"The book required 5 years of intense, essentially full-time work. I believe in it. But for now, all advice to me has been that it is dangerous and unwarranted even to defend the work. I therefore am unable to comment further on events. I am sorry — more than words can say." -- Kormendy
"I apologize most humbly and sincerely for the stress that I have caused with the PNAS preprint, the PNAS paper, and my book on using metrics of research impact to help to inform decisions on career advancement. My goal was entirely supportive. I wanted to promote fairness and concreteness in judgments that now are based uncomfortably on personal opinion. I wanted to contribute to a climate that favors good science and good citizenship. My work was intended to be helpful, not harmful. It was intended to decrease bias and to improve fairness. It was hoped to favor inclusivity. It was especially intended to help us all to do the best science that we can.
A specific aim was to provide calibration of the "black box" of jump-starting successful research careers. One of my aims throughout was to help young people as they start their careers and to help established scientists as they make decisions on how to lead the scientific enterprise at their institutions and beyond.
But intentions do not, in the end, matter. What matters is what my actions achieve. And I now see that my work has hurt people. I apologize to you all for the stress and the pain that I have caused. Nothing could be further from my hopes.
The PNAS paper and arXiv preprint have been withdrawn as thoroughly as the publication system allows. The arXiv withdrawal is accepted by arXiv and appears in the posting for Wednesday, Nov. 3, 2021.
The same may be the fate of the book. I hoped to generate healthy discussion and to provide practical aids. We will see in the coming few months whether any good can be salvaged from its development. Meanwhile, publication of the book is "on hold".
I fully support all efforts to promote fairness, inclusivity, and a nurturing environment for all. Only in such an environment can people and creativity thrive."
Can some explain this guy's Sin in short words for me please? Suggesting the application of metrics to hiring in scientific employment? Suggesting that this metric be used instead of another? Could he have discussed the subject in a different way and avoided being shunned by his discipline?
The sin is meritocracy. Any system which does not achieve equality of outcome is broken in the eyes of the woke. And they spread their views by bullying people who mostly don't fight back, like this astronomer.
It's important to note that he wasn't shunned by his discipline, only a loud untouchable minority. Some animals are more equal than others, after all.
Can someone explain why sibling comment is flagged into oblivion?
Is there any sound evidence that meritocracy and "equity" are compatible? If not, I don't see why sibling comment's position is false, and I don't see how it breaks site guidelines either.
If you're talking about https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29217720, it is clearly an ideological battle comment (almost a prototype actually) and therefore obviously against the site guidelines.
We want curious conversation here. Not only do ideological battle and curiosity not overlap, the former destroys the latter, like a tank battle in a city park. If people can't post in the intended curious spirit, they shouldn't post at all; and if they do anyway, flags are the appropriate outcome—no? I'm not sure why this would be unclear.
The article is about a scientist who was pressured into retracting a paper over ideological reasons rather than scientific reasons.
It would be understandable if HN were opposed to posts and comments that "do ideological battle," but that doesn't appear to be the case. If HN's editorial policy is that "ideological battle" may be waged with impunity by one side but may not be called out by the other, that's deeply troubling.
How can there be curious conversation if an honest and frank discussion is disallowed? There's a huge social upheaval occurring, with a large number of people trying to change the status quo to focus on equity in outcome over equality in opportunity. I respectfully disagree with the idea that selectively stifling speech on just one side of that discussion will somehow make discussion more curious and open, instead of less.
Everyone whose favorite side gets moderated thinks that the moderators are secretly favoring the other side*. The thing is, the other side thinks we're favoring yours; I could give you dozens if not hundreds of examples. Here's an old list: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26148870 – there are many more than that, and plenty of cases of people attacking us personally for siding with your side, which they perceive as dominating the site. These perceptions are all false; they're determined not by what the moderators are actually doing, or how the site actually is, but by your/their own passions.
I think this is literally the most predictable phenomenon that shows up on HN—it's so reliable that one can confidently predict people's politics simply by their assessment of moderator (and/or community) bias.
> How can there be curious conversation if an honest and frank discussion is disallowed?
An honest and frank discussion is not disallowed. What's disallowed is ideological rhetoric that seeks to defeat the other side instead of relate to it. That's deeply destructive of curiosity. If we were to allow it, it would actually drive everyone who isn't consumed by such passions away from HN, and that would be the death of HN. If you want to smite enemies, there are lots of other places to do it.
