Mind Matters Natural and Artificial Intelligence News and Analysis

CategoryPeer Review

soul-geometry-composition-stockpack-adobe-stock
Soul Geometry Composition
Type
post
Author
Denyse O'Leary
Date
September 20, 2023
Categorized
Neuroscience, Panpsychism, Peer Review, Philosophy of Mind
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Leading Consciousness Theory Slammed as “Pseudoscience.” Huh?

Integrated Information Theory’s panpsychist leanings are the 124 neuroscientist critics’ real target
Denyse O'Leary
September 20, 2023
5
Neuroscience, Panpsychism, Peer Review, Philosophy of Mind

Since last week, 124 neuroscientists, including some really big names, have signed an online letter,” to be published in a journal, denouncing a leading theory of consciousness, Integrated Information Theory (IIT), as “pseudoscience.” If you don’t follow these controversies, IIT may not immediately ring a bell. But the theory featured in popular science news earlier this summer when dualist philosopher David Chalmers won a 25-year bet with IIT neuroscientist Christof Koch. He had bet that a “consciousness spot” would not be found in the brain and it was not. But they were both good sports about it and, as agreed, Koch bought Chalmers a case of fine wine. But the signatories to the letter are in no mood for parties. Read More ›

doctor-defibrillating-critical-patient-in-hospital-stockpack-adobe-stock
Doctor Defibrillating Critical Patient In Hospital
Type
post
Author
Denyse O'Leary
Date
September 17, 2023
Categorized
Media, Medicine and Health, Peer Review, Philosophy of Mind, Science
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Near-Death Experience Study: Brain Is Active After Death

Science media are making surprisingly few efforts to attack or explain away the team’s findings
Denyse O'Leary
September 17, 2023
6
Media, Medicine and Health, Peer Review, Philosophy of Mind, Science

A recent study led by near-death researcher Sam Parnia of the consciousness of patients whose hearts have stopped is providing more baseline data about the circumstances under which many near-death experiences occur. A team at the NYU Grossman School of Medicine, working with 25 hospitals mostly in the US and Britain, studied the “lucid death experiences” that can occur when heart attack survivors are apparently unconscious. Of 567 patients, only 53 (9.3%) survived. Most of them were flatlined, meaning that they had no brain activity at a certain point. Sometimes brain activity was restored as late as up to an hour later. Only 28 of them completed interviews. According to the media release for the open-access study, “Four in 10 Read More ›

safety inspection clipboard
Preforming a pre-trip inspection on a truck,Concept preventive maintenance truck checklist,Truck driver holding clipboard with checking of truck,spot focus.
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post
Author
Denyse O'Leary
Date
August 11, 2023
Categorized
Peer Review, Philosophy, Science
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Science Is Self-correcting? Time for a Reality Check!

In the wake of the Stanford scandal, the reasons why science often ISN’T self-correcting are attracting much more attention
Denyse O'Leary
August 11, 2023
5
Peer Review, Philosophy, Science

Many of us grew up with the claim “Science — unlike religion — is self-correcting!” Why so many science boosters dragged religion into it was never clear to me. It sounded too much like saying “The chemistry department, unlike the (stupid) philosophy department, is self-correcting!” Oh? Well, let’s see then. Self-absorbed nonsense often followed, which only heightened suspicion. The recent resignation of neuroscientist Marc Tessier-Lavigne, president of Stanford University, over yet another peer-reviewed research scandal has forced science thinkers to accept a, perhaps unaccustomed, moment of serious self-reflection. Here’s a sampling from recent news, first from veteran whistleblower Ivan Oransky: You may have thought, given the voluminous coverage of this case, that Tessier-Lavigne’s defenestration demonstrates such failures are highly unusual Read More ›

people-connected-people-by-lines-cooperation-and-collaboration-news-gossip-spread-teamwork-society-concept-social-science-relationships-marketing-dissemination-of-trends-and-information-stockpack-adobe-stock
People connected people by lines. Cooperation and collaboration, news gossip spread. Teamwork. Society concept. Social science relationships. Marketing, dissemination of trends and information
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post
Author
Denyse O'Leary
Date
July 11, 2023
Categorized
Ethics, Peer Review
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Is There a Boom in Research Dishonesty?

