text:
The Chinese approach to ethics is almost purely situational. Compound this with a manipulative media, and what you get are fat, happy citizens who are staunchly nationalistic and xenophobic. All they care about is money.
If you want some positive moderation, reply to the above true statement about the Chinese changing only the nationality.
they will lie cheat and steal to get their way - china has truely embraced western culture.
Except that Western culture has watchdogs like the SEC that will bring massive fraud lawsuits against you when you try to cheat and steal.
fake science papers are vetted - peer review here is intense.
Peer review may be intense, but I find that flaws in research are often ignored.
As my prof said to me the other day: "I could sell this no problem," in reference to my MS thesis work. I have been hoping to do more supportive research, but in the "publish, publish, publish" world, it has been deemed more prudent to move on to other work.
As the Prof said, there are two possibilities if I attempt the background(controls). (1) They work, in which case I've bought nothing (her words). or (2) The controls don't work in which case everything is garbage. The Prof would rather remain ignorant if that is the case... wow.
What honesty we have here in Academia USA!
A few sentences later, the sage Prof said, "It's not unethical."
I thought I was getting a MS degree to learn and do science well. Instead, it's become drudgery.
I won't be saying the school name here
One does not throw around these accusations, and the wagons would be circled rather quickly.
My project is rather tangential to the work the rest of the lab does. I will be the only who ever does the work in the lab, and no one else will ever follow up on it.
I've never been part of a multi-pub project, that is true, but that is not the point here.
Back to the the topic of the post - I have heard of other labs (postdoc mills) also conducting shady research. My point, is
My project is rather tangential to the work the rest of the lab does. I will be the only who ever does the work in the lab, and no one else will ever follow up on it.
And in the light of this
It kind of depends. It's "just" a Master's thesis, which means that you need to be able to put together something credible in the sense that you can formulate a larger academic work with an argument, sources and perhaps something of your own to back your thesis up.
At least over here in Finland, the point is not to really produce original research. That's for Ph.D.'s. For Master's you want to show you understand your subject matter and aren't just wantonly making shit up. In this sense I can understand your professor wanting to just get your degree and move on... if you're going to do actual publication in a journal, write a PhD thesis or something, the criteria are different.
But that's just "over here".
At least they went after Madoff after the fact.
In China, he wouldn't have been caught during the act, or prosecuted afterwords. If he had been caught, he would have just split a portion of the profits with their government.
Heh, what do you think happened with Madoff for 20 years?
Well, what do you think happened? I think he hoodwinked everybody including regulators with his reputation and (in the case of his shareholders) consistently high returns dissuading them from asking questions.
But the point remains, once the (rather negligent) regulators realized what was happening, he was prosecuted.
Regulation in general is tough. The incentives for good regulation will NEVER be 10% as good as the incentives given to those who
In China he would most likely have gotten a trial of 2-3 days behind doors followed by an execution within a few weeks after that.
Someone like Madoff would have been in too big a hole, and have pissed off too many people, to be able to buy his way out.
These days I regularly read in the Hong Kong newspapers about high-flying politicians and businesspeople being sentenced to long jail terms or indeed to death for corruption and other financial crimes such as pyramid schemes. The central government is serious when it comes to fighting corruption however it is really really hard as the lower echelons are so thoroughly corrupt. As a rule of thumb the higher up in the government the less corruption you find (though when it takes place the amounts of money involved become mind blowing).
Serious about fighting corruption?
There's only one "serious" way of fighting corruption in my book: shining the light of openness on the places where corruption festers.
The exaggerated sentences are a sure sign that the regime *isn't* serious about fighting corruption. They go through the motions of "making an example" of the current offender, yet inevitably he'll have no shortage of successors.
So if the strategy doesn't work to reduce corruption, why do they keep doing it? Because it does something very useful to them. It makes the issue one of *personalities*. It's not the system that's broken, it's this apparently endless supply of bad apples. You make a show of punishing a bad apple, and that convinces the people that the higher-ups are honest men. If those men control the media, the police and the courts, how could they fail to create that impression?
When a wicked rebel finally overthrows the government, he immediately becomes the duly constituted government and the officials of the former government become criminals. That is the law of the medieval thinker. It is not *our* conception of law, except possibly international law. Our concept of law is not about personalities. It is a set of common rules that at once bind all of us and free us. Our ideal of law is not order or preservation of the current regime, it is this: so long as a man stays on the clearly marked road of legality, he is utterly unassailable. Granted our laws fall short of that, but that is overwhelming what we expect from the law, even if we don't expect perfection.
In China, the law is more vaguely drawn. It's brilliant in a way, because when you can't be sure when you've broken it you curb your behavior, but it's not law in our sense at all. It's just power.
The higher ups in the Chinese Communist Party are honest men in the same way the rebel who seizes power and recreates the old regime with a different cast of personalities is an honest man. At any point in time, these men are "honest" for a certain value of "honest" -- a value that they get to define to suit their interests at the moment.
What the Communist Party has done is give up on any pretense of socialism, replacing it by a pretense of a free market. You can't have a free market without a free society, and you can't have a free society without real laws. China is huge and full of talented people who would flourish under the rule of law. But the party only has to improve on its history of miserable failure to make things better. They can eliminate some of the things they did that were holding China back, and then take credit for the successes that follow, but that doesn't mean they aren't holding China back.
What the article basically amounts to is that Chinese research is like everything else the party fosters and protects. There's good, talented people doing good work, but the institution is shot full of corruption. Why does this keep happening? Because the party has not adopted the single principle of "modernization" that really matters: accountability.
Accountability - yes that's an issue. Mostly to who the leaders are accountable.
