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The AI research paper was real. The "co-author" wasn't:
David Cox, the co-director of a prestigious artificial intelligence lab in Cambridge, Massachusetts, was scanning an online computer science bibliography in December when he noticed something odd—his name listed as an author alongside three researchers in China whom he didn't know on two papers he didn't recognize.
At first, he didn't think much of it. The name Cox isn't uncommon, so he figured there must be another David Cox doing AI research. "Then I opened up the PDF and saw my own picture looking back at me," Cox says. "It was unbelievable."
It isn't clear how prevalent this kind of academic fraud may be or why someone would list as a co-author someone not involved in the research. By checking other papers written by the same Chinese authors, WIRED found a third example, where the photo and biography of an MIT researcher were listed under a fictitious name.
It may be an effort to increase the chances of publication or gain academic prestige, Cox says. He says he has heard rumors of academics in China being offered a financial reward for publishing with researchers from prestigious Western institutions.
Whatever the reason, it highlights weaknesses in academic publishing, according to Cox and others. It also reflects a broader lack of rules around the publishing of papers in AI and computer science especially, where many papers are posted online without review beforehand.
"This stuff wouldn't be so harmful if it didn't undermine public trust in peer review," Cox says. "It really shouldn't be able to happen."
(Score: -1, Troll) by Anonymous Coward on Monday February 22 2021, @05:11PM (3 children)
This is sophistry at best, and dangerously manipulative of words at worst.
There is not a universal single idea. Much like I trust an airplane pilot to fly me safely but would not trust them to perform surgery on me, science has multiple spheres of trust.
In this case, there is the idea of trusting or not trusting the findings, and trusting or not trusting the process. Cox is saying that this undermines the trust in the process, which is potentially dangerous in that it suggests "science is all a bunch of made up stuff anyway, so Ph.D. in medicine knows less than my cousin Suzy, who treated malaria using bleach."
I'll go one step further and say that not trusting findings, while valuable, can also be taken too far, too. "We haven't proven the world is round, I don't trust those findings!" There is skepticism, but there has to be a limit to that as well.
(Score: 2) by Arik on Tuesday February 23 2021, @03:47AM (2 children)
No. Science is in fact a sphere of /distrust./ Spheres of trust are religious artifacts. Science means distrust. Distrust your theory, criticize it. Distrust your results, replicate them. Distrust everything - test everything.
The moment you enter a 'sphere of trust' you have thereby left the 'sphere of science' behind in the rear-view.
"Ph.D. in medicine knows less than my cousin Suzy, who treated malaria using bleach."
Whether she has a Ph.D. or not is irrelevant. Suzy trusts the theory; isn't your researcher smart enough to doubt it?
If not, you might as well give her salary to Suzy instead.
If laughter is the best medicine, who are the best doctors?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday February 23 2021, @06:43PM (1 child)
This is patently false. Evidence: How many people are trying to calculate the diameter of the Earth, because we can't trust what others have said in the past? How many people are measuring the strength of gravity, or indeed that gravity exists? If you went to a research board suggesting an experiment to determine the molecular formula for water, you'd be laughed out of the room... and indeed, how could you even know there is a molecular formula at all?
The extreme https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Philosophical_skepticism [wikipedia.org] being put forward here is a gross oversimplification... impractical at best and disingenuous at worse. It is similar to saying you would never cross any bridge that you didn't personally build and test because "the person who built it may have had malice intent."
Yes, in "trust but verify" you need to verify, but that doesn't mean you never trust.
(Score: 2) by Arik on Tuesday February 23 2021, @10:33PM
You couldn't be more wrong. The size of the Earth has been the subject of /numerous/ calculations and experiments just over the past couple of centuries alone. Every few years someone does it again, a little differently, and claims to have produced the most accurate estimate yet. Then the critics get their say, and if it stands up to criticism people start using it. That's how science works. Exactly the way you say it doesn't work.
If laughter is the best medicine, who are the best doctors?