Or do some academics just feel sure they won’t get caught? Or that, if they do, it somehow doesn’t matter?
Denyse O'Leary
July 11, 2023
5
Ethics, Peer Review

What to make of this news stream? ● Distinguished Professor Francesca Gino of Harvard Business School was recently accused by other academics of falsifying data in a number of studies, including one on dishonesty, where she was a co-author, Professors Joseph Simmons, Uri Simonsohn and Leif Nelson of University of Pennsylvania, Escade Business School in Spain, and University of California, Berkeley, respectively, accused Gino of the fraud on their blog Data Colada. “Specifically, we wrote a report about four studies for which we accumulated the strongest evidence of fraud,” they wrote, stating they shared their concerns with Harvard Business School. Therese Joffre, “Harvard ethics professor allegedly fabricated multiple behavioral science studies” at The College Fix, June 28, 2023 Gino, currently Read More ›

health-care-researchers-working-in-life-science-laboratory-medical-science-technology-research-work-for-test-a-vaccine-coronavirus-covid-19-vaccine-protection-cure-treatment-stockpack-adobe-stock
Health care researchers working in life science laboratory, medical science technology research work for test a vaccine, coronavirus covid-19 vaccine protection cure treatment
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post
Author
News
Date
January 11, 2023
Categorized
Peer Review, Philosophy, Science
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Gloomy News from a Nature Article: Is the End of Science Near?

A study in the premier science journal notes the long term falling off of truly original findings, as opposed to endless citations of others’ findings
News
January 11, 2023
9
Peer Review, Philosophy, Science

Science writer Tibi Puiu reports on new findings that reflect what many today, have begun to suspect: Over the past few decades, the number of science and technology research papers published has soared, rising at a rate of nearly 10% each year. In the biomedical field alone, there are more than a million papers pouring into the PubMed database each year, or around two studies per minute… The new study revealed that the “disruptiveness” of contemporary science has decreased, rendering ever diminishing returns. In this particular context, authors define disruptiveness as the degree to which a study departs from previous literature and renders it obsolete. In other words, a highly disruptive study is one that completely changes the way we Read More ›

evolution-theory-on-old-paper-stockpack-adobe-stock
Evolution theory on old paper
Type
post
Author
Denyse O'Leary
Date
December 21, 2022
Categorized
Ethics, Peer Review, Philosophy, Politics, Psychology
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When Scholars Simply Don’t Want To Believe Something Obvious…

… they are very good at developing clever arguments to avoid seeing it
Denyse O'Leary
December 21, 2022
8
Ethics, Peer Review, Philosophy, Politics, Psychology

This article was originally published in Salvo 62 (Fall 2022) under the title “The Whitewashing.” In Hitler’s Ethic: The Nazi Pursuit of Evolutionary Progress (Palgrave Macmillan, 2009), University of California historian Richard Weikart demonstrated painstakingly that the Nazis had developed an ethic based largely on applying Darwinian evolution principles to government. Scholars have since tried hard to obscure the connection, most likely because they believe in Darwinism and see it as science. Any suggestion that the Nazis were avid Darwinists too is unseemly and must be refuted by any and all means. With racism very much in current news, Weikart has focusing in Darwinian Racism: How Darwinism Influenced Hitler, Nazism, and White Nationalism (Discovery Institute Press, 2022) on the way Read More ›

magazines-stockpack-adobe-stock
Magazines
Type
post
Author
Robert J. Marks
Date
December 7, 2022
Categorized
Peer Review
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How the Inflation of Journal Citations Impacts Academia

Adjusted for inflation, a citation today is worth about half what it was ten years ago
Robert J. Marks
December 7, 2022
9
Peer Review

Over 30 years ago, I coauthored a book, Neural Smithing, on training artificial neural networks. In 2021 it was cited 112 times — more than in any previous year. Why? I wish the only reason was that my book is a classic and has stood the test of time. But the book was on training neural networks and a lot has happened in that field over the last 30 years. Another, more substantial reason, I’m afraid, is citation inflation. Stated simply, there are many more citations today than a few years ago and my book is catching its fair share. Monetary inflation can be corrected to tell us the value of a year 2000 dollar in 2022. Likewise, citation inflation Read More ›

excalibur-in-graduation-hat-on-stone-at-sunset-day-congratulate-the-graduates-or-education-congratulation-or-academic-freedom-concept-3d-illustration-stockpack-adobe-stock
Excalibur in graduation hat on stone at sunset day. Congratulate the graduates or education congratulation or academic freedom concept. 3D illustration
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post
Author
Denyse O'Leary
Date
October 27, 2022
Categorized
Censorship, Peer Review, Politics, Science
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Stanford’s Academic Freedom Conference Slammed by Academics

