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Comment by delichon | Hacker News Reader

Maybe there is a vast dark matter of uncompromising super rigorous science happening that is invisible to us because it is too rigorous to meet its own standard so never publishes anything. But they know things.

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I think this may actually be true in a sense. A lot of good science gets published but never wildly noticed, just because good science is rarely sexy.

When it comes to testing materials, ASTM publishes and maintains dozens of kilos of fine-print documentation covering laboratory methods and procedures, almost all of which conclude with statistical ratings of their repeatability and reproducibility.

Very few would ever be published without a significant number of labs able to routinely achieve comparable performance.

I have tons of ideas that are interesting and with good preliminary results, but that will never get published before a lack of time to support them well enough that they are accepted by my peers (i.e., interesting works without enough rigour to clear a partially self-imposed threshold). Everyone interested in their field of research is in the same situation. Lowering the threshold would increase the amount of ideas that get communicated, but it would also increase the likelihood of one of these ideas being bonkers and decrease the signal-to-noise ratio in the literature.

Our math department does publish

There was a prof in my department who routinely passed grad students without a single publication because his standards were extremely high. All of his publications going back to like 2005 were Science or Nature

> who routinely passed grad students without a single publication

I really hope these were just Masters level students, because at least they could get the benefit of the doubt that it was coursework or something.

If it's PhDs, I feel so sorry for them: a major part of the degree is learning to communicate research. Without publications, there is no proof they can do research or communicate it.

I know a professor like this, and I feel sorry for his students too.

PhDs, and they did present at conferences (which in my field were not very selective), but yes it does seem like they did not get the whole PhD experience

Why discount the thesis, the traditional evidence of these things?

It depends on the context. I don’t bother reading American theses anymore because there is usually not much of value in them. Even in countries where theses usually mean something, they are often seen as a box-ticking exercise that needs to be done in the quickest and easiest way possible. If we fail students who don’t have a good thesis, not many would pass.

In my experience, the thesis doesn't properly test the skills involved in being a researcher. All it shows is that you've done some research, and that you can write and talk about it given a large amount of prep time and guidance. Without any publications, it's hard to judge if the PhD knows how to do peer review for instance.

On the other hand, after having gotten through a couple of publications, a couple of seminars and at least one peer review process, the thesis becomes almost just a formality. Since by then you've already had plenty of experience writing, dealing with criticism, and presenting your work to experts.

That is like your prior, man.

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