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Comment by slg | Hacker News Reader

Your first comment was effectively "Everyone knows this person is a fraud and no one is willing to stand up and put a stop to it".

Your second comment was effectively "Well I don't know they are a fraud and I'm not going to be the one who upsets people by trying to put a stop to it".

I don't say this as a criticism of you. I say this a defense of the people you are criticizing. Stopping people like this takes a lot of work and often some personal risk. Most of us aren't willing to do it despite us pretending otherwise.

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>Stopping people like this takes a lot of work and often some personal risk.

I don't recall where I first heard it, but the principle that it takes 10x the amount of energy to refute bullshit as it does to generate it certainly seems to apply in this case.

Bullshit Asymmetry Principle.

https://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=bullshit%20a...

It is easier to fool people then to convince them they have been fooled - Mark Twain

And often it doesn't actually matter. How many times have you seen people who use citations and references get harassed by some bloviating hoard?

Reality is almost irrelevant in the face of ideology, dogma, and all the other forces that keep counterintuitive or uncomfortable reality out.

A post-doc of a collaborator of a professor of mine was once found to have doctored data. The professor and her collabs only found out when they looked at the images and found out that there were sections that seemed to have been copy/pasted. Getting the papers retracted was a gruelling process that (iirc) took over 3 years.

The people in charge were given evidence, face much less risk, and it's their job to put a stop to it. They deserve the criticism.

>The people in charge were given evidence, face much less risk, and it's their job to put a stop to it.

That is an awfully authoritative statement to make based off what OP shared.

But either way, this has been proven time and time again whether we are talking about simple corruption like OP mentioned or more serious forms of injustice. People will judge themselves based off motivations and others based off actions. We can excuse ourselves because of the personal inconvenience that acting will cause us. But other people don't get that luxury. They get criticized purely based off that lack of action because if we were in their situation surely we would do the right thing. Being honest about this is important step to actually fixing the system because we need to identify the motivations which lead to the lack of action in order to remove them and encourage action. Simply vilifying people for not acting accomplishes nothing.

> That is an awfully authoritative statement to make based off what OP shared.

Which part do you disagree with? Maybe the 'much' on much less risk?

'given evidence' is true unless OP made op the story. (And even if OP made up the story then we're judging fictional people and the judgements are still valid.)

I think 'less risk' goes part and parcel with being administration rather than someone lower rank reporting a problem.

And it seems clear to me that it's their job.

So, criticism. Which is not a particularly harsh outcome. And doesn't necessarily mean they made the wrong decision, but them providing a justification would be a good start.

Inaction is often excusable when it's not your job. It's always important to look at motivations, but vilification can also be appropriate when there's dereliction. Sometimes there are no significant motivations leading to lack of action, there's just apathy and people that shouldn't have been hired to the position.

>'given evidence' is true unless OP made op the story.

OP never mentioned evidence. People just "knew" this person was a fraud but there was no mention of the actual evidence of fraud. The closest thing to evidence is that "their work was terrible" but that isn't evidence of fraud.

>I think 'less risk' goes part and parcel with being administration rather than someone lower rank reporting a problem.

We have no idea the risks involved. It would be highly embarrassing for a prestigious school and/or instructor to admit that they admitted a fraud into their program. Maybe this isn't even the first time this has happened to these people. Would you want to be the person know for repeatedly being duped by frauds? Maybe that would that ruin your reputation more than looking the other way and letting this person fail somewhere else where you would not be directly tied to their downfall. It is also incredibly risky to punish this person without hard evidence as that can lead to a lawsuit.

These are not meant to be definitive statements. They are just hypothetical that show how we can't judge people's motivations without knowing a lot more about the situation.

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