As presented here, his theory is that the careers of younger scientists depend on the qualitative judgments of older scientists.
The field is convinced the judgments of older scientists are systemically, oppressively wrong on matters of sex and race.
So the only acceptable judgment is criticism of the qualitative judgments of older scientists. He can only be un-shunned by criticizing scientists like himself.
I can't speak for the critics because I am not in that particular field and would not have called for its retraction. But having read it, I do think the paper exemplifies a deeply flawed schema for how science works today and how scientists should be judged. In my opinion it shouldn't have been published, at least because it's superficial and doesn't contribute much in practice beyond citations or h index, to the extent those might be used. Should it have been retracted? I don't know and don't really care, to the extent I think there's lots of stuff published in the academic literature that's questionable.
The paper makes these assumptions, at least implicitly: (1) that scientific value should be evaluated in terms of contemporaneous reputation of some sort, and (2) that scientific products reflect something in the individual, as opposed to groups, political factors, and so forth. Both of these assumptions are deeply flawed, or in the least, might be seen as controversial.
I can't speak to astronomy in particular, but in biomedicine academics has become a sort of FOMO rather than focus on correctness, rigor, or insight. In my areas, large citation counts almost always reflect an idea or evidence being on the mind of lots of people, with a small number just having been first to get it on paper for whatever reason. It's kind of like trivial patents or something, where something has a lot of value but is pretty obvious to anyone knowledgable working in the field. Then on top of that you have the group-work phenomenon where things really reflect the group, and not the individual, but because of promotion, the nature of crowds, etc. certain individuals are always trying to soak up attention like a black hole.
Take large observatory projects, or probe missions. Does sending a probe to a planet reflect 1 PI? 2 co-PIs? The team? There's lots of things like this but even more incremental.
It also ignores the role of political factors, which are huge. Imagine a computer science department where all of the non-hardware faculty are bullied out of the department by those doing hardware, physics-type research because of a belief on the part of the latter that anything non-hardware based isn't "real science." Junior faculty are threatened, not given tenure, senior faculty have their salaries frozen and are slandered, people leave in droves until they get what they want. Do we judge someone in that type of environment the same as someone who is surrounded by supportive colleagues?
Academics is broken, and this paper sort of proceeds as it's not. It's not really about diversity, except to the extent that diversity issues can often be a canary with regard to deeper problems with abuse, dysfunction, and corruption.
The short version is this: the paper is circular. Foxes guarding the henhouse, etc.
The paper recommended that its approach be considered for initial broad screening, narrowing down from thousands of candidates to a couple hundred. What would you recommend be done for initial screening? Should the committee spend months laboriously poring over every single application?
15 comments
[ 3.0 ms ] story [ 49.9 ms ] thread1. Archive copy of withdrawn paper: https://web.archive.org/web/20211028230225/https:/arxiv.org/...
2. Coverage at Retraction Watch: https://retractionwatch.com/2021/11/03/astronomer-apologizes...
"The book required 5 years of intense, essentially full-time work. I believe in it. But for now, all advice to me has been that it is dangerous and unwarranted even to defend the work. I therefore am unable to comment further on events. I am sorry — more than words can say." -- Kormendy
3. Kormendy's Apology: https://chandra.as.utexas.edu/apology.html
"I apologize most humbly and sincerely for the stress that I have caused with the PNAS preprint, the PNAS paper, and my book on using metrics of research impact to help to inform decisions on career advancement. My goal was entirely supportive. I wanted to promote fairness and concreteness in judgments that now are based uncomfortably on personal opinion. I wanted to contribute to a climate that favors good science and good citizenship. My work was intended to be helpful, not harmful. It was intended to decrease bias and to improve fairness. It was hoped to favor inclusivity. It was especially intended to help us all to do the best science that we can.
A specific aim was to provide calibration of the "black box" of jump-starting successful research careers. One of my aims throughout was to help young people as they start their careers and to help established scientists as they make decisions on how to lead the scientific enterprise at their institutions and beyond.
But intentions do not, in the end, matter. What matters is what my actions achieve. And I now see that my work has hurt people. I apologize to you all for the stress and the pain that I have caused. Nothing could be further from my hopes.
