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Incentives in Academic Research

48 points · 48 comments · zero_k

  1. augment_me · · focus · HN ↗
    As a PhD student, I am seeing the same thing. I am currently generating about 10 papers per month for marginal increments/architectural additions that are autoreviewed in a loop by Claude + Codex until those tools don't spot any major issues and then sending them in to various conferences. Since more than half of the reviewers are just using these tools to review, it's really easy to get a good score. This year I got into ICLR, ICML, NeurIps, SIGGRAPH and ACL with 2-authors papers (me and my supervisor).

    Its fucked up, but I am getting a lot of praise from the department/supervisor, I got an very good internship lined up next summer, and I have plenty of time to study whatever I find meaningful because the slop generates itself. I think that this ship will sink if enough people do this, so I set up similar systems for some of my colleagues as well. The only way to break the system is to overload it until it doesn't work, so I can only hope for this.

    1. great_tankard · · focus · HN ↗
      >The only way to break the system is to overload it until it doesn't work, so I can only hope for this.

      This is a joke, right?

      1. augment_me · · focus · HN ↗
        Not really, with a slow transition you will just have people in power clutching on to their careers, tenure and more general gatekeeping with whatever means they have. You can already see this starting with the paper count limitation that is 1 for new scientists and 20 for established scientists for ICLR 2027.

        I have in fact set up similar autosubmission systems for my peers who wanted it and they are already finding success with it 2 months later.

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