<story><title>Please commit more blatant academic fraud</title><url>https://jacobbuckman.com/2021-05-29-please-commit-more-blatant-academic-fraud/</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>tlb</author><text>The idea that a field can be reformed by making it worse until it suddenly faces a reckoning and emerges much better is ... I don&amp;#x27;t know where people keep getting the idea that this might work. It has never worked in any field ever in history.&lt;p&gt;The thing that can happen: fields gradually split into rigorous and non-rigorous camps. Like with evidence-based medicine, or chemistry&amp;#x2F;alchemy. Depending on the field, either might prevail in the market. Medical research and bridge-building are mostly rigorous, programming is mostly non-rigorous.&lt;p&gt;AI&amp;#x2F;ML has a range of rigor levels, from fairly good to total crap. I think people in the field have a reasonable idea which is which. It&amp;#x27;s frustrating to people outside the field that think they can just take the technique with highest reported performance numbers and expect good results.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>raphlinus</author><text>I&amp;#x27;ll give my reading, and a tip to the author.&lt;p&gt;To me, this did not read as a serious proposal to actually commit more fraud. Rather, it was a &amp;quot;modest proposal&amp;quot; in the tradition of Swift, in which the actual call to action was for the field to be more critical of papers, especially to be on the lookout for all fraud, both the obvious kind and the more subtle variants, the latter of which also do great damage to the field.&lt;p&gt;The tip: humor like this is fun and appreciated by people who run in the same circles as the author, but an essay like this will be read by a diverse cross-section of people. Some won&amp;#x27;t have the cultural references, some won&amp;#x27;t have English as a first language, etc. Almost always when I&amp;#x27;ve snuck jokes into my writing, I&amp;#x27;ve found it causes confusion.&lt;p&gt;So I might have written this a slightly different way, something along the lines of: the community is structurally more equipped to deal with blatant than subtle fraud. Ironically, now that we&amp;#x27;re seeing more egregious examples of fraud, there&amp;#x27;s a better chance that things will get better; we would have tolerated the subtle types for a long time, as lots of people benefit from the status quo.&lt;p&gt;If the author were actually legitimately calling for more fraud, then I apologize for misunderstanding.</text></comment>
<story><title>Please commit more blatant academic fraud</title><url>https://jacobbuckman.com/2021-05-29-please-commit-more-blatant-academic-fraud/</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>tlb</author><text>The idea that a field can be reformed by making it worse until it suddenly faces a reckoning and emerges much better is ... I don&amp;#x27;t know where people keep getting the idea that this might work. It has never worked in any field ever in history.&lt;p&gt;The thing that can happen: fields gradually split into rigorous and non-rigorous camps. Like with evidence-based medicine, or chemistry&amp;#x2F;alchemy. Depending on the field, either might prevail in the market. Medical research and bridge-building are mostly rigorous, programming is mostly non-rigorous.&lt;p&gt;AI&amp;#x2F;ML has a range of rigor levels, from fairly good to total crap. I think people in the field have a reasonable idea which is which. It&amp;#x27;s frustrating to people outside the field that think they can just take the technique with highest reported performance numbers and expect good results.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>dalbasal</author><text>In politics and other areas, the concept is known as &amp;quot;accelerationism.&amp;quot;&lt;p&gt;It tends to be associated with political extremism... &amp;quot;bring on the revolution&amp;#x2F;war&amp;#x2F;etc.&amp;quot; As an angry or disillusioned response, I think it&amp;#x27;s a close relative of nihilism. Cover for being destructive.&lt;p&gt;That&amp;#x27;s not to say &amp;quot;worse before better&amp;quot; isn&amp;#x27;t a thing... it&amp;#x27;s just not a thing we can do usually.</text></comment>