[a_throwaway_6]

My first instinct when hearing of accusations of academic misconduct is to ask who is making those accusations: is it someone whose opinions I can trust?

The author of the blog above has an About page where they introduce themselves as "a researcher with a background in Economics, Mathematics, and Cognitive Science". Instead of a list of academic achievements: publications, grants, chairs, awards, etc, as we would expect to see in a researcher's "about" page, the author continues their introduction with a few words on what they're "thinking about" at the moment and what their long-term goals are, then makes a peculiar plea:

  If you’re reading this and you do anything biology-related at all, I would
  love to talk to you and would especially appreciate you getting in touch.

Then the author lists their favourite TV shows, personal essays, interviews etc. All this does not make the author of the article sound like a trustworthy source, but rather as someone desperate for attention.

The next thing I usually look for in cases like this is whether the person accusing someone else of academic fraud has given an opportunity to the party they accuse to defend themselves. The author of this blog has not only not done that but is engaging in misleading tactics. The following text is in TFA:

  Also see UC Berkeley’s official response regarding this essay – all problems
  with the book I discovered are “minor”.

The sentence "UC Berkeley’s official response" links to the following URL:

https://yngve.hoiseth.net/articles/why-we-sleep-institutiona...

However, the linked resource is not "UC Berkeley's official response" at all, but rather a blog by a different blogger, Yngve Hoiseth, who claims they contacted someone -who is never named- at UC Berkeley about Alexey Guzey's post we are reading above. Yngve Hoiseth's blog itself claims to have uploaded "the entire exchange here", linking to the following URL:

https://yngve.hoiseth.net/why-we-sleep-institutional-failure...

Which is dead and has not been archived by archive.org.

All this makes the article above sound very difficult to take seriously. In all honesty, it sounds entirely like an attempt to kick shit up for the author's personal gratification. Or perhaps there is some strange ???-PROFIT scheme hidden somewhere in there, but even that is not particularlly interesting.

Posting under a throwaway because the article's author sounds desperate enough to engage in all sorts of internet attacks to deter critics.

[guzey]

The email exchange in question is contained in the post I link itself directly following the broken link: https://yngve.hoiseth.net/articles/why-we-sleep-institutiona... - kinda incredible to not have noticed it. The person from UC Berkeley is never named because, as Yngve notes right there as well: "Because this failure is UC Berkeley's more than any individual's, I have edited the exchange slightly by removing the names of their representatives."

[a_throwaway_6]

What is listed in the post you link are exerpts of the email conversation, selected by Yngve Hoiseth. The link I mention is broken should lead to the entire, unredacted, unexcerpted email conversation, but fails to do so. This makes it impossible to determine to what extent Yngve Hoiseth edited the email exchange to force his interpretation of the exchange on a reader.

Your post and Yngve Hoiseth's post claim that the email exchange presented in Yngve Hoiseth's post is an "official response" from UC Berkeley. To determine the veracity of this claim it is necessary to know who was contacted, in UC Berkeley.

The name of the person (as in first name and family name/s) is not necessary for this, but it is necessary to name their office. For example "dean of such-and-such" or "director of so-and-so". That this information is not provided makes the claim of an "official response" impossible to verify. For example, nobody can contact the person Yngve Hoiseth claims they have contacted, or the person currently holding the same office, and ask them to verify that they or their office have, indeed, been contacted by Yngve Hoiseth.

That, together with the absence of the entire conversation makes it impossible to know whether Yngve Hoiseth really did have this email exchange, to what extent they presented it fairly and to what extent what was said by the other person was edited.

The person Yngve Hoiseth claims to have contacted allegedly said the following:

  My understanding is that my university email communication is a matter of
  public record, and I try always to communicate with that standard in mind.
  There is no prohibition that I know of against publication of my emails with
  you, in other words. I would just ask that you contextualize my communications
  in a transparent and accurate way.

This is absolutely not what was done in Yngve Hoiseth's post and your linking to it claiming it is an "official response" to your post.

Assuming the exchange was real, it seems that the person at the other end didn't ask for their identity to be withheld for any reason. It sounds as if they fully expected for their identity to be made public instead. There seems to be no reason why Yngve Hoiseth's post ommits this detail.

Given all the above your post and Yngve Hoiseth's post are misleading and suggest an effort to misrepresent at the very least UC Berkeley's position.

[hntrader]

  "suggest an effort to misrepresent at the very least UC Berkeley's position."

This is a non-sequitur.

The decision to keep the identity of the contact anonymous and the presence of a dead link (when a slightly redacted version of the full conversation is still available) doesn't automatically suggest that they're trying to misrepresent UC Berkeley. What an unjustified stretch.

[a_throwaway_6]

You don't see any problem with someone selectively quoting from what they claim is "UC Berkeley's official position", while not pointing to an actual source of that "official position" in UC Berkeley itself, or the entire conversation?

How are we to know that Yngve Hoiseth did not make up the entire conversation, or that they didn't simply choose the passages of the email exchange that support their view, only?

If this is an "official" exchange, why the lack of transparency?

The lack of transparency "suggests an effort to misrpresent".

[hntrader]

It ideally should've been made clear that the veracity is unconfirmed, but aren't there more charitable interpretations for why it wasn't?

