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by tonyg 486 days ago
> Undermining the credibility of computer science research is the best possible outcome for the field, since the institution in its current form does not deserve the credibility that it has.

Horseshit. This might be true for AI research (and even there that's an awfully broad brush you're using, mate), but it's certainly not true for other areas of computer science.
2 comments
CJefferson 486 days ago
Is there a lot of good research in computer science, of course.

Is there even more stuff which really shouldn't be published, and has experiments which are abused to show off how great new technique A is, while hiding that was attempt 72 at making an experiment that showed A was great? Also of course.

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SirHumphrey 486 days ago
Maybe your lab is different (if you work in a research setting), but most of the researchers will readily admit that most of their research output is at least somewhat bull**. It's something that is trained in to people from high school research projects onwards - people judging your results usually do not have time or ability to research you work and even if they have they usually have much more importing things to do than check your mediocre results.

As a society, we have far too much trust in science, however any time this argument is brought up, we focus on conspiracy theorists who struggle with 100+ years old theories as if the visage of the public trust in science will change their mind, ignoring that any member of the public, who accidentally discovers the Jenga tower the science is built on (but hidden) will become much more likely to believe those charlatans in the future.

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tensor 486 days ago
Excuse me? Based on what? In my time in academia exactly zero researchers would claim that their work is somewhat bullshit.

As a society, there is laughably little support for science, instead the majority of policy and business decisions are based on fairy tales and snake oil. We need more trust in science.

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genewitch 486 days ago
As of this comment scroll location, there are at least three people that admitted to co-authiring a paper they knew was BS.

So you don't know anyone, but I can counter with those three anecdotes.

3>1

Qed I am right, statistically.

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