And then fighting corruption is difficult when the whole society is corrupt. How can you make sure the anti-corruption body isn't corrupt themselves? Basically the age-old "who watches the watchers" issue. How to fight corruption in the police for a start? When you need that very police force to arrest corrupt people? You basically ask them to arrest themselves. And then the suspects will just again bribe the officers trying to
Interesting post, with which I largely agree but:
You can't have a free market without a free society,
This isn't quite accurate (of course this depends on your definition of free society, I think you mean democracy of some kind. Apologies if I'm putting words in your mouth).
If you agree that prosperity is well-nigh impossible for a country at large without some kind of functioning free market (which it is, incidentally, for examples see sub-saharan Africa), it has been suggested, and I strongly agree with this, that prosperity is a pre-requisite for democracy
I heard the same thing about academic credentials from my friends on various grad faculties. They simply cannot depend on any of the transcripts, CVs, or recommendations they get from China. There are so many universities that no one has ever heard of that it's basically impossible to confirm anything. And professors in China simply don't write rec letters. When asked, they do what only piss-poor professors in the USA do - they just have the student write the thing and they sign it, unread. If the situation is really bad, the student signs the thing too.
The Chinese approach to ethics is almost purely situational.
Asian religions in general lack the fixed rules found in western moral systems. The ancient "Art of War" text is pretty much about using manipulation and deceit to win wars without even doing battle. This kind of cunning is prized in Chinese culture. It also results in less physical conflict.
I don't necessarily think this means that westerners are more honest, it's just that cheating is frowned upon enough that it's usually caught earlier, among p
I mean, seriously. If it was some white dude in Wall Street caught in fraud, or some Ivy-League professor caught cheating on his results, we'd blame the perp for cheating, and the regulatory bodies for not catching the perp.
But the minute it becomes Something About The Savage Yellow People, you get all these amateur anthropologists, who make well-reasoned and completely accurate statements, like this:
The Chinese approach to ethics is almost purely situational.
I mean, the article makes it clear; the Chinese government doesn't want to police, and they're pushing for results (which is why they're crowing about the large numbers of papers published). Isn't that evidence enough for making wrong-doing easier?
We do this because many people who have the pleasure of working with China have such similar experiences of being treated royally and being ripped off. If these were isolated incidents, we would all point to the perpetrator as the guilty party, but what experience has shown us is precisely that it isn't the case of a few bad apples. Rather, there seems to be a systemic problem (maybe cultural, maybe a problem with incentives, who knows) that leads to a huge amount of what we Westerners would consider dishonesty conducted in Chinese business (and as we see here in education as well).
You can act like a typical mefite and claim whatever moral high ground you want, but when the vast majority of those of us who have experiences in China all come back and say the same thing, it's you who is probably wrong, not us.
Disclaimer: Yes, I'm of Chinese descent.
As sad as it is, I think I have to agree with many of the above commentators. There does seem to be a strange lack of morals in people from the PRC, particularly the students. In Australian universities, rightly or wrongly, they have something of a reputation for being underhanded, plagiarising cheats who you really, really do not want to have in your group assignments. That's not to say they're the only one's doing it, far from it, but they definitely have that reputation. Maybe things have changed, I don't know.
In terms of the underlying reason, It could be for any number of reasons. Maybe they find the language hard? *shrugs*. But then students from other countries don't resort to cheating. Or maybe they don't quite understand what exactly plagiarism is? I don't know. I doubt it. Maybe they don't know how to reference? I worked in one group where they basically copied entire paragraphs, word for word, from our mentor's project (submitted the year before). They didn't even both to change the product names to match what we were doing. And when I confronted them, they didn't seem particularly repentant, more annoyed they got caught. Heck, I've seen them submit in Wikipedia articles as their project, formatting unchanged.
I really don't think it's a cultural thing as such. True, Confucianism does have its weird quirks. But to argue that we have no morals is a little unfair. However, my father taught me a saying when we were young, I probably can't even write the characters anymore...haha...disgraceful, but basically, it went along the lines of when your wealth is short, your morals are correspondingly short. Maybe that's it. But I doubt most of the international students arriving here are exactly "poor", by any definition.
I suspect it's really just a "win at any costs" culture endemic on the mainland, combined with their infamous mercenariness. Even in business, from what I've heard, you really, really want to be careful dealing with them. They'll screw you over nine ways to Sunday, and sell their own grandmother to make a buck. *sigh*. It really is sad to see, but maybe things will change, as they get wealthier?
Cheers, Victor
I'm a university prof in Japan. The Chinese students we get here are awesome. I try to get as many of them in my classes as possible. They actually do the work (very different from Japanese students) and come to class with something interesting/insightful to say (again, very different from Japanese students). I don't think you could give me enough of them.
That being said, I did not have the same experience when I was teaching in the US. The Chinese students there cheated like mad. My friend (Japanese) who is now teaching in the US writes me at least once a month asking, "What should I do with all these Chinese students? They're all cheating!" I tell her to fail them, but she's too nice.
Another friend taught in China for 2 years before joining our faculty here. She is Singaporean of Chinese descent. Her parents made her go to Chinese school so she could grow up to be a proper Chinese lady. Here is what she decided: Mao destroyed China. Having grown up on classics and traditional moral teachings, and being fluent and literate in Mandarin, she thought she knew what she'd be getting into when she went there. But she found that people were petty, dishonest, and did baffling things like take more than one handout, rather than one per person ("They're not worth anything!" she finally screamed). She concluded that when you kill off everyone with an education (or they run away to Taiwan or elsewhere), you're left with provincial morons who are greedy and lack social values. Then you impose a system on them that cannot provide for even their most basic needs, and they learn to grab anything they can get right now because they may never get another chance.