[a_throwaway_6]

I could perhaps see a charitable interpretation if the author of the blog post (Guzey) did not accuse the author of the book (Walker) of "deliberate data manipulation", gave the opportunity to the target of the accusation to explain himself, did not misrepresent himself as a "researcher" (pointing to his blog posts as examples of his "research"), did not link to a friend's blog post for "UC Berkeley’s official response", etc, etc.

The author of the blog post is not leaving a lot of room for charitable interpretations.

But in any case, what charitable interpretation do you propose?

[a_throwaway_6]

Also, since I have you here, can I please enquire as to what you mean when you say that you are a "researcher" in your about page?

[guzey]

It means that I do "research". e.g.

- https://guzey.com/how-life-sciences-actually-work/ - https://guzey.com/science/sleep/14-day-sleep-deprivation-sel...

[a_throwaway_6]

What you link to is not "research" but "opinion" published in your blog. It identifies you as a "blogger", but not as a "researcher".

At most I could see what you have written as "study" of others' research but presenting yourself as a "researcher" and what you do as "research" is misrepresenting yourself and comes across as an attempt to claim for yourself greater expertise than you seem to have.

You should make clear your level of experitse and your knowledge about different matters that you like to discuss in your blog.

[guzey]

How do you define "research" and "opinion"?

[a_throwaway_6]

I do not care about splitting hairs. A person legitimately calling themselves a researcher would also not need to do so. They would simply point to their research, not to blog posts. Anyone can write a blog post and publish it on their blog.

If you are the only person calling yourself a "researcher" (or it's only you and your dear friends and blog readers) then you are misrepresenting yourself.

[karaterobot]

> My first instinct when hearing of accusations of academic misconduct is to ask who is making those accusations: is it someone whose opinions I can trust?

What does it matter who is making the accusations if they are verifiable?

[a_throwaway_6]

It matters because I don't have the knowledge to verify the accusations and the fact that the person that makes accusations of academic fraud is misrepresenting himself as a "researcher" means that they are not a trustworthy source of academic criticism.

[hntrader]

But you do have the knowledge to verify some of the accusations, because much of them don't require any knowledge to verify.

He's often just pointing out logical internal contradictions in the text (point 2) or lies/mistakes about what the author claimed a source said when in fact the source said no such thing (point 4 about WHO and point 5 about NSF).

Also, I don't agree that he's misrepresenting himself. He didn't claim that he had an academic appointment. He claimed that he's a researcher, of which professional academics are a strict subset. After reading his excellent article, I'm in agreement with him that this is a suitable label.

Your other criticisms of his About page are just odd. So what if he puts his hobbies on there, or is reaching out to biology people? That's normal for an About page.

[a_throwaway_6]

Unfortunately, I have no way to tell what is a "logical internal contradiction in the text", because I am not knowledgeable in the subject matter of the text and so cannot follow its internal logic.

I disagree that a "researcher" is a loose label that anyone can assign to themselves without qualifications. For example, a reiki healer could claim themselves to be a "researcher" but this would be misleading.

Writing an article arguing that an author of a book has perpetrated academic fraud is evidence against any claim of careful research. Claming academic fraud is really the nuclear option. The first thing to do when one finds fault with someone else's work is to contact the other person and ask for clarification. If things get to the point where one feels the only way forward is to "go public" with an exposition of the other person's work faults, then one should include the other person's explanations or reactions, if any were given, or details of the attempts made to contact that other person.

As I say above, this was not done to any reasonable degree and the only attempt at anything like it is misleading and links to an email conversation claimed to be an "official response" by UC Berkeley (rather than the book's author) but that is impossible to verify.

The overall impression is of a one-sided argument, lack of transparency, attempts at deception and misrepresentation and overall disreputable and underhanded tactics. Such actions by the article author do not suggest they are a "researcher" of any repute, except maybe in their imagination.

[hntrader]

The contradiction pointed out in the article (section 2) doesn't require domain expertise to understand. Basic comprehension will suffice for that.

The misquoting of sources doesn't require domain expertise to understand.

The misleading way that data is presented in graphics doesn't require domain expertise to understand.

The author's credibility is not relevant when the claims are easily falsifiable by yourself.

You should read Gelman's more positive take on the article. He's someone that's quite credentialed, if that's what you're looking for.

  "I disagree that a "researcher" is a loose label"

It is a loose label that's commonplace in industry.

Researcher isn't synonymous with academic.

  "The first thing to do when one finds fault with someone else's work is to contact the other person"

I agree with what you're saying here. It would've been better to contact him privately first.

[a_throwaway_6]

"Researcher" isn't synonymous with "academic", but it's not synonymous with "blogger" either.

Part of my point is that an actual researcher, i.e. a professional, would have followed due procedure, contacting the author of the book privately and asking for clarifications, and generally giving the other person an opportunity to examine and respond to criticism.

Academics criticise each other's work constantly but this is acceptable because the purpose is to improve one another's work, not to tarnish each other's reputation and drag their name through the mud.

As things are, it is clear to me the blog post above is meant to kick up an internet storm with accusations of "deliberate data manipulation" and the misleading statements about an "official response" from Berkeley etc. These are the actions of a scandal-monger, not a researcher.