Opponents are angered by the fact that, although the conference will be live-streamed, it is by invitation only and no media are allowed
Denyse O'Leary
October 27, 2022
6
Censorship, Peer Review, Politics, Science

Stanford Business School’s academic freedom conference, starting next week and headlined by tech entrepreneur Peter Thiel, is coming under fire. The organizers argue, Faculty organizers of the conference, from Stanford and several other institutions, promote it as follows: “Academic freedom, open inquiry, and freedom of speech are under threat as they have not been for decades. Visibly, academics are ‘canceled,’ fired, or subject to lengthy disciplinary proceedings in response to academic writing or public engagement. Less visibly, funding agencies, university bureaucracies, hiring procedures, promotion committees, professional organizations, and journals censor some kinds of research or demand adherence to political causes. Many parts of universities have become politicized or have turned into ideological monocultures, excluding people, ideas, or kinds of work Read More ›

Statistics Carlos Muza on Unsplash 84523
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post
Author
Jeffrey Funk and Gary Smith
Date
October 4, 2022
Categorized
Economics, Education, Peer Review
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The Hyper-Specialization of University Researchers

So many papers are published today in increasingly narrow specialties that, if there is still a big picture, hardly anyone can see it
Jeffrey Funk and Gary Smith
October 4, 2022
5
Economics, Education, Peer Review

The Bible warns that, “Of making many books there is no end; and much study is a weariness of the flesh.” Nowadays, the endless making of books is dwarfed by the relentless firehose of academic research papers. A 2010 study published in the British Medical Journal reported that the U.S. National Library of Medicine includes 113,976 papers on echocardiography — which would weary the flesh of any newly credentialed doctor specializing in echocardiography: We assumed that he or she could read five papers an hour (one every 10 minutes, followed by a break of 10 minutes) for eight hours a day, five days a week, and 50 weeks a year; this gives a capacity of 10000 papers in one year. Read More ›

deepfake-concept-matching-facial-movements-with-a-different-face-of-another-person-face-swapping-or-impersonation-stockpack-adobe-stock.jpg
Deepfake concept matching facial movements with a different face of another person. Face swapping or impersonation.
Type
post
Author
News
Date
May 27, 2022
Categorized
Ethics, Machine Learning, Peer Review
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The Threat That Deepfakes Pose to Science Journals

Image manipulation has been a problem for decades but convincing deepfakes could magnify the problem considerably
News
May 27, 2022
5
Ethics, Machine Learning, Peer Review

When a team of researchers at Xiamen University decided to create and test deepfakes of conventional types of images in science journals, they came up with a sobering surprise. Their deepfakes were easy to create and hard to detect. Generating fake photographs in this way, the researchers suggest, could allow miscreants to publish research papers without doing any real research. Bob Yirka, “Computer scientists suggest research integrity could be at risk due to AI generated imagery” at Tech Explore (May 25, 2022) They created the deepfakes in a conventional way by starting with a competition between two powerful computer systems: To demonstrate the ease with which fake research imagery could be generated, the researchers generated some of their own using Read More ›

Usain_Bolt_winning
Type
post
Author
Gary Smith
Date
February 23, 2022
Categorized
Peer Review, Science
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The Brady Bunch – Why Research Should Be Guided By Common Sense

Do our names really influence our choice in profession or the way our lives play out?
Gary Smith
February 23, 2022
5
Peer Review, Science

The credibility of scientific research is undermined by scientists torturing and mining data in a tenacious search for media-friendly results. Media-friendly findings tend to be entertaining, provocative, and surprising, and there is a good reason why they are surprising – they are wrong. Here is an example from BMJ, a top-tier medical journal. A paper with the alluring title, “The Brady Bunch?,” investigated “nominative determinism,” the idea that our surnames influence our choice of professions. With my name being Smith, I might have been predestined to choose to be a blacksmith or silversmith. That didn’t happen, but a newspaper article did find “a dermatologist called Rash, a rheumatologist named Knee, and a psychiatrist named Couch.” The authors of the BMJ Read More ›

woman-sleep-on-the-bed-turns-off-the-alarm-clock-wake-up-at-the-morning-selective-focus-stockpack-adobe-stock
Woman sleep on the bed turns off the alarm clock wake up at the morning, Selective focus.
Type
post
Author
Gary Smith
Date
January 31, 2022
Categorized
Neuroscience, Peer Review, Science
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Get Your 8 (or 5?) Hours of Sleep

Data misrepresentation may win you big gigs, but it makes a bad name for scientists
Gary Smith
January 31, 2022
7
Neuroscience, Peer Review, Science