And that's the reading of China that I've decided is the closest. It cannot be overstated how much Maoism changed that country, and mostly for the worse.
To add to this -
somethings joke surveys are run in Western nations along the lines of "would you have sex with someone who offered you $100,000 for it". A great number of people say "yes".
Then they shrug and think about how unethical and unprincipled people in poor nations are who would do anything for money.
What just doesn't connect in their minds is that the relative gain for these people IS equivalent to the hundreds of thousands.
But to argue that we have no morals is a little unfair. However, my father taught me a saying when we were young, I probably can't even write the characters anymore...haha...disgraceful, but basically, it went along the lines of when your wealth is short, your morals are correspondingly short. Maybe that's it. But I doubt most of the international students arriving here are exactly "poor", by any definition.
We have plenty of sayings like that... you do what you have to, for example. But by definition, if your morals change when your situation changes, you never really had 'em to begin with. They were just some half-formed convictions, that you discarded for convenience. They weren't morals. Maybe that's just an error in translation, but perhaps it's also amazingly telling.
I really don't think it's a cultural thing as such.
followed by:
I suspect it's really just a "win at any costs" culture endemic on the mainland
Asian religions in general lack the fixed rules found in western moral systems. The ancient "Art of War" text is pretty much about using manipulation and deceit to win wars without even doing battle. This kind of cunning is prized in Chinese culture. It also results in less physical conflict.
Not just that, but there also seems to be some cultural component that makes it a lot less okay to be wrong. I've heard from people in several different fields that it's difficult to work with Asian contractors or comp
The Tao Te Ching is one of my favourite books. I am now living in Beijing and it seems that of the main 3 fabled founders of Chinese Wisdom, Lao Tzu, Confucius and Sun Tsu, Lao Tzu is consistently misunderstood and misrepresented.
It seems this text is too much like poetry and its brilliance only strikes a chord with very few - since its lessons require a kind of letting go of the illusion of control, most people can't hear its messages at all.
You know nothing about Chinese culture.
First, Art of War is not a religious text nor a social/philosophical text. Like its name implies it was written as a manual for *war*, of course it doesn't teach morals (as some would even argue morals gets in the way of efficient warfare). Outside of warfare, all the great philosophers of Chinese history like Confucius preach honesty and nobility in treating others. Let's not even forget all the *real* religions such as Buddism and Tao which all talk about things like doing bad will bring bad back upon yourself.
The problem is purely social due to communist ruling which led to a super-poor lower class who has nothing to lose and would risk anything because worse comes to worse, they die either way (either from hunger from lack of money, revenge for cheating someone, or capital punishment if caught, whichever comes first), as well as the new found rich whom 10/20 years ago were the super-poor, aren't educated enough to teach their kids proper morals, or worse still, teach them to be selfish because "That's how your dad got rich! you follow me and be ruthless or you'll rot like those beggars on the street". It will take another generation or two before proper education will change the mentality. But for sure it has nothing to do with religion (as much as I'm anti-religion, the religions in China DO have good morals as well as the same stuff like the Golden Rule), it's the social condition forcing it upon people.
The country I come from, Venezuela, has a similar Communist-style government, a share a lot of traits with China in this regard. They're willing to ditch moral and ethics when it comes to climbing up the social ladder. They're also quite poor and nationalists, and tend to engage in any behavior that creates an illusion of being smarter or wealthier, as a country or individual.
Most participate in this illusion-building business, unwilling to accept information that can challenge their views of their own bogu
I'm not sure why that's relevant to the discussion at hand. War isn't normal morals, and misinformation and acting unpredictably has been part of it in western warfare too, long before they heard of Sun Tzu.
E.g., even heard of the Trojan Horse? How's that for deceit in warfare? That's about a war from the 12'th century BC, while Sun Tzu is generally accepted to have lived in the 6'th-5'th century BC, while some place him as late as 3'rd century BC.
Where was that morality of western religions then? Or maybe
Asian religions in general lack the fixed rules found in western moral systems. The ancient "Art of War" text is pretty much about using manipulation and deceit to win wars without even doing battle. This kind of cunning is prized in Chinese culture. It also results in less physical conflict.
So, should someone from China point to Machiavelli's "The Prince" as an example of the kind of cunning prized in western culture? Or maybe the "The Prince", like the "Art of War", is a product of a particular place and time and doesn't say much about contemporary culture in either the east or west.
So, should someone from China point to Machiavelli's "The Prince" as an example of the kind of cunning prized in western culture? Or maybe the "The Prince", like the "Art of War", is a product of a particular place and time and doesn't say much about contemporary culture in either the east or west.
The Prince is Machiavelli's treatise on the Borgias. It is not a manual. It is a cautionary tale. To say that The Prince is the product of a particular place and time is to completely miss the point. It is a story about what can happen in any age if the powers-that-be are permitted to use fear to control the populace; the very point of the book is that it is an effective strategy for control of a populace, but it has terrifying and undesirable results. Of course, you and almost everyone else seems to have missed this nuance; For example, this study of the book [machiavellitheprince.com] refers to Cesare Borgia as Machiavelli's "Perfect Prince", while simultaneously explaining that Cesare "remains dependent on the power and influence of his father." Clearly he is less than perfect if he is not a power in himself, which was another moral of the book. It was necessary to continually extol the virtues of The Prince to avoid being killed for writing it.
