Sayre's Law: Academic Politics Are So Vicious Because the Stakes Are So Small
Maybe universities, tenure committees, and funding sources should stop measuring academics by vanity metrics such as H-Index and publication counts. And don't get me started on the tendency toward "minimum publishable units."
That said, abusing power as an editor deserves a special place in hell...
I've heard that some universities set aside $5-10 million whenever they grant someone tenure. It's a fiscally prudent accounting measure. And it's also a measure of how valuable the contract can be. (Of course one still needs to do some work soooo....)
I wonder if that's the amount to endow a chair or something, because $5m is well within the "never work again" FIRE amount - but perhaps a tenured professor not only has his salary, but that of his assistants, etc.
Every serious academic knows it is complete crap, the problem is finding a better metric. Although the crappyness competes with "no metric at all" and I think the latter would be superior.
The only advantage the current system has is that it is stupendously simple, so at least it is hard to manipulate.
Institutional design needs legibility to track people's reputation at scale. The problem is that these metrics are often poor substitutes.
The difficulty is that nobody knows how to. My guess is that if you want good signaling, you'll need to find something that is difficult to fake. My guess are evolving benchmarks that measure many things in multiple dimensions, but benchmarks were easily gamed.
You can have it without benchmarks that can be gamed, but then it's basically down to "this feels right" and you have to trust the leadership to not be discriminatory, etc.
How should they be judged then? Any metric can be gamed. And if it will be kind of qualitative assessment then politics will be 10000x more important. The system is clearly broken but I’m not sure if alternative is not even worse.
The funny thing is, if the guy wasn't quite so greedy with this racket, probably no one would notice. Surely if the number of your publications and citations shoots up exponentially and surpasses those of much more well-known scientists, folks are bound to ask questions. I wonder if this got out of control or whether he really did think it's a good idea to collude his way to such prominence.
This is typical behavior from psychopaths when they get away with the crime for so long, they believe they are untouchable and start becoming sloppy and get caught.
Elsevier has a history of 'promoting' successful millers to more or other journals, so they can 'drive growth', as it's sometimes put in IT, there as well.
I am not arguing against the facts expressed in the piece. This is not an area in which I have any expertise.
However, I am a bit uncomfortable with the pithy language used. It's possible (likely, even), that the fired editors deserve the pithiness, but it's still a bit weird to read that kind of prose, in a scientific context.
This is an investigative substack, not a piece of academic literature. God forbid the author home some (admittedly, strong) opinions and speaks negatively about fraudsters.
> This is an investigative substack, not a piece of academic literature.
Professional news is usually written without expressing judgement and minimizing opinion.
> fraudsters
It's an allegation.
The author only hurts themself: My impression is that they don't believet the fundamentals of truth and humanity: they are certainly partially wrong, could be very wrong, will never know the complete truth, and their judgment of others is too flawed to rely on. Also it seems they are acting more on their emotions and less on fact and reason.
I certainly apologize for hurting feelings. That was not my intent.
I've just learned (the hard way, of course, because how else do we learn?), that using this kind of terminology, even though we may be feeling quite pithy, gives ammo to those that wish to discount us.
This goes double, in my experience, for any context that prizes objectivity and articulate discussion.
I'm with you on this. There's a difference between exposing wrongdoing and being antagonistic.
Doing them both together increases the amplitude of the signal at the cost of reducing the integrity of the signal.
If you wonder why the world is informationally too loud and too noisy these days, it's because everyone who does this is turning up the volume to be louder than others who are also, in turn, turning up the volume for the same reasons.
Maybe I'm just naive or dense, but I'm not seeing language I'd be concerned about in the article? Help me get calibrated, is there something in particular that bothers you? or just a general vibe?
Literally zero need for that; none. And it's that kind of language that calls into question the authors motives. I went from "Excellent reporting here" to "This guy is emotional and not a reliable source of information" in 6 words.
