Hacker News Reader

Comment by gadders | Hacker News Reader

From TFA:

"Lauer notes that not long before he left NIH, he and his colleagues identified a principal investigator (PI) who had submitted more than 40 distinct applications in a single submission round, most of which appeared to be partially or entirely AI generated. The incident was “stunning” and “disappointing,” says Lauer, who was not involved in creating the new NIH policy but hopes the cap will discourage other researchers from abusing the system."

Always somebody who ruins things for everybody else.

View on HN

Indeed, and failing to name and punish the individuals in question means the rest of profession is now bearing a collective weight going forward.

While I personally do not mind people abusing the system being called out, in this case I am not sure that is an issue. Is there any purpose in allowing people to submit more than six?

The process itself can require multiple submissions for the same grant. From my reading of the article, initial submissions, revisions, or renewals will all count as a “submission”. Additionally, if you are part of a collaboration (program project), that will count too. The concern here is that with these caps in place, you’ll see a pull back from collaborative efforts (which are normally looked on favorably).

The main gripe isn’t the fact that there is a limit, but rather that the threshold is too low. If you doubled the threshold to 12, I don’t think you’d see much pushback and still be able to limit over submissions. This being NIH, I’m a bit surprised there wasn’t more data presented to show why 6 was a reasonable limit.

The real problem seems to me to be that revisions etc. count as submissions and they are not limiting the submissions count to where you are PI. Six PI submissions per year seems plenty enough, though there are some PIs with a crazy number of grad students, post docs, etc. but hey, spread the PI responsibilities to post docs or whatever.

Sadly this kind of greed and indecency seems pervasive in society. We're transforming into a new species: homo economicus.

There really does seem to be a "vibe" in the last few years where (paraphrasing) "Society is going to sh*t so although this action is morally dubious, it's not strictly speaking illegal, so I'll maximise my earnings so at least I am well resourced when everything falls apart."

When you see it working so well around you, you get the idea it may work for you too.

It's called being a loser and we should ostracize such losers at every turn. Making money won't make them less of a loser. Can't wash it off, actually.

The problem: money is the new measure of success, so loser is exactly what they are not in this view.

Strongly disagree. I know a lot of losers with a lot of money, and most people around them think they're fundamentally losers too.

They follow their leaders basically. Look at the pattern of avoiding claiming responsibility like the plague as it ends up with all of the downsides. When borderline the 'not illegal' legalist ethics prevail across all segments of upper society, with Congress sticking to that and blatantly illegally insider trading or worse instead of a higher 'avoid even the appearance of impropriety' the shit has rolled down hill.

Although it might also just be an impact of illusions of nobility from the past shattered by increased transparency. George Washington abused his power to land speculate for one, presidents who had their affair participant institutionalized for stating uncomfortable truths about whose child was whose.

Agreed. And it also makes people think that behaviour like this is OK: https://michaelwest.com.au/macquarie-bank-privatisation-and-...

Indeed, many such cases. Our society is full of institutions that functioned only because "no one in a position to participate would be shameless enough to abuse it." Then that assumption breaks, and it's ruined for everyone.

It is relevant, though awkward to discuss, that a large share of NIH and NSF funding proposals (and indeed funded projects) are led by researchers who didn't grow up in the US. I wonder if it's in fact a majority.

It's hard to know without reading them, and perhaps 40 is too much for a innocent explanation, but ...

It's common that the head of the laboratory submit the applications for each project, so 40 application may mean 40 subteams with 2-6 minions each (where each minion has a Ph.D. or is a graduate student.) Usually when the paper is published, the head of the laboratory is the "last author".

Now it's getting common to make an AI cleanup, like fixing orthography and grammar and perhaps reduce the text to 5000 characters. Without reading them it's hard to know if this is the case or it's nonsensical AI slop.

> It's common that the head of the laboratory submit the applications for each project, so 40 application may mean 40 subteams with 2-6 minions each (where each minion has a Ph.D. or is a graduate student.) Usually when the paper is published, the head of the laboratory is the "last author".

I believe this is the reason they are limiting it. A not of grants require the PI to spend at least some percentage of their research time on the project. PIs trend to ignore that requirement. As a result big names were getting a huge number of grants and early career researchers were getting none. Requirements like these give other researchers a chance.

Is there ground to sue those people?

I suppose you could if you looked at it as a denial of service attack.

Maybe someone could make a fraud case out of it? It really depends on details not given whether or a decent civil or criminal case exists. Very likely a university-level ethics investigation would be warranted.

If it wasn’t against the rules, and the submissions themselves were legit (albeit AI assisted), what basis is there for fraud?

Reply on news.ycombinator.com