The Prince is a cautionary tale and and indictment of the acts of the Borgias, it was not a manual for statehood. But it still says plenty about contemporary culture in both the East and West because it is an examination of the human condition. Tyranny didn't end with the invention of the Cafe' Borgia.
The Prince is a cautionary tale and and indictment of the acts of the Borgias, it was not a manual for statehood. But it still says plenty about contemporary culture in both the East and West because it is an examination of the human condition.
Are you sure that is generally accepted? I'm sure I remember being taught that it was written as a job application. I've done a little searching online and found the job application idea (although not as a definitive interpretation), along with the idea that it is a satire, or even some sort of counterpoint to the Discourses (which I guess is what you are saying). I'm not sure your interpretation is universally accepted however, although I'm happy to be corrected.
The Chinese approach to ethics is almost purely situational
Mine too. But I get called an asshole for it.
The Chinese approach to ethics is almost purely situational. Compound this with a manipulative media, and what you get are fat, happy citizens who are staunchly nationalistic and xenophobic. All they care about is money.
Mostly true (especially the "care about money" part, Chinese are getting very materialistic and may surpass the US in that soon if they haven't done so already - looking at the better-off city dwellers at least).
Manipulative media? Not really - manipulated media is the correct way to say it. The government manipulates the media in China, the press has very little freedom.
And nationalistic yes for sure, xenophobic also but less strong.
But fat and happy citizens? Well in the literal sense they are fattening
The Chinese approach to ethics is almost purely situational. Compound this with a manipulative media, and what you get are fat, happy citizens who are staunchly nationalistic and xenophobic. All they care about is money.
Replace that "Chinese" with American and you would have a vaguely true statement as well!
Although this report doesn't surprise me, China already had been faking Antiques 5,000 years ago. It's a long tradition.
To be fair, faked results happen here from time to time. But the scientific community built around verifying thing would eventually collectively beat this type of behavior down - sometimes motivated by schadenfreude as much as anything from the pure good of their hearts. All that is different in China is probably this type of infrastructure. Nothing more or less.
The Chinese approach to ethics is almost purely situational.
LOL! Just two stories down we got another news on worker extortion in the USofA! And you imply the lack of ethics as a completely Chinese thing.
Have you ever did business with American companies? Verizon? Sony Music? Hello, anyone paying attention?
Perhaps what you really meant was those Chinese researcher should be smarter and did their con job in the financial market instead? Then they could become billionaires and live a good life for a decade or two like Madoff did, rather than being caught AND didn'
In one instance you have worker extortion in the US where the employers (who I understand are from India) are caught and will be punished. On the other you have Chinese scientists who have successfully lied to the international science community in 60 of their papers and will not be punished in any way.
"like Madoff did, rather than being caught"
Are you from some kind of parallel universe? Madoff is doing jail time.
Also, and this is the most important point. Why is it just because America has some issues you think that the Chinese should get a free pass to do even worse things without punishment. What the hell is wrong with you?
Sorry to reply to your mail again
I just noticed this story is now tagged "chinasucks"... oh well it's a US centric web site after all... too bad so many Americans have so rude ideas about this country.
China is a great country, with many great people. Of course not all is well there too - but to start saying things like "chinasucks" well that says more about the tagger than China.
I also often rile against the US (and at times also against China) but I won't say "ussucks". The government sucks maybe. So
but they police citizens, opinions, the media, the internet....
it's what I call:
This is just a hypothesis.
Based on what?
government's insane minimum requirements for the number of publications a scientist with a government grant must have.
Do you have any information to back up this assertion?
Let's clear this up...
In China, the government grants are almost entirely political, and you're not fighting for tenure; tenure doesn't exist. Likely, you get your grants through your department head (who goes on all your papers). Essentially, your job is like a western stock trader. You have a job at the University, and maybe it pays well, maybe it doesn't. You get paid a bonus based on papers you publish. The higher the index of the journal you publish in, the higher your bonus. Those bonuses make up the majority of the salary for many scientists.
Unlike in the west, if you're caught cheating, there are no automatic, immediate consequences. It's very much like stock trading here, with similar ethics and results.
Do you have any information to back up this assertion?
Yeah, there was this study in this Chinese journal...
Perhaps the scientist's cheating is a response to their government's insane minimum requirements for the number of publications a scientist with a government grant must have. I don't know, though. This is just a hypothesis.
That's actually not too far off the mark. The official salary of any government researcher is, well, well below what someone of equivalent schooling could have gotten in business or IT (as in most countries, only moreso). However, the government is pumping major sums of money at institutions that publish frequently, such that most researchers are paid hefty bonuses on a "per publication" basis by their home institution, usually a smaller amount for chinese-language journals and more for international journals, and a mega-bonus for high-profile journals.
The bottom line is that you can become comfortable middle class by pumping out as many publications in the most obscure international journal that you can break the entry barrier into. You can become very comfortable indeed if you actually start cooking the data and publishing only in journals you doubt will ever fact-check your data (for example, a journal run by your buddy down the hall). And short of the journals getting wise to you, there is virtually no chance of being caught if you are careful - you simply choose your fake results to be just-interesting-enough to be publishable while not notable enough to garner any widespread attention. In all but the highest-tier journals, the peer review is under no obligation to also serve as fraud detection. Peer reviewers are anonymous, unpaid volunteers who are asked to assess if the presented data warrant the arrived-at conclusions, the system simply could not operate if we had to assume every submitted paper could be a carefully planted fake.
In the US, the people who give you your grants work for some large federal agency that would start going over everything you have ever written with a fine-toothed comb at the first whisper of faked data. In China, the grant managers are often employees of the same institution that you work at, so there are all sorts of disincentives to proactively look for fraud.