Unfortunately I had the same impression. Or the comment on Anna Du's looks. Otherwise great reporting that, even in an informal substack piece, lose the shine with these types of aggressive comments. The content speaks for itself and is already quite damning to the corrupt editors. No need for ad hominem attacks.
I must however, take the time to be the ever-sensitive snowflake and highlight a troubling trend in this person's other posts. He seems to have some anti-trans leanings[1], refusing to gender people correctly and all that (and certainly not pushing back against comments which declare "M to Fs are psychotic bullies who would kill all of us to maintain their sacred illusion". Not to imply that one must rebuke every unkind thing in their comment section, but I hope you can understand that it is illustrative of his audience.). Now I'm no proponent of death threats or double standards, it's just a convenient way to highlight a lack of respect. He will misgender you if he does not like you, and he does not like any delusional transwomen[2].
He's also quite concerned about Canada's population. The capital-W White population specifically [3]. Note that this is presented separate from later graphs about TFWs, so I don't even think he has the right to hide behind that paper-tissue-thin shield. He is quite sad to see the Great White North get a little less white. I am not saying that Canada has managed its immigration well, but I do not believe that he is overly concerned with those matters.
I'm not here to litigate his arguments, I have other things to do with my life. He has his principles, and I have mine. I'm certain he'd be happy to talk for hours about the transwomen and the Indians and all the topics polite society cowers from. His anti-Zionism and dislike of the Rothchilds, I am certain, comes from a strongly-voiced anti-Imperalist lense.
I'm torn about your comment. On the one hand, the context is interesting. On the other hand, it's almost unrelated to the substance of this post of his. I suppose there's a general anti-mainstream-science bias propagating through national-conservative/far-right/alt-right circles, specifically about how the world of academia functions. However, the facts of this post about how a corner of academia functions ought to stand up or fall down independently of all that. 95-100% of this is facts (falsifiable, and maybe wrong, but stated as such), and a tiny percentage is opinion.
Oh yeah, it's a fine post! Interesting read. But I don't think it's that silly to say that success for a person who espouses these views is success for the views themselves, and that a tone-shift might arise if gradually, more and more posts about inoffensive topics written by "Mr. Don't Worry About It ;)" make their way onto the front page.
I don't think it's strange at all to see this post, and the argument, in the context of Brunet's general antagonism towards academe. Certainly suggests that some arguments might be made in bad faith, or as performative gravy-train applications for the broader conservative news ecosystem.
Information for non-commercial purposes should be free for general social enrichment. Information for commercial purposes should have some path towards monetization but the one we've got right now is clearly a terrible fit.
For the future, though, usually if you just email one of the paper author's with even a hint of interest you'll get the full paper and often a neat discussion about how your specific interest relates to the paper. I think people assume researchers get hounded by fans like celebrities but they're usually folks that love to talk about their topics of interest.
Why should taxpayer funded research be monetized when used for commercial purposes? We have a privatized publication cartel monetizing a public good. We should instead nationalize the publishers.
Agreed - I emailed some people about a paper recently - they no longer had some supporting stuff that I was interested in but they were very helpful all the same.
Well, isn't libgen no longer accepting uploads for years now? The last few years really haven't been great for shadow libraries which is incredibly unfortunate.
Your comment is funny because it’s completely opposite - economics has generally great track record and fraudulent results typically do not survive for long. Citation cartels and paper mills exist in all disciplines.
I've literally got the NWS hourly forecast and radar open in the next tab over to watch when and where the rain will be clear as I plan my route home...
Really? I see the whole "Yes the entire body of work, across multiple schools of economic thought, and every examination of the history demonstrates rent controls dont work. But we think this time, perhaps they will work"
to "Once again rent controls have failed" pipeline has been pretty firmly established.
Does it, really? There haven't been any problematic issues since economists and their lore became a dominant influence over politics that could be attributed to this influence?
There are few things I’m afraid of more than a man that thinks himself righteous, because there is very little that such a man would be unwilling to do.
