My research ethics class on Tuesday tried to drill into us that actually it’s good and right to not tell your student about a solution to their problem because you learned about the solution by peer reviewing a paper, and their right to confidentiality overrules the waste of time, labor, resources, and even animal lives.
I was literally the only one who said “Maybe this confidentiality thing is actually bullshit and we should just share the info?” And everyone acted like I was fucking insane.
That's insane. If someone's student were working on a problem I'd written about, I'd want the peer reviewer to share at least some of my thoughts with them. I suspect that it comes from the insane paranoia about getting "scooped" that all academics are forced to have in virtue of hiring/promotions/tenure being tied to publications, and publications being tied to "novelty." The way the system is organized is actively hostile to collective problem solving and knowledge sharing.
Me too!!! Make it so we don’t survive based on publications and “being first.” There should be exactly 0 expectation of confidentiality when it comes to research, the whole fucking point is for this shit to be public knowledge so other people can base their own research on the foundation you’ve added to.
Fascism runs deep in the academic field of science, from Women and POC having their research stolen from them, to data being flat out fabricated for political gain.
Imagine what kind of a future we could have if we could root out all that white supremacy and capitalist rentseeking.
In this hypothetical the paper hadn’t been published yet. The professor in the story reviews a shitty paper, gives feedback, and then her student comes to her saying she’s having an issue that would be solved by the exact thing used in the reviewed paper, and the questions were all variations of “Is it okay for the professor to share this information?” And making it very clear that the “correct” answer was a resounding no, which is insanity.
100% I wrote a booklet on the topic, which covers both the failures of for-profit publishing and a list of demand for academics and the public to organize around! https://socialistcanada.files.wordpress.com/2021/01/booklet-for-public-ownership-and-democratic-control-of-scientific-publishing-v4-1-1.pdf
The modern academic journal system and its consequences have been a disaster for the human race
My research ethics class on Tuesday tried to drill into us that actually it’s good and right to not tell your student about a solution to their problem because you learned about the solution by peer reviewing a paper, and their right to confidentiality overrules the waste of time, labor, resources, and even animal lives.
I was literally the only one who said “Maybe this confidentiality thing is actually bullshit and we should just share the info?” And everyone acted like I was fucking insane.
That's insane. If someone's student were working on a problem I'd written about, I'd want the peer reviewer to share at least some of my thoughts with them. I suspect that it comes from the insane paranoia about getting "scooped" that all academics are forced to have in virtue of hiring/promotions/tenure being tied to publications, and publications being tied to "novelty." The way the system is organized is actively hostile to collective problem solving and knowledge sharing.
Me too!!! Make it so we don’t survive based on publications and “being first.” There should be exactly 0 expectation of confidentiality when it comes to research, the whole fucking point is for this shit to be public knowledge so other people can base their own research on the foundation you’ve added to.
Fascism runs deep in the academic field of science, from Women and POC having their research stolen from them, to data being flat out fabricated for political gain.
Imagine what kind of a future we could have if we could root out all that white supremacy and capitalist rentseeking.
You can recommend a paper without peer reviewing it, that argument makes no fucking sense or am I missing something?
In this hypothetical the paper hadn’t been published yet. The professor in the story reviews a shitty paper, gives feedback, and then her student comes to her saying she’s having an issue that would be solved by the exact thing used in the reviewed paper, and the questions were all variations of “Is it okay for the professor to share this information?” And making it very clear that the “correct” answer was a resounding no, which is insanity.
The implication is that the paper was not published yet, as it was undergoing peer review.
100% I wrote a booklet on the topic, which covers both the failures of for-profit publishing and a list of demand for academics and the public to organize around! https://socialistcanada.files.wordpress.com/2021/01/booklet-for-public-ownership-and-democratic-control-of-scientific-publishing-v4-1-1.pdf
That's fantastic! I'll definitely be sharing this with colleagues.