But just because the system is skewed this way doesn't mean they should be let off the hook by any means. Fake science is so much worse than no-science because it often forces others in the same field to have to expend scarce resources to identify, reproduce, and discredit it. And as the Central Government shifts to aiming for quality over quantity, they will have to pay the price sooner and crack down on massive fraud, or risk exclusion from the very same international scientific communities they hope to impress.
Post-doc biologists at Harvard have to publish 70 papers in 7 years (if memory serves) to even qualify for a junior faculty position. There's no way that a scientist can publish ten papers per year that are worth jack squat, and the result is that most of the papers coming out of Harvard are garbage that get published because of where they come from. This isn't a China-only problem.
Post-doc biologists at Harvard have to publish 70 papers in 7 years (if memory serves) to even qualify for a junior faculty position. There's no way that a scientist can publish ten papers per year that are worth jack squat, and the result is that most of the papers coming out of Harvard are garbage that get published because of where they come from. This isn't a China-only problem.
Thank-you for pointing this out.
In reading this whole thread, I am getting a MASSIVE propaganda vibe off the entire thing.
Basically, the stress test of truth I sometimes use around here works like this. . .
"If 98% of Slashdot is united in praise or condemnation on any subject, then somebody somewhere is playing the social-engineering violin extremely well, because this bunch can't even agree on the direction of gravity's pull. -Nor should they, which means something is wrong."
I guess it's true; if you sustain a BS message for long enough, it becomes self-referential and emotionally true. How can we have come so far, learned so much and still fall for the same old and tired psychological ploys?
Would that be the similar to the psychological ploy that seems to be planting the idea that the US is crashing as a country?
Coz from where I sit, you guys are doing fine. A bit fragile at the moment, but some positivity and you guy's'll be up and about in no time.
or you could keep China-bashing...
Some of the Gucci handbags they make are not so authentic either.
Some of the Gucci handbags they make are not so authentic either.
But I just love my Chinese Relox watch.
Listen, I think the more science that happens, the better. And I completely support Chinese scientists attempting to make China a science powerhouse.
But at the moment they have no real reason to self-police. If the reputation cost to a journal of accepting a Chinese paper is too high (if fabrication is too rampant), they'll reject them out-of-hand to protect their reputation. Then, the legitimate scientists in China will need to kick some ass in their academia in order to be let back in.
Whether it's factories selling the latest iPod design for cheap knockoffs, or faked research, China has been playing fast and loose with the rules of international relations. They're with the big boys now, for better or worse, and people are starting to not excuse them for it.
You don't see the risk of reputable journals passing over legitimate research because it comes from China?
This could be the worst thing for science in China, and pretty terrible for science in general (imagine the split it could cause). Academic integrity should be bottom-up because fact checking from the top (from a journal's perspective) is often impossible.
China loves fakes.
Examples: fake Rolex watches, fake LV hand bags, fake jewelery (both as in copied design or fake gold/diamonds/gemstones), fake eggs (no kidding here - they appeared on the market in Hong Kong), fake medicine (featuring well-known brands on the packing but at best just a placebo and at worst a deadly poison), and fake beauty in their "miss plastic surgery" pageants.
Mainlanders come in droves to Hong Kong to buy genuine hand bags, watches, jewelery, milk powder, medicine, and more. At lea
Yes, the journals should start mostly ignoring articles from academics in China, very little alternative, journals simply cannot fact check every article. I'd imagine China's strongest academics would still publish once their papers were referred to the journal by a respected western academic, but that'll hopefully stay rare.
When you are dealing with science, if you want results, you have to do it right. Science is a process of knowing about the natural world. When done right, it allows us to separate things that are probably true from things that are probably false better than anything else. As such, we discover new things and develop new technologies to make our lives better.
However, that only work when you do it right. If you just make shit up, your results are worthless. After all I can write up a study that shows I have psychic powers. I can have mountains of fabricated data to support that. However, that won't do anything to actually give me any psychic powers.
So, while individually the faked up research may do well for the scientist in question, getting them a better job and so on, nationally it'll set China back. Their fake research won't generate real results when you get down to it.
As Feynman said "For a successful technology, reality must take precedence over public relations, for Nature cannot be fooled." This was with regards to the Colombia disaster. Here was a case of faking up the science to support the conclusion that was wanted, which was that things were safe. Well, all that was for naught, as the reality was it was NOT safe and blew the fuck up.
Same deal with any science. If a Chinese scientist fakes results on a study of a silicon doping technology to allow for smaller transistors, and a Chinese fab then tries to build equipment based on it, it won't work. Doesn't matter that there was a paper saying it would, if the research isn't true, it doesn't help. The laws of physics are what they are, we can't change them. All we can do is understand them. If our understanding is wrong, well then tough shit for us, our stuff won't work like we predict.
As discussed here many times before (this is not new): Chinese scientists are judged by number of publications, just that. Just the number. As a result a PhD student will do their best to pump out as many papers as possible, as the more they manage to get published the better future career prospects they have.
The quality of the papers is simply not taken into account when it comes to job offers.
And then this is the obvious result. Lots and lots of papers, with little to no really new information, and on top of that a lot of made-up stuff by the ones that really have nothing new but still need the numbers.
I wonder what happened to those two profs from Jian who sent in all those fabricated crystal papers.
Sadly, although I am looking to do business in China in the future, I have come across many anecdotes from people who tell me it is very dangerous.
- Someone I know well lost millions due to Chinese side refusing to pay for computer equipment sold
- One firm in Hong Kong told me mainland companies prefer to hire their CFOs from Hong Kong because they are seen as being more trustworthy
- Several companies that had focused on China, leaving it and heading to Japan, due to difficulty in finding trustworthy partners.