The PNAS paper and arXiv preprint have been withdrawn as thoroughly as the publication system allows. The arXiv withdrawal is accepted by arXiv and appears in the posting for Wednesday, Nov. 3, 2021.
The same may be the fate of the book. I hoped to generate healthy discussion and to provide practical aids. We will see in the coming few months whether any good can be salvaged from its development. Meanwhile, publication of the book is "on hold".
I fully support all efforts to promote fairness, inclusivity, and a nurturing environment for all. Only in such an environment can people and creativity thrive."
Nonsense. I'm getting a little alarmed by the pro forma recitation of this doctrine.
It's important to note that he wasn't shunned by his discipline, only a loud untouchable minority. Some animals are more equal than others, after all.
Is there any sound evidence that meritocracy and "equity" are compatible? If not, I don't see why sibling comment's position is false, and I don't see how it breaks site guidelines either.
We want curious conversation here. Not only do ideological battle and curiosity not overlap, the former destroys the latter, like a tank battle in a city park. If people can't post in the intended curious spirit, they shouldn't post at all; and if they do anyway, flags are the appropriate outcome—no? I'm not sure why this would be unclear.
It would be understandable if HN were opposed to posts and comments that "do ideological battle," but that doesn't appear to be the case. If HN's editorial policy is that "ideological battle" may be waged with impunity by one side but may not be called out by the other, that's deeply troubling.
How can there be curious conversation if an honest and frank discussion is disallowed? There's a huge social upheaval occurring, with a large number of people trying to change the status quo to focus on equity in outcome over equality in opportunity. I respectfully disagree with the idea that selectively stifling speech on just one side of that discussion will somehow make discussion more curious and open, instead of less.
I think this is literally the most predictable phenomenon that shows up on HN—it's so reliable that one can confidently predict people's politics simply by their assessment of moderator (and/or community) bias.
> How can there be curious conversation if an honest and frank discussion is disallowed?
An honest and frank discussion is not disallowed. What's disallowed is ideological rhetoric that seeks to defeat the other side instead of relate to it. That's deeply destructive of curiosity. If we were to allow it, it would actually drive everyone who isn't consumed by such passions away from HN, and that would be the death of HN. If you want to smite enemies, there are lots of other places to do it.
* https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&sor...
The field is convinced the judgments of older scientists are systemically, oppressively wrong on matters of sex and race.
So the only acceptable judgment is criticism of the qualitative judgments of older scientists. He can only be un-shunned by criticizing scientists like himself.
The paper makes these assumptions, at least implicitly: (1) that scientific value should be evaluated in terms of contemporaneous reputation of some sort, and (2) that scientific products reflect something in the individual, as opposed to groups, political factors, and so forth. Both of these assumptions are deeply flawed, or in the least, might be seen as controversial.
I can't speak to astronomy in particular, but in biomedicine academics has become a sort of FOMO rather than focus on correctness, rigor, or insight. In my areas, large citation counts almost always reflect an idea or evidence being on the mind of lots of people, with a small number just having been first to get it on paper for whatever reason. It's kind of like trivial patents or something, where something has a lot of value but is pretty obvious to anyone knowledgable working in the field. Then on top of that you have the group-work phenomenon where things really reflect the group, and not the individual, but because of promotion, the nature of crowds, etc. certain individuals are always trying to soak up attention like a black hole.
Take large observatory projects, or probe missions. Does sending a probe to a planet reflect 1 PI? 2 co-PIs? The team? There's lots of things like this but even more incremental.
It also ignores the role of political factors, which are huge. Imagine a computer science department where all of the non-hardware faculty are bullied out of the department by those doing hardware, physics-type research because of a belief on the part of the latter that anything non-hardware based isn't "real science." Junior faculty are threatened, not given tenure, senior faculty have their salaries frozen and are slandered, people leave in droves until they get what they want. Do we judge someone in that type of environment the same as someone who is surrounded by supportive colleagues?
Academics is broken, and this paper sort of proceeds as it's not. It's not really about diversity, except to the extent that diversity issues can often be a canary with regard to deeper problems with abuse, dysfunction, and corruption.
The short version is this: the paper is circular. Foxes guarding the henhouse, etc.