> But this paper has very severe issues: the design doesn’t make any sense and the reviewers also pay no attention to it. The paper was accepted at no reason which can make anyone feel guilty in this case.
After the deadline, crazy modifications of the paper were made and I started to...
My understanding:
- The paper didn't had proper review, yet got accepted. Hmmm.
- To save everyone faces, the author did some hacks/patches. Unfortunately, it deviated significantly from the original claim.
- The supervisor refused to help him.
Couldn't you just retract your paper? Thus, no need to lie.
The entire world of scientific papers is ridiculous and I wrote it many times.
I worked in one of the most prestigious labs in the world and seen it first hand.
And people wonder why 85%+ of papers in natural sciences are not reproducible. The incentives are all wrong in academia and science, it's just farming papers, farming citations, money and politics.
The two major wrong incentives are the pressure to publish on high impact papers for PhDs and postdocs, as their career depends on it (this gives them limited timeframes to fail and really explore), and lab funding being tied to the same incentive.
The pressure to publish is also a major factor behind tweaking data. As your PhD is ending you need those publications or you can forget an academic career. And it's a pyramid, so you need to get ahead of others in your situations. You tweak data, you pull your strings, you leverage your or your labs connections.
On top of that, add the fact that as soon as you move in any direction you are effectively entering a niche where the number of people qualified to review your paper is small, and everybody knows each other.
If you're working on helicoidal peptides as energy transmitters on metal surfaces it's a niche. Advanced perovskite synthesis? Niche. Hormonal regulation of some gland? Niche.
There can't be that many experts on pretty much any topic in science, those are all small clubs, even when you get to popular topics.
From the student's chat log, he thinks that upon retraction, the supervisor would be so unhappy that
1. His future doctoral program would be hard.
2. It would be impossible to graduate.
3. He would be killed by the supervisor.
It's hard to say how much of these is warranted. He said 3 was concluded from a conversation with his supervisor. However, tragically he thought these are real enough for him that there was no other way than to suicide.
Maybe take a step back and consider where your understanding is sourced from. I don't think I'd take the claims or ravings of a suicidal person as completely true representations of facts you need to account for the fact that this is all just the representations of someone that we know holds particularly extreme views.
Comments
After the deadline, crazy modifications of the paper were made and I started to...
My understanding:
- The paper didn't had proper review, yet got accepted. Hmmm.
- To save everyone faces, the author did some hacks/patches. Unfortunately, it deviated significantly from the original claim.
- The supervisor refused to help him.
Couldn't you just retract your paper? Thus, no need to lie.
The entire world of scientific papers is ridiculous and I wrote it many times.
I worked in one of the most prestigious labs in the world and seen it first hand.
And people wonder why 85%+ of papers in natural sciences are not reproducible. The incentives are all wrong in academia and science, it's just farming papers, farming citations, money and politics.
The two major wrong incentives are the pressure to publish on high impact papers for PhDs and postdocs, as their career depends on it (this gives them limited timeframes to fail and really explore), and lab funding being tied to the same incentive.
The pressure to publish is also a major factor behind tweaking data. As your PhD is ending you need those publications or you can forget an academic career. And it's a pyramid, so you need to get ahead of others in your situations. You tweak data, you pull your strings, you leverage your or your labs connections.
On top of that, add the fact that as soon as you move in any direction you are effectively entering a niche where the number of people qualified to review your paper is small, and everybody knows each other.
If you're working on helicoidal peptides as energy transmitters on metal surfaces it's a niche. Advanced perovskite synthesis? Niche. Hormonal regulation of some gland? Niche.
There can't be that many experts on pretty much any topic in science, those are all small clubs, even when you get to popular topics.
It's a perverse system.
From the student's chat log, he thinks that upon retraction, the supervisor would be so unhappy that
1. His future doctoral program would be hard.
2. It would be impossible to graduate.
3. He would be killed by the supervisor.
It's hard to say how much of these is warranted. He said 3 was concluded from a conversation with his supervisor. However, tragically he thought these are real enough for him that there was no other way than to suicide.
Maybe take a step back and consider where your understanding is sourced from. I don't think I'd take the claims or ravings of a suicidal person as completely true representations of facts you need to account for the fact that this is all just the representations of someone that we know holds particularly extreme views.