I think China has reached a point where cheating in one way or another is limiting its growth potential severely. The main factor in considering a project in China is how not to get screwed. This is not a theory I made up, but actually what has come up in discussions about 2 different companies who have asked me to sell their products in China.
The news articles attached suggest that academia is also completely ridden with cheating unfortunately. I can't see that the country will be able to get anywhere in the future without a sweeping change. I don't think it is a matter of imprisoning or killing academics like China has done with financial or government people in the past. The only idea I have is for someone to give John Boswell a grant to translate the Symphony of Science [symphonyofscience.com] videos into Chinese. This could be mandatory viewing for all academics, and the leaders of universities would be required to institute programs for instilling a new culture of honesty in students and having papers tested before they leave the university. Another idea is to create a bilingual (Chinese-English) transparency website that can be used to discover cheating authors and to also post what happened to them when they were discovered.
The attempt would be to supplant this supposedly celebrated part of Chinese culture and redirect the energy into an understanding of what science is really about. Clearly, you cannot perceive the wonder, or make great contributions, if you cheat. The linked articles suggest that this understanding is not yet mainstream in China, or is too overshadowed by the economic chaos.
I don't know that the Symphony of Science will help. It isn't a problem with the scientists as you've pointed out, it is a general cultural problem. The current culture in China is one that is very short sighted. You do what is good for you now, and don't worry about what comes later. Well, that kind of attitude can lead to some real problems, as our recent economic downturn did a good job showing. However in China it is very much a national attitude like that and it really permeates all facets of life. So
I'm not going to argue for or against the cultural component to the problem - but I do think there are parallels between modern China and the United States around 1900. The big industrialists are king, and the government is more concerned with keeping those rich entrepreneurs happy than with bothering them about pesky laws. It's really a "wild west" sort of mentality.
I expect that a decade or two having to deal with the rest of the industrialized world will largely straighten this out, whether the root is c
China is a highly authoritarian regime, no surprises that their equivalent of the ministry of truth is DoublePlusCooking the results
It seems that science coming from the old Soviet Union was top notch by comparison. Although there were some egregious cases (such as with Lysenkoism) of ideologically-driven suppression of science, overall it seems that Soviet scientists were very well respected by their international peers, most especially in mathematics and physics. Their scientists received several Nobel Prizes, whereas the it seems that the People's Republic of China doesn't actually have even one: none of the four Nobel Laureates of Chinese descent did the work which won them their prizes while they were in China, under the Chinese system of scientific research, and all of them, ironically, had at some point become citizens of the United States. Compare this with the Soviet prize winners, all of whom worked under the auspices of the Soviet scientific research institutes when they did their prize-winning work.
The Soviet experience shows that a repressive, totalitarian society is still able to produce cutting-edge science, so the fact that China is doing so badly in this area probably has nothing to do with their form of government. You might say that if they really wanted to be a scientific and research powerhouse they're doing it wrong. They might look to how the USSR did its work in the Cold War years if they wanted a "socialist" model on how to do science so as to be respected internationally.
The authorities don't want to be the bad guy.
Is there another country named China I'm not aware about?
Folks, this has nothing to do with Asian vs. Western culture in general. This is about one thing, very specificially... WITHIN the framework of modern Western society (which dominates the whole world today, including China) China's government has been more heavily promoting and rewarding success in education and research, whereas the Western governments largely reward and promote success in business. Both do what they do without any regard to ethics. The result in China is lying and cheating in academia. The result in the West is lying and cheating in business, which in its milder forms is known as marketing and has become so entrenched that it isn't even considered unethical anymore. In its more severe forms, which are equally pervasive, it leads to Enrons, Maddocks, industries totally dominated by monoplies, etc.
Simple and obvious.
So you're saying that Chinese businesses aren't more corrupt than Western ones?
Your attempt at moral equivalence is as rickety as, well, Chinese research papers.
Q: How many IBM CPU's does it take to execute a job? A: Four; three to hold it down, and one to rip its head off.


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To keep ourselves honest, the Fantasy Source will check in from time to time with a deeper look at our projections for specific players. Today, we analyze Cardinals' reliever Trevor Rosenthal.
MORE FANTASY BASEBALL: Top 25 for 2014 | 5 hardest-throwing RPs | Join Fantasy Source
Player: Trevor Rosenthal
RP Ranking: No. 6
Projection: 4 wins, 37 saves, 2.49 ERA, 1.04 WHIP, 101 Ks in 72.3 innings
Why this is too optimistic: As great as Rosenthal was last year, he only closed out eight games (counting the playoffs). Even though five of those saves came during his star turn in the pressure-packed postseason, we know it can be tough for relievers to carry the ninth-inning burden all season. That's not to say Rosenthal will collapse or get replaced -- it's just a reminder that he might not be quite as dominant. Rosenthal would also have to shave his WHIP by .06 points from last year, which means he'd have to improve on a surprisingly high .341 BABIP. Also, it's tough for any pitcher, even the biggest flame-throwers, to post a 12.6 K/9 ratio. Over the past five seasons, only 16 pitchers with at least 10 saves have posted a K/9 mark that high.
Why this is too pessimistic: Rosenthal looked unhittable in the playoffs last year (0.00/0.54, 33 Ks in 20.1 innings), and for the season, he had just a 1.91 FIP. Cardinals' relievers had 44 saves last year, so he could easily surpass 37. Basically, if the 23-year-old continues to improve, he could post a sub-2.00 ERA, a sub-1.00 WHIP and be in the top five in K/9 ratio. That would likely make Rosenthal a top-three closer. Given his age and ability, that seems more likely than a noticeable regression.

