xevb3k

The rest of that sentence is: “then the VCs will want to talk to you anyways.”

Which is only a little bit true.

If it becomes an established practice, over several decades... probably?

For example?

Yes, but none of those problems requiring building a really really big radio telescope.

Sure there are some common data analysis techniques, but they are common to a lot of applications.

It just says “developing”. I would imagine this is code for “writing papers about”. I’m sure those papers use whatever technique is currently hot and will produce a decent publication. I doubt they use simple statistical approaches, because that’s likely not novel or publishable.

This is all fine. However, the problem is suggesting that this is a somehow reasonable/tenable solution to solving the noise issues...

Maybe the noise can be removed by other methods, maybe the noise doesn’t matter, but magic doesn’t solve the noise issues.

“At other telescopes, astronomers are developing machine-learning algorithms that could identify, extract, and compensate for dirty data“

Whenever I see “machine-learning” in the context of scientific development I just mentally replace it with “magic”.

Employing machine learning, at the data acquisition stage, is a really bad idea. It can easily introduce biases...

And here I was thinking I’d try to get in first with a Three Body Problem reference, but you beat me to it.

It’s interesting though, China does appear to have a much stronger commitment to radio astronomy than the US (at least that’s how the article characterizes it).

I wonder why that is? The article didn’t really discuss why radio astronomy is so attractive...

The motivation exists elsewhere. The statement “In Japan, we don’t usually doubt a professor” is also true elsewhere. I don’t usually read any paper with the assumption that data was fabricated (maybe selected, possibly presented in a way to tell the strongest story, but not out-right fake).

So, I still can’t quite put my finger on what is different about the Japanese ecosystem. Perhaps the checks and balances within departments are not as strong?

Outside Japan, a manager or department head seems to have a stronger supervisory role in my limited experience.

I was involved in a project with a researcher in Japan, it was impossible to replicate their work.

Numerous people (academics in the field) have suggested that the work was falsified.

I somehow can’t quite bring myself the believe it. I can’t understand what the motivation would be, or that any reasonable person would fake scientific data. And continue to do so, over a period years.

The STAP cell debacle is somewhat similar. What’s the endgame? Surely it becomes clear in the end that the work can not be replicated?

Can anyone shed some light on the motivation for these frauds? Is there something in particular about the Japanese ecosystem that makes them more common?

Personally I find it pretty painful creating large documents in Word. Creating documents in Latex helps me focus on the text/structure without worrying about figure/table placement (I can still have them in the markup, but and fix all the formatting issues after I’ve written the text).

I think it depends on author mentality somewhat. Word works well for some, Latex for others.

It might also be worth considering Markdown or plain HTML. Particularly if an ePub/kindle version is a possibility.

The largest group in the poll was US (not including SF/NY) followed by Europe (not including UK).

From your list that leaves Berlin.

Few other towns have the density and variety of startups that the Bay Area has to be honest.

The employment bubble you describe really only exists in the Bay Area. The majority of users on HN are not in the Bay Area:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3298905

People 35 and over, are somewhat likely to have families and find it difficult to relocate.

I’m confused, did they somehow just include the source code in the app bundle? As a resource perhaps? Or can source code leak into the app through some other vector?

As far as I can tell, it’s not really true any more than in other countries.

It’s just really very hard to learn Japanese well, and also to get a good grasp on Japanese culture. The vast majority of foreigners coming to Japan never achieve fluency (from what I can tell, though if there are stats on this I’d be interested).

That’s really interesting, thanks for providing some context!

Well the reddit allegations gained publicity because they were repeated by the editor of Make. I’d think it weird if Vice didn’t mention them, they were repeated and rebutted everywhere in the Maker community.

In my view it’s unreasonable to expect them not to mention them. Unless you have an agreement that they will not be included in the final article. Not just vague wording about them being “off-limits” which I would assume would mean that we wouldn’t discuss them.

Is this bullying or just a misunderstanding?

Is it normal or even possible for western journalists to let a source/interviewer dictate the final content of an article?

I always assume that journalists can, and should, have freedom to write what they want as long as it’s true and accurate. If I say to a journalist something is “off-limits” I assume it means I’ll end the interview and not engage with them if they cover that topic. Not that I have a right to dictate what’s written in the free press.

I’m honestly asking, I may just be misinformed. Can a source generally put limits on a journalist like this?

Yes, the connection is weird.

Prompted me to look up the numbers though. Apple could buy TSMC for cash, four times over... pretty incredible.

Yes, my phrasing was not ideal. I don’t know if it’s particular bad in tech. But it is a general problem I’ve seen (and also noticed in tech).

There’s a reasonable amount of evidence that fathers still don’t do their share of parenting in general:

https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2013/jul/05/childca...

Though I’d be interested in more stats on this.

I’ve known enough HN’ers and tech fathers in real life who talk a lot but don’t look after their kids to have become cynical myself.

It’s great that kids feel safe in Tokyo. And I understand the reaction against helicopter parenting generally. But the arguments against helicopter parenting never discuss how safe things really are, or if the rates of child abuse have declined (or are under-reported).

Recently I saw a report on Chikans (gropers on trains in Japan). The report suggested that almost every young woman experienced this (in particular high school girls).

Couldn’t believe it. I essentially thought it was bullshit.

So I asked the Japanese women who I know well enough if this was the case.

They confirmed that it happens to everyone once or twice (though uncommon).

It’s almost never reported to the police.

A lot of men in tech don’t spend a lot of time looking after their kids. They then criticise their wives parenting methods. I’m not saying this is what you’re doing, but it’s made me a cynic about most of what I read on HN.

14 month old child... it’s not unreasonable to expect that a 14 month old child would be supervised.

The police reaction was clearly over the top... but yea can’t say it reasonable to leave a 14 month old outside a restaurant in a busy city.

Your scientific society sounds bad, and essentially has morphed in to a publishing company.

Seriously, a society should not be funded by publication fees.

Personally I think it would be better for the societies to stay small and be funded by membership fees or grant funding (as part of out reach other activities, meetings etc on grants).

If you find it through publishing you can’t really complain about the rent seeking behavior of journals...

Well, academic societies like this are the problem.

When high journal fees are talked about an often over looked fact is that scientists chose this model. Scientific journals were originally run as non-profits by their members.

I guess it was considered too much hassle, and they decided to move production too an external company... that’s when all this rent seeking behavior began.

My opinion really, is that scientists themselves should move back to the scientific society runs the journal model. It doesn’t make much work to publish a bunch of PDFs in an archive anymore.

Yep! Based on personal experience I couldn’t agree more.

I don’t think British society is ready to address these issues either, there’s still a lot of unacknowledged classism and racism.

Overall, I’d sum up the British attitude as “it’s not that great here, but it’s the best country in the world”.

That is, there’s a lot of cynicism, but people assume the balance in the UK is as good as it gets.

It really isn’t.

Do you have a reference? Not doubting it, but I’m curious to know if this is true.

I don’t think it’s just that they contracted subtitles and dubbing to different teams. The requirements are different.

This is particularly true in Japanese, the space constraints on speech and normal modes of expression are very different.

The original English, literal meaning of the Japanese audio, and Japanese subtitles all differ significantly.

Comparing the English subtitles and Japanese doesn’t work very well for language study. Mostly you just have to look each Japanese word you don’t know up in a dictionary...

That’s very interesting, thanks! I now need to go read more about those 450,000 year old fragments.

I thought the half life of DNA was around 400 years. Anyone know how this is possible?