• @candybrie
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    527 months ago

    Does 80 technical papers in 2.5 years seem kind of off to anyone else? That’s more than a paper every 2 weeks. Is there really time for meaningful research if you’re publishing that often? Is he advising a lot of students? If that’s the case, is he providing the attention generally needed for each one? Is his field just super different than mine?

    • @[email protected]
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      437 months ago

      In acamedia you usually get your name on most papers where you help a bit. And if you’re the boss, you get your name on papers without even helping but perhaps supplying space, material, budget.

      • @candybrie
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        7 months ago

        I’ve been in academia. My field required a “significant intellectual contribution” to the research and the writing, so no putting your name on papers if you just supplied space/material/budget. You can get an acknowledgement for that, not an authorship credit.

        • ormr
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          7 months ago

          And which reviewer or publishers verifies how “significant” a contribution is beyond seeing some initials matched with tags like “visualization” or “experimental design”? That’s right, nobody. It’s not even remotely traceable who did what if you’re a reviewer.

          Academia is full of fraud and people trying to secure their share of credit because in academia it’s all about names, as the twitter exchange above illustrates so profoundly. And the other driver for the sad state of academia is of course having the quantity of published papers as the most important criterion for academic success. The more papers, the more citations, the bigger your name will become. It determines your chances of getting funding and therefore your career. If you want to make a career in science you have little options but to comply with this system.

          • @candybrie
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            107 months ago

            That’s kind of the point I was making.

            • ormr
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              27 months ago

              Sorry, my irony detector must be malfunctioning.

            • @samus12345
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              77 months ago

              Everything Everywhere All Corrupt

        • @candybrie
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          67 months ago

          Ah. I hadn’t really considered preprints or workshops. If I just count the ones that seem to be published in journals or conferences, it’s 28. Still prolific. But reasonable in a 10-15 person lab.

      • @[email protected]
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        27 months ago

        Importance of order changes by field. In my field, at least for in lab work: first is the main lab person that worked on the project. Last is the PI, everyone that helped goes in the sandwich. I’m unsure about collaborations between labs and at that point too afraid to ask.

    • @buddascrayon
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      97 months ago

      There are some people in this world who are smarter and more motivated than we are.

      And then there are people who get a head start when their rich daddy gives 'em a bunch of money and they get lucky with how they invest that money but pretend to be a genius anyway.

    • @[email protected]
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      87 months ago

      This is a fair question. But also, we’re talking about one of the most influential minds in deep learning. If anything he’s selling himself short. He’s definitely not first author on most of them, but I would give all my limbs to work in his lab.

      • @candybrie
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        7 months ago

        I’m not questioning his contributions to the field. Just being on that many papers. It just seemed like such a crazy amount of publishing.

        Though deep learning has been on fire the last couple years. And the list posted included a lot of preprints and workshops, which I hadn’t really considered.

      • @someacnt_
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        07 months ago

        He sounds like a hack.

    • @[email protected]
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      37 months ago

      Yeah, even if he is advising or contributing, the way he put it sounds very disingenuous like he’s trying to inflate the number for his argument. Which MIGHT mean there likely was not many with immediately recognizable significance in that time (don’t yell at me, I have not taken the time to verify this).

      Either way, the way he responded comes across as very “I’m published, you’re not, neener neener!” which is not a good look for anyone with a doctorates.

      Also, genuine question, how significant was the contribution of LeNet-5 to the field of deep learning vs Neocognitron?

      • pflanzenregal
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        7 months ago

        He could’ve just said “I have a turing award, you don’t” if he wanted to show off.

        He is also called one of the godfathers of deep learning, so I’d say his contributions are very significant.

      • @[email protected]
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        47 months ago

        He is not first named on all of them, which means he likely advised masters and PhD/post docs on their work. It’s not uncommon.

        This many papers is uncommon, but how it happened is not out of the norm.

        • @[email protected]
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          27 months ago

          Right, I didn’t mean to imply that the practice was uncommon, just that using it as a defense of ego so readily was eyebrow-raising. I’m no academic, but I feel like I’d lose respect for my advisor had they used the paper I worked hard on as a way to boost numbers used as personal defense in some petty squabble in a public forum.

    • Flying Squid
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      17 months ago

      Stephen King claims he writes 2000 words a day.

      R. L. Stein supposedly wrote a new (admittedly short) novel every two weeks.

      This Spanish romance novelist apparently wrote over 4000 novels in her lifetime.

      https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Corín_Tellado

      So sure, why not 80 technical papers in 2.5 years?

        • Flying Squid
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          37 months ago

          Successful writers generally don’t just make stuff up. They do plenty of research.

          • pflanzenregal
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            77 months ago

            You can’t just compare creative writing to writing a paper.

            • Flying Squid
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              -47 months ago

              True, but you can compare writing 4000 novels a year with being able to write 80 papers a few pages long in 2.5 and say that both are possible.

              • @[email protected]
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                7 months ago

                He didn’t write all those papers. He put his name on them. He also finds it worth his time to publicly argue with a pig in shit, so there’s that.

              • @candybrie
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                7 months ago

                The writing of the paper is generally a trivial part of the work. Each technical paper is supposed to be a succinct summary of months or years of technical work.