Matthew Walker is a professor of neuroscience and psychology and founder of the Center for Human Sleep Science at the University of California, Berkeley. He has become famous for his book and a TED talk promoting the importance of sleep for health and performance. He even got a job at Google as a “sleep scientist.” Walker has a receptive audience because he is entertaining and his arguments make sense. In one of his books, Walker used a graph similar to the figure below to show that a study done by other researchers had found that adolescent athletes who sleep more are less likely to be injured. The figure is compelling, but there are several potential problems. The hours-of-sleep data were based on 112 responses to an online Read More ›

portrait-of-a-beautiful-lion-lion-in-the-dark-stockpack-adobe-stock
Portrait of a Beautiful lion, lion in the dark
Type
post
Author
Jonathan Bartlett
Date
January 25, 2022
Categorized
Peer Review, Science
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Will the Real “Predatory Journal” Please Stand Up?

Large publishers serve themselves by painting "predatory journals" with a broad brush
Jonathan Bartlett
January 25, 2022
5
Peer Review, Science

The scientific publishing industry has been on a hunt for what it calls “predatory journals.” They want to make sure that all scientific publications occur in “legitimate” and “reputable” journals. Additionally, they encourage scholars to avoid “predatory” journals which are there merely to enrich themselves by having you pay for access. While I agree with these ideas in principle, I’ve noticed more and more that the way that these principles are applied has been, well, incredibly self-serving for the journals. To begin with, let’s look at a commentary on predatory journals published in 2019 in the journal Nature: Predatory journals are a global threat. They accept articles for publication — along with authors’ fees — without performing promised quality checks for issues such Read More ›

many-assorted-old-books-lays-in-the-stacks-as-background-front-view-close-up-stockpack-adobe-stock
Many assorted old books lays in the stacks as background front view close up
Type
post
Author
Jonathan Bartlett
Date
December 13, 2021
Categorized
Peer Review
Tagged

Will the Sokal Hoaxes Worsen the Academic Echo Chamber?

When only mainstream thinking is allowed, insularity and echo chambers are the result
Jonathan Bartlett
December 13, 2021
4
Peer Review

The latest spate of academic hoaxes, which includes not only the latest Sokal hoax, but also fake papers being published in journals such as the Arabian Journal of Geosciences, is a major cause for concern. While the hoaxes themselves are problematic, what is likely to be worse is the ongoing fallout for researchers and new ideas. Academics has long had a problem of being insular. Many papers are published on the basis of your status in academics, not the quality of the paper itself. This is not to say that the papers didn’t legitimately pass peer review (though that is questionable in some cases), but rather that the editor decides which papers are “worthy” of peer review based on the editor’s knowledge Read More ›

bulls-eyes-and-head-close-up-black-and-white-photo-of-a-bull-stockpack-adobe-stock
Bull's eyes and head close-up, black and white photo of a bull.
Type
post
Author
Jonathan Bartlett
Date
December 6, 2021
Categorized
Peer Review, Science
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Be On the Lookout for More Sokal Hoaxes

If you spot a Sokal hoax, let us know by tagging @cnaintelligence on Twitter
Jonathan Bartlett
December 6, 2021
4
Peer Review, Science

In a previous article, we noted that a group of researchers have been testing the rigor of social science journals by submitting fake articles and data in order to demonstrate problems in these branches of academics. These hoaxes, known as Sokal hoaxes (named after the original hoaxer, Alan Sokal), have now begun their third round, with the first detected paper in the journal Higher Education Quarterly. The paper, “Donor money and the academy: Perceptions of undue donor pressure in political science, economics, and philosophy,” has now been retracted, but it looks like this is not quite the end of the matter. The Chronicle of Higher Education managed to get in contact with the Sokal hoaxers. While their identities are anonymous, they responded to emails sent to the Read More ›

black bull
Portrait of bull in profile
Type
post
Author
Jonathan Bartlett
Date
December 2, 2021
Categorized
Peer Review, Science
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Are Sokal Hoaxes Really Helping Reform Science?

