I've heard many papers are published to never be read by humans. It only makes sense that some portion of those papers aren't written by humans either.
I wonder what the overlap is between AI assisted papers and papers with few to no readers.
The whole system should get ready for the 21st century.
Most of the scientists arent great writers. It does not make sense to still force them to be a good writer.
Let be fishes be good at swimming instead of climbing trees.
In a modern world where basically EVERYTHING is specialized and no generalist is alive anymore we should make use of language tools.
Hell Chatgpt writes an introduction which is fun to read instead or my overcomplicated bullshit that I would have brought up
Edit: the comment was not related to the OP but to a general chatgpt discussion.
It's interesting that you write this because the last place I worked focused on unspecializing by having almost everyone do every job.
In fact, they relocated across the country to save on building costs, and instead of hiring actual technical writers and office staff, they pushed the extra work down on their engineers because it's more profitable to bill for the engineering time.
I spent much of my job editing papers and I'm not even good at it while getting paid to do embedded design. It was weird. It was basically fraud but walking the fine line of technically legal.
I observed this happening multiple times throughout my career. Sometimes, inefficiency is the point in this case driven by capitalists and market forces.
... Did you read the article? Language tools like grammarly and deepL are in use by scientists today. Copying+pasting the output of chatGPT without ever looking at it, or even using a language tool to publish thoughts that were never in your head to begin with, is the actual concern
Did you read the article?
I for sure didnt.
Thanks for highlighting that.
I was carried away by having the discussions at my university with my peers in mind.
Copying+pasting the output of chatGPT without ever looking at it, or even using a language tool to publish thoughts that were never in your head to begin with, is the actual concern
Nevertheless I dont understand why this is a concern.
The scientific standards existed decades if not already at least a century.
Those discussions are putting chatgpt in a bad light. However the fact that our scientific system was eroded and made a mockery of before the introduction of chatgpt is not highlighted.
There are still plagiarizations around and nobody cares. Mostly because of political sensitivity.
However science has failed to repel "bad actors" (intentional or unintentional) from the scene.
I dont know when. And why. But publisher have for sure something to do with it.
I agree, I have no problem with people guiding chatgpt to help them write something they want and they checked it.
Generating bunch of articles even they didn't read is something else.
ok sorry side note, 40 FUKKEN EUROS TO READ IT? do they want their research read or not
It's worse than that. Authors actually pay (up to several thousand dollars) to publish, the editors who find referees are doing this as a side job, so probably they're not exactly overpaid either. Finally you have the anonymous referee, who not only doesn't get paid, but they get literally zero recognition. Also, papers aren't printed in journals any more, they are online only, so there's no printing fee either, there's only just server hosting costs, paying some people for language editing and final typesetting (in many fields authors must submit LaTeX manuscripts, basically ready for publishing). And profit of course.
Yep, it’s a fucking embarrassment. Clearly science and academia stopped attracting our brightest and best a while ago or their egos are so fragile they’re as easy to manipulate as children. Either way, institutionally, very poor leaders and caretakers of institutions, which truly undermines the faith we can have in the quality of research they are doing.
I can understand why it seems the way. But the people doing academic research by and large could make a lot more money working less hard at some company, but choose instead to try to advance human knowledge.
The incentives are just terrible. When I was a PhD student, I railed against this system, but when it came time to publish, I was overruled by my PI. And I know now that he was right - success is built off publication, and the best journals have this shitty model.
I used to think that when I became boss, I wouldn't participate in the bullshit, but if any of my trainees want a career in academia, that stance would be screwing them over. The rules need to come from the top, but the people at the top, almost by definition, are the ones that have prospered with the current system.
The rules need to come from the top, but the people at the top, almost by definition, are the ones that have prospered with the current system.
And if these smart academically inclined people can’t reason about the merits of the system beyond whether it has worked for them, then they are as I accused them … unintelligent or childish.
You speak of higher salaries outside of academia, but from what I’ve seen (where you shouldn’t presume I haven’t worked in academia) success in academia is its own reward with prestige that should not be underestimated.
And if these smart academically inclined people can’t reason about the merits of the system beyond whether it has worked for them, then they are as I accused them … unintelligent or childish.
Nah, it's really hard to notice things that are against your incentives to notice. And if all of the people around you are prospering in the same system, extra hard. The myth of meritocracy is extremely compelling, possibly to an even greater extent in academia than elsewhere.
success in academia is its own reward with prestige that should not be underestimated.
No doubt. And listen, I'm on the tenure track job market at this very moment, having said that last year was definitely going to be my last attempt. There's some kind of cultish nature, all the more inextricable in that I can see it, and it doesn't stop me.
I guess my point is that it's obvious to most of us that that success is extremely rare, and getting rarer. The thing that keeps me in it is the sense that I can do more good pursuing knowledge for knowledge's sake than work that is easier and more remunerative but less fulfilling. Call that stupid or childish? Maybe 🤷.
Yea we’re not disagreeing here.
The myth of meritocracy is extremely compelling, possibly to an even greater extent in academia than elsewhere.
This of essentially what I’m targeting in my dumb/childish accusation, especially in those with some job security or tenure and so have more power and ideally wisdom.
I can do more good pursuing knowledge for knowledge’s sake than work that is easier and more remunerative but less fulfilling.
That’s idealistic I’d say, and all the luck to you my friend.
In the end though, my accusation is intentionally provocative and intentionally aimed at what academics take pride in because at some point, IMO, academia needs to see that they’re often embarrassing themselves and letting themselves down, maybe not individually, but at some level. And, beyond that, maybe not pursuing as much of the greater good as we would all like to think.
I suspect academia might be pretty central to civilisation and the more corrupt it gets the more corruption leaks into the civilisation.
Anyway. All the best to you. Hope you get what you’re looking for and don’t burn out from the system or anything like that. Cheers for the chat!!
Okay but who gets the 40 euros then? All goes for server maintenance costs?
It goes to the publisher's profits.
That's the publishers fee, the authors typically don't get paid for their work to be published. It costs a couple grand to get your paper published and free for the general public.
Also a fee for the universities, who need to subscribe to the journals for the authors to be able to read their own fucking work.
Which btw is most often paid for by the respective countries.
@floofloof They charge €40 for access, yet one is left wondering what sort of peer review this paper has undergone when obvious signs of generative AI has slipped in. What about less obvious signs? If the "authors" had simply used the copy-to-clipboard icon in chatgpt, they would have been all good and this would never have been uncovered.
If anything, this is an argument for free public access to scientific papers. Any experts on AI could scan and detect this, even when it's more subtle.
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