subset: commoncrawl


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Important info on Campus Center renovation, access, servicesUniversity of Hawaiʻi at Mānoa
Diane E Chang, (808) 956-0391
Director of Communications, Chancellor's Office
Sarah Yap, (808) 956-4832
Director of Student Union and Campus Life Services, Student Union and Campus Life Services
Director of Communications, Chancellor's Office
Sarah Yap, (808) 956-4832
Director of Student Union and Campus Life Services, Student Union and Campus Life Services
Posted: Jan 9, 2011
Welcome back to campus, and the start of the Spring 2011 semester! Here is important information for our entire UH Mânoa community.
The Campus Center Renovation and Expansion Project Phase 2B, which includes the construction of a Recreation Center and full-service coffee shop, is under way. Campus Center is OPEN during construction. ALL dining and student union services will be available as usual.
ACCESS INFORMATION: There are two main entry and exit points to Campus Center. The first is the green stairway facing Hemenway Hall that fronts Jamba Juice. The second is Campus Center Courtyard green stairway facing Kuykendall Hall near Campus Center Dining.
ADA access to the second and third floors of the Campus Center is via the passenger elevator on the first floor near the ATM machines. ADA access to the UH Bookstore is a door on the first-floor near the Campus Center passenger elevator, located on the east (Diamond Head) side of the building near the ATMs. Use the ramp and continue forward until reaching a door before the left-turn to the elevator. Press the call button once, and a Bookstore attendant will answer the door and be available to assist.
Look for signs or call our Ticket, Information and ID Office for general information at 956-7236. Information on access is available online at:
SERVICES, INCLUDING ID AND UPASS VALIDATIONS: Services at the Campus Center during the Spring Rush have been adjusted to better serve you. The Ticket, Information and ID Office in CC212 (near Subway) will relocate a number of its services to the Campus Center Ballroom located on the third floor of Campus Center during the first week of school. These changes will ONLY be in effect from Monday, January 10, to Thursday, January 14.
For January 10-14 only (the first week of school), go to the Campus Center Ballroom on the third floor for the following four (4) services:
1. UH Mânoa ID validation
2. ID production (new and lost/stolen)
3. UPASS issuance (mandatory and opt-in)
4. Department badge production
For January 10-14 only (the first week of school), go to the Ticket, Information and ID Office at CC212 (near Subway) for the following seven (7) services:
1. U.S. passport acceptance
2. Student Affairs Dining Services (voluntary meal plan, flashcash and gift certificate purchases)
3. Faxes and laminations
4. Monthly city bus passes
5. Concert tickets, athletic tickets, and movie tickets
6. Lost and found
7. Campus tours on Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays at 2:00 p.m.
Starting January 17, all eleven (11) of the above services will be available at the Ticket, Information and ID Office at CC212 (near Subway).
For more information, please go to: www.hawaii.edu/campuscenter. For information about the Campus Center Renovation and Expansion Project, please go to: www.hawaii.edu/campuscenter/renovation. For all inquiries, please call our general information line at 956-7235.
Mahalo for your support!
Student Union and Campus Life


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Huang Advances to Finals of 'B' Singles Draw
PRINCETON, N.J. - Yale completed day two of the Farnsworth Invitational Saturday in Princeton, N.J.
In the 'B' Singles Draw, freshman John Huang advanced to the finals with two victories Saturday. In the quarterfinals, Huang rolled to a 6-3, 6-2 win over Penn State's Taylor Cohen. Huang then ousted the No. 1 seed Jonathan Fife of Cornel 6-4, 6-4 in the semifinals.
In the 'A' Singles Draw, senior captain Connor Dawson lost his second round match to No. 3 seed Eugen Brazdil of Penn 6-4, 6-2.
Junior Calvin Bennett advanced to the finals of the 'A' Consolation Draw with a 6-4, 6-2 win over Matija Pecotic of Princeton.
In the 'B' Consolation Draw, freshman Marc Powers defeated Alex Faust of Princeton 6-4, 6-1 to advance to the semifinals. In the semifinals, Powers defeated Haig Schneiderman of Columbia 7-5, 6-4.
The Bulldogs had a pair of losses in the second round of the 'C' Singles Draw. Sophomore Joel Samaha lost 7-6 (4), 4-6, 6-1 to Princeton's Matt Spindler. Sophomore Erik Blumenkranz also lost in three sets. Princeton's Charlie Brosens defeated Blumenkranz 4-6, 6-4, 6-4.
In the 'D' Singles Draw, No. 2 seed freshman Daniel Hoffman advanced to the finals with two victories Saturday. He defeated Princeton's Michael Lin 4-6, 6-0, 6-2 in the quarterfinals before defeating No. 3 seed Nathaniel Gery of Columbia 6-1, 6-3.
Senior Matt Schimmel advanced to the finals of the 'E' Singles Draw with two victories Saturday. Schimmel defeated Jared Karson of Cornell 7-5, 6-3 before defeating Matt Siow of Princeton in the semifinals 6-4, 6-2.
Report Filed by Steven Horn '10,
Yale Sports Publicity


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Editor's Comment: Post-exertional malaise (PEM) is the hallmark symptom of ME/CFS. Dr. Christopher Snell's group has developed the 2-day Cardiopulmonary Exercise Test (CPET) for ME/CFS, a test that can objectively measure PEM. The CPET is a non-invasive test that has long been used to evaluate cardiac health. By measuring gas exchange (the ratio of oxygen to carbon dioxide), Snell's group has determined that, unlike controls, people with ME/CFS consistently show reduced oxygen consumption. This reseach supports other evidence demonstrating hypoxia (low oxygen levels) in the brains of patients with ME/CFS. It is important to note that the CDC study currently underway does not employ the 2-day CPET as described in this study, but the 1-day CPET, which does not measure PEM. The authors of this study have found the 1-day CPET to be inadequate for distinguishing ME/CFS patients from controls.
