Comment by pragmomm | Hacker News Reader

Comment by pragmomm | Hacker News Reader

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You should also understand that there are external forces here, like state sponsorships that monetarily rewards for scientists to simply file enough research findings.

The startling rise in the publication of sham science papers has its roots in China, where young doctors and scientists seeking promotion were required to have published scientific papers. Shadow organisations – known as “paper mills” – began to supply fabricated work for publication in journals there. https://www.theguardian.com/science/2024/feb/03/the-situatio...

The number of retractions issued for research articles in 2023 has passed 10,000 — smashing annual records — as publishers struggle to clean up a slew of sham papers and peer-review fraud. Among large research-producing nations, Saudi Arabia, Pakistan, Russia and China have the highest retraction rates over the past two decades, a Nature analysis has found. https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-023-03974-8

That's why a recent article https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41607430, where the measurement of China leads world in 57 of 64 critical technologies was based on number of journal citations, was laughable.

Talking with some Chinese colleagues in the past, they were talking about having a 'base' salary which was not enough to have a family on. For every published paper they'd get a one-time payment. So you'd have to get a bunch of papers out every year just to survive; no wonder people start to invent papers.

Of course the same thing is happening in the 'Western' world too, with a publication ratchet going on. New hire has 50 papers out? OK! The next pool of potential hires has 50, 55, 52 papers out, so obviously you take the 55 papers-person. You want outstanding people! Then the next hire needs 60 papers. And so on.

...an effect known as "wonkflation".

I think there are maybe two separate issues here.

Paper mills are bad but mostly from the perspective of academic institutions trying to verify people's credentials/resumes. Paper mills aren't really that much of a concern in the sense of published research results being false in the way the article is talking about because people aren't really reading the papers they publish. In that sense it doesn't really matter if there are places where non-scientists need to get one paper published to check some box to get a promotion, because nobody is really considering those papers part of established scientific knowledge.

On the other hand, scientists intentionally (by actually falsifying data) or unintentionally (as a result of statistical effects of what is researched and what is published) publishing bogus results in journals that are considered legitimate which aren't paper mills actually causes real harm as a result of people believing the bogus results, and unfortunately the pressures that cause that (publishing papers quickly, getting publishable results, etc.) exist everywhere, and definitely not just in China, nor did they originate in China.

I think you're making the wrong distinction here, it's not about whether the result came from a known or unknown paper mill in that country. It's about whether there is a culture of fraud and fakeness that permeates that country and that scientific community. And there is certainly a culture of fraud and fakeness in China, from tofu dreg buildings, to fake food and gutter oil, to drugged olympic athletes, to fudged economic numbers.

Let me give just one example of how prevalent the culture of fakeness has pervaded through China. Nowadays, because the economic decline, people are eating out less, and restaurants are getting less and less traffic. Therefore, they needed to cut costs. So some restaurants started using pre-packaged food, and just heat those up in the microwave and serve them up as cooked dishes. Because other restaurants couldn't survive without doing the same cost-cutting behavior, they've all started doing the same things. Thus, most restaurants in China are now serving pre-packaged food. And there's a backlash from consumers, so now even less people eat out. And then restaurants started using expired pre-packaged food. Oh, and because expired pre-packaged food has a tendency to cause diarrhea, some restaurants in China have started adding Loperamide into the dishes to prevent diarrhea.

Fake it until you make it out of China mentality.

Since when is this kind of blatant racism acceptable on this site? “Gutter oil”? Wtf is wrong with you?

still happening in China in 2024

Foreigner caught a Chinese couple scooping up gutter oil https://www.reddit.com/r/interestingasfuck/comments/1eo2wmy/...

There are 1.4 billion people in China. You’re showing me a couple of people doing who knows what in a clip of unknowable provenance. This is not the hill to die on, my man

Obviously there are way more occurrences than this video. Also, the lady in the video acted like nothing was wrong and admitted no shame, which means there is a culture/common practice of using gutter oil.

Wikipedia says that today this carries the penalty of decades in prison and a suspended death sentence. I very much doubt it’s as prevalent a practice as you suggest. To suggest that this crime is a “normal part” of Chinese culture is simply wrong.

There was no penalty/death sentence for the recent public incident of the oil tank truck that was found transporting both toxic industrial oil and cooking oil, without cleaning in between. Which apparently was a wide-spread practice, as confirmed by netizens. Instead the officials just hand waved and said it's an isolated incident, and they're looking into it. And no news of it since.

Restaurants in china are legally required to use oil traps like that and the oil must be removed. It is usually reprocessed to be used for industrial purposes. The fact that those people were possibly possibly illegally collecting it to sell to a company that reprocesses it does not at all mean that it's going to be used as "gutter oil" in restaurants any more than someone collecting empty cans from a trashcan means they're going to reuse those cans in a restaurant.

Gutter oil used to be a major issue in China but the Chinese government cracked down on it a lot a few years ago.

I recommend watching this video about it: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G43wJ7YyWzM

They said "cultural", you decided to insert "race", presumably to stoke more outrage.

This is what happens when Silicon Valley execs, trying to make their employees more replaceable, call for more STEM education; suddenly, tons of funding and institutional resources go into STEM research with no real reason or motivation or material for this research. It's like an gerbil wheel: once you get on the ride, once you get tricked into becoming a "scientist" just because a few billionaires wanted to cut slightly thicker margins, there's no stop. Bullshit your way through undergraduate education, bullshit your way through a PhD; finally, if you're good enough at making up statistics, you get a job training a whole host of other bullshitters to ride the gravy train.

> tons of funding and institutional resources go into STEM research with no real reason or motivation or material for this research.

I do believe that there exists an insane amount of (STEM) questions where there exist very good reasons to do research on - much, much more than is currently done.

---

And by the way:

> This is what happens when Silicon Valley execs, trying to make their employees more replaceable, call for more STEM education

More STEM education does not make the employees more replaceable. The reason why the Silicon Valley execs call for more STEM education is rather that

- they want to save money training the employees,

- they want to save money doing research (let rather the taxpayer pay for the research).

> - they want to save money training the employees,

So what you're saying is that they push for STEM education to make their employees more replaceable...?

> So what you're saying is that they push for STEM education to make their employees more replaceable...?

A general rule of thumb is rather that better education and/or specialized knowledge makes employees nore productive, but also less replaceable.

>less replaceable

Only when they are the only ones that have that knowledge, not when teaching it becomes rote.

A decent rule if considered in a vacuum, but perhaps you missed some necessary context related to this particular discussion?

> - they want to save money training the employees,

repeating what user u/randomdata said already,

> - they want to save money training the employees,

> - they want to save money doing research (let rather the taxpayer pay for the research).

means they want to offload costs to the public in order to increase profits, which is what I said above.

Offloading costs is a different thing than making employees more replaceable.

Employees are more expensive because they are less replaceable. A company must invest a certain amount of money into labor to make a profit; however, if that company learns it can invest less money into endeavours to make the same profit, then it can decrease the amount invested into labor. The only way to do so is to create some sort of technology, or social relation, that makes the price of individual workers cheaper. Thus, any reduction of cost of labor that increases profit is something that makes employees more replaceable.

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