So it makes sense to be cautious when I find myself feeling like one, or being pulled along by the emotions of another who does.
You're not wrong about the danger posed, but take a step back and consider who this attitude helps. The greatest beneficiaries of a culture in which good faith and civility are unconditionally granted for fear of misguided righteous anger is a paradise for fraudsters and bad faith actors. I think we're seeing that world now.
Spot on. Leaders in my company love to tout the line "assume good faith". If you say anything that indicates someone else is not operating in good faith, you are deemed the bad actor. This allows bad actors to run absolutely rampant.
It helps the good people, who do good and influence their society to do the same, and live in a good society. The best societies give the accused the full protection of the law, and give them fair trials. The problematic ones have mob rule.
Much of what you write assumes the OP author and you know what evil is, with certainty. That is the critical and most dangerous flaw.
This is a good point. I tend to be careful not to fall into this trap myself, but it doesn't really do any good to call it out in public. it ends up empowering the bad actors. Thank you for this awareness.
It's the danger with not updating your behavior when the balance of probabilities shows that the individual/group/organization you're dealing with is acting in bad faith.
Our modern era has so many megaphones blaring into the void that it's become significantly more difficult to determine which ones are overtly lying. Accordingly, it's far more difficult to establish a consensus about who's operating in bad faith.
Again, the failure point isn't with the assumption of good faith. It's with not recognizing bad faith when it's made manifest.
I agree, that's why I'm talking about unconditional assumption of good faith. I strongly believe in assuming good faith by default, and also in the importance of updating your priors as new information becomes available.
You can't comment like this on HN, no matter who or what you're replying to. I understand it's a heated topic in which everyone was posting escalatory rhetoric, but it's everyone's responsibility to avoid pouring fuel on the flames. Please take a moment to read the guidelines and make an effort to observe them in future.
Please don't sermonize like you have in this thread. It's not cool to heap blame on one person for vast, complex global societal problems, and it's certainly not what HN is for. This site exists for curious conversation about interesting topics. It's specifically not for ideological battle, and the first rule of commenting on HN is "be kind".
This style of commenting is completely unacceptable on HN. You can't just blithely speculate about fellow community members being “evil”, or indeed anyone else; people can do wrong without being evil, and the first rule of the In Comments section of the HN guidelines is to “be kind”.
Some of your comments about controversial topics are egregious enough to warrant a ban. I don't want to ban you because some other comments are substantive contributions, but we need you to avoid inflammatory, ideological comments in future.
This blog contains some extremely troubling language, identity targeting, and direct slurs. The credibility of the author is very low, at a first pass.
The alleged Elsevier behavior may have occurred, of course, independent of the integrity of the source.
What troubling language and slurs are you referring to exactly?
I didn't see anything "troubling" (let alone "extremely troubling") or anything that would indicate that anyone other than the implicated authors have an integrity issue.
I didn't immediately see a red flag that would make me discount all of their work. It's clear what the author's general opinions are. They're entitled to them of course.
I don't any signs that it's a bot, or that the comment was LLM generated. It's pretty safe to assume they made an alt to make that comment, as they didn't want to take a negative opinion towards a conservative author on their main. i.e. trying to avoid controversy.
This website is slightly to the right of reddit these days; what exactly would expressing a negative opinion about a conservative blogger do to their main account?
My suspicion was some affiliation with a current or future implicated individual.
I figured it was someone who just cared enough to make an account.
Yeah, this article seems fine, but looking at some of chris brunet's other articles has me a bit O.O
First time I've run into this with a HN share in a good long while. Not that the article shouldn't have been shared, ofc, but.. it certainly puts me on guard.
Yes, I'm saying that HN is very far left, which wasn't the case just a few years ago. It's mostly a progressive echo chamber at this point plus some interesting tech news.
Maybe universities, tenure committees, and funding sources should stop measuring academics by vanity metrics such as H-Index and publication counts. And don't get me started on the tendency toward "minimum publishable units."
That said, abusing power as an editor deserves a special place in hell...