peer review processes at top journals and conferences and getting through those is a meaningful accomplishment. Then there are also worthless peer review processes at lower quality avenues. Getting through those is like getting a participation trophy. Yes, you need to show up on time, but not much more than that.

The real peer review happens afterwards, when other researchers actually engage with your work.

This is true, but as in many areas, power laws apply. The vast majority of research has very low impact and mostly serves fulfilling publication quotas. There is likely plenty of scientific fraud happening in lower tier publications as well, but no one notices because no one cares.

How is this academia’s moment? People have been publishing bad science since its inception, its why we made tools like peer-review which predate the internet.

there was this:

https://www.theguardian.com/science/2023/may/07/too-greedy-m...

also the scandals in standford and harvard.

also this https://www.universityworldnews.com/post.php?story=202307201... which is bad because the academia is intended to be above this "petty geopolitics". as far as I know academic collaboration didn't quite stop either during the cold war, but I was born after it was over so I don't really know this, might be wrong.

and more than all these, the whole sci-hub debacle is the biggest telltale.

this is not about good or bad science, but about the money incentives.

maybe I'm in a news-bubble, but I also see things about postdocs being a fraud, even PhD's are now a dubious gamble?

and then I add my personal experience doing a masters at a public 3rd world country university, and I just hope it burns to the ground, which is a bad idea to dwell on.

Also this:

https://english.elpais.com/science-tech/2023-04-20/one-of-th...

"One of the most internationally cited scientists, Ai Koyanagi, forced to renounce her controversial contract with a Saudi university"

"The psychiatrist, currently employed in Spain at the Sant Joan de Déu Research Institute, declared that her main place of work was King Abdulaziz University, with the aim of elevating the Arab institution in the international rankings"

And is not the only researcher in that gravy train:

"Seven highly cited Spanish researchers [employed by Spain], paid by universities in Saudi Arabia to increase their prestige [posing as fake full-time employees of that Universities]"

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