The evidence is mixed. The current prank on Higher Education Quarterly prompts some questions
Jonathan Bartlett
December 2, 2021
6
Peer Review, Science
It happened. Again. In 1996, physicist Alan Sokal submitted a mostly-nonsense paper to the journal Social Text. The purpose? To show that the social sciences, especially the critical theorists, were not intellectually rigorous. His paper, “Transgressing the Boundaries: Towards a Transformative Hermeneutics of Quantum Gravity,” was written so that anyone who was familiar with quantum gravity would know that it was a joke. Therefore, when it was accepted, it was obvious that no rigorous review process was in place. The journal apparently just accepted anything that sounded “intellectual-ish” and conformed to the editors’ idea of what scholarship looked like. It became known as the Sokal hoax. In 2017, a group of researchers began a similar hoax, later tagged as Sokal Squared. The goal, again, was to show that what the authors call “grievance studies” are undermining real scholarship by allowing nonsense to pass as scholarship. They managed to get several of their fake papers published, for example, Human reactions to rape culture and queer performativity at urban dog parks in Portland, Oregon (May 22, 2018). In fact, for some of the papers that hadn’t been published by the time the experiment ended, the reviewers requested more outlandishness. That brings us to the present day. The education journal Higher Education Quarterly,” which is run by Wiley (a major academic publisher), published a new paper titled “Donor money and the academy: Perceptions of undue donor pressure in political science, economics, and philosophy.” If you take the alleged names of its authors, who cannot be traced to any institution of higher education, “Sage Owens” and “Kal Avers-Lynde III,” the initials spell out: S.O.K.A.L. III It is unclear at this writing what this third iteration of the Sokal Hoaxes is trying to prove. At Power Line, Steven Hayward suggests that the overall goal is to show that any paper can be published if it stokes the biases of leftist editors. If so, the hoaxers have pushed the right buttons: the Koch Brothers, the Federalist Society, right-wing interference… The problem? As search has demonstrated, the funders they study don’t actually fund the research they are studying and some of the organizations have been defunct through the entire period of study. One of them appears entirely fictitious. While we still don’t know who wrote “SOKAL III” or why, I think it is good to take a moment and reflect on academic hoaxes in general, and what they indicate. The goal of the hoaxers is to demonstrate that critical theory and “grievance studies” journals are only pseudo-academic. They want to show that obviously wrong papers get through as long as they conform to the style and expectations of the journal. So did these hoaxers succeed in their aim? To begin with, I should say that it is not the job of an editor or reviewer to catch falsified data. Journals assume that data associated with an article is legitimate and was legitimately obtained. Now, there are times when data is obviously wrong, and a worthwhile editor or reviewer should catch that. However, it is not the job of the reviewers to verify or repeat the experiment. They trust the reporting and merely make sure that the reasoning about the data is correct. Therefore, a proper hoax must illustrate more than just acceptance of falsified data. It has to illustrate acceptance of wrong reasoning about that data. Or, at minimum, the data must be so obviously wrong that any worthwhile reviewer would be able to spot it. However, there are other requirements of a proper experiment that the “Sokal squared” hoaxers seem to have left out. In order to show that the social science journals they targeted are more problematic than science journals, they would have needed a control group. Note that none of the Sokal hoaxers tried submitting nonsense to a science journal. Even other Darwinists often complain about “just-so” stories in evolutionary biology, and especially in evolutionary psychology. So why did the hoaxers not dream up an equivalently outrageous just-so biology story to see if it would pass peer review? Were they afraid to know the results? History says that, as long as you are proposing an evolutionary “just so” story, there is almost no idea that is too absurd to be published in even the topmost journals. The original Sokal hoax, too, had problems. The journal it was submitted to, Social Text, was not a peer-reviewed journal. In other words, the journal was not even claiming to have the same scholarship standards as science journals. In fact, they were relying on Sokal himself to provide the expertise on physics, which was the primary reason for including him. So, while I am in basic agreement with the hoaxers about the general quality of critical theory and “grievance studies” journals, I find it odd that the hoaxers, so certain of their proposition, seem to be unscientific in their approach to finding out the answers. In fact, we don’t even need to go into hoaxes to see that the same sort of implicit bias can infect ordinary science journals. As noted by Michael Crichton and followed up on here at Mind Matters News, science journals have been ready to publish whatever the latest trendy topic is for decades, no matter how bad the science content. Then, for topics that are less trendy, they will sometimes retract legitimate papers which have been properly reviewed simply because the topic is out of favor. If an idea is in favor, then, as we’ve seen, the requirements for rigor are relaxed significantly. So, while I appreciate the attempts of the Sokal hoaxers to demonstrate biases and poor scholarship in the social sciences, I fear that those in the harder sciences will use this as an excuse to ignore their own problems with bias and poor scholarship. Note: “SOKAL III” has now been retracted. You may also wish to read: Twenty years on, aliens still “cause global warming” Over the years, the Jurassic Park creator observed, science has drifted from its foundation as Read More › Read More ›
father-and-son-competing-in-video-games-at-home-stockpack-adobe-stock
Father And Son Competing In Video Games At Home
Type
post
Author
News
Date
July 6, 2021
Categorized
Ethics, Mathematics, Peer Review, Science
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Why Did Video Gamers Uncover Fraud More Easily Than Scientists?