Discriminative Validity of Metabolic and Workload Measurements to Identify Individuals With Chronic Fatigue Syndrome
By Christopher R. Snell et al.
Objectives:Reduced functional capacity and post-exertional fatigue following physical activity are hallmark symptoms of chronic fatigue syndrome (CFS) and may even qualify for biomarker status. That these symptoms are often delayed may explain the equivocal results for clinical cardiopulmonary exercise testing among individuals with CFS. Test reproducibility in healthy subjects is well documented. This may not be the case with CFS due to delayed recovery symptoms. The objectives for this study was to determine the discriminative validity of objective measurements obtained during CPET to distinguish individuals with CFS from non-disabled sedentary individuals.
Methods:Gas exchange data, workloads and related physiological parameters were compared between 51 individuals with CFS and 10 control subjects, all females, for two maximal exercise tests separated by 24 hours.
Results:Multivariate analysis showed no significant differences between controls and CFS for Test 1. However, for Test 2 the individuals with CFS achieved significantly lower values for oxygen consumption and workload at peak exercise and at the ventilatory/anaerobic threshold. Follow-up classification analysis differentiated between groups with an overall accuracy of 95.1%.
Conclusions:The lack of any significant differences between groups for the first exercise test would appear to support a deconditioning hypothesis for CFS symptoms. However, results from the second test indicate the presence of a CFS related post-exertional fatigue. It might be concluded that a single exercise test is insufficient to reliably demonstrate functional impairment in individuals with CFS. A second test may be necessary to document the atypical recovery response and protracted fatigue possibly unique to CFS, which can severely limit productivity in the home and workplace.
Source: Physical Therapy, 27 June 2013, doi: 10.2522/?ptj.20110368, Christopher R. Snell, Staci R. Stevens, Todd E. Davenport and J. Mark Van Ness. Contact: email@example.com


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Apple-Cran-Pear Sauce Recipe
5 3 5
This pretty pink sauce is a nice change from typical cranberry relish. Apple pie filling and canned pears add just the right amount of sweetness.—Keri Lawson, Fullerton, California
Recommended: Apple Crisp, Crumble and Cobbler Recipes
VERIFIED BY Taste of Home Test Kitchen
Popular Videos
- 2 packages (12 ounces each) fresh or frozen cranberries
- 2 quarts water
- 1 can (21 ounces) apple pie filling
- 2 cans (15-1/4 ounces each) sliced pears, drained
- 1/2 cup sugar
- 1/2 cup unsweetened applesauce
- 1 tablespoon butter
- 1 tablespoon grated lemon zest
- In a large saucepan, cook cranberries and water over medium-high heat until berries pop, about 10 minutes, stirring occasionally. Drain. Add remaining ingredients. Cook, uncovered, over medium heat until mixture boils. Reduce heat; cover and simmer for 30 minutes, stirring occasionally. Serve warm or cold. Yield: 12-14 servings.
Originally published as Apple-Cran-Pear Sauce in Taste of Home October/November 1997, p6
Reviews forApple-Cran-Pear Sauce
My Review
Click stars to rate
Any changes to your rating or review will appear where you originally posted your review
Average Rating
Reviewed Nov. 23, 2014
"I have been making this for years , it's so good! A must have on our Thanksgiving menu"
Reviewed Sep. 2, 2012
"make it every turkey day.."
Reviewed Nov. 12, 2011
"Ever since I found this recipe years ago, I make it for Thanksgiving. It turns out great, makes a lot. I have tweaked it a little bit to my liking, mostly cutting the fruit into bite size pieces and we love it warm or cold!"


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04 February 2006 19:00
Arcadi Espada. 4 de febrero(via)
Sincronía. Debate Catalunya Radio. Persona Ciutadans Catalunya y Gran Ubú. Bronca de Gran Ubú a la presentadora. MP3.
1 (1 marks)
Founded in late 2003 and heartquartered in France, we are non-profit and independant.
We believe in the open web, think internet services should be sustainable, build for the long term.
While we are re-launching the service, we only accept new members through invitation.


text:
Hi there!
I made a short but very clear tutorial on how to make a nice looking colorgrid in javascript and html5. this is for very beginners. so they have a chance to make something nice in a short amount of time while learning javascript and html5
(if this is not the right place to post a tutorial i'm sorry. only trying to help )


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Earthquest Hawaii 2054: Hawaii in the Coming Age of Global Warming and Sea Level Rise
UH professor gives revealing insights in new bookUniversity of Hawaiʻi
Author/Honoluu CC Professor
Arlene Abiang, (808) 956-5637
External Affairs & University Relations
HONOLULU — With Hollywood's recent blockbuster release of "A Day After Tomorrow," the subject of climate change is certainly top of mind for many, and Hawaiʻi is no exception.
In his new book now available in most local bookstores, "Earthquest Hawaiʻi 2054," Honolulu CC professor and author Rick Ziegler puts Hawaiʻi in the spotlight and answers questions on how the state will be affected by global warming and sea level rise in the year 2054.
Using data, projections and predictions from the United Nations Report on Climate Change combined with social trends and political insights, Ziegler creates an alarming and realistic scenario of Hawaiʻi 50