Video gamers are subject, a psychologist tells us, to much more rigorous constraints than scientists
News
July 6, 2021
3
Ethics, Mathematics, Peer Review, Science

In a recent article at The Atlantic, King’s College psychologist Stuart Ritchie, author of Science Fictions: How Fraud, Bias, Negligence and Hype Undermine the Search for Truth (2020), has noted a curious fact: Video gamers are much quicker to spot fraud than scientists. The video game fraud he focuses on involved a gamer’s claim that he had finished a round of Minecraft in a little over 19 minutes, a feat he attributed, Ritchie tells us, to “an incredible stretch of good luck.” “Incredible” is the right choice of word here. “Dream,” as the player was known, later admitted — in the face of skepticism — that he had “inadvertently” left some software running that improved his game — thus disqualifying Read More ›

concept-of-different-emotions-drawn-on-colorfull-cubes-wooden-background-stockpack-adobe-stock
concept of Different emotions drawn on colorfull cubes, wooden background.
Type
post
Author
News
Date
July 2, 2021
Categorized
Artificial Intelligence, Peer Review, Philosophy of Mind
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, ,

Emotion Recognition Software Use Spreads While Science Is Doubted

Emotional recognition software has been coming under fire for misuse and racial bias for some time
News
July 2, 2021
4
Artificial Intelligence, Peer Review, Philosophy of Mind

An editor at AI Trends notes The global emotion detection and recognition market is projected to grow to $37.1 billion by 2026, up from an estimated $19.5 billion in 2020, according to a recent report from MarketsandMarkets. North America is home to the largest market. John P. Desmond, “Market for Emotion Recognition Projected to Grow as Some Question Science” at AI Trends (June 24, 2021) But the software has been coming under fire for misuse and racial bias for some time: “How people communicate anger, disgust, fear, happiness, sadness, and surprise varies substantially across cultures, situations, and even across people within a single situation,” stated the report, from a team of researchers led by Lisa Feldman Barrett, of Northeastern University, Read More ›

stack-of-papers-isolated-on-white-background-stockpack-adobe-stock
Stack of papers isolated on white background
Type
post
Author
Gary Smith
Date
June 17, 2021
Categorized
Peer Review, Science
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A Vulnerable System: Fake Papers and Imaginary Scientists

Publication counts and citation indexes are too noisy and too easily manipulated to be reliable
Gary Smith
June 17, 2021
7
Peer Review, Science

In the last two posts, we examined how scientific publication has ceased to be a good measure of scientific accomplishment, and how the peer review system is being gamed by unscrupulous publishers and researchers alike. Now, we will continue the discussion on the undermining of scientific publication using two examples: SCIgen and citation counts. SCIgen In 2005 three MIT graduate computer science students created a prank program they called SCIgen for using randomly selected words to generate bogus computer-science papers complete with realistic graphs of random numbers. Their goal was “maximum amusement rather than coherence,” and also to demonstrate that some academic conferences will accept almost anything. They submitted a hoax paper titled, “Rooter: A Methodology for the Typical Unification of Access Points and Redundancy,” Read More ›

lying-businessman-holding-fingers-crossed-behind-his-back-stockpack-adobe-stock
Lying businessman holding fingers crossed behind his back
Type
post
Author
Gary Smith
Date
June 15, 2021
Categorized
Peer Review, Science
Tagged
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Gaming the System: The Flaws in Peer Review

Peer review is well-intentioned, but flawed in many ways
Gary Smith
June 15, 2021
8
Peer Review, Science

Last time, we examined how scientific publication has ceased to be a good measure of scientific accomplishment because it has now become a target, following Goodhart’s Law. In today’s post, we will continue that examination by turning to the peer review system, and how that system is being gamed by unscrupulous publishers and researchers alike. In theory, the peer review process is intended to ensure that research papers do not get published unless impartial experts in the field deem them worthy of publication. Peer review is well-intentioned, but flawed in many ways. First, the best researchers are incredibly busy and naturally more inclined to do their own research than to review someone else’s work. Thus, peer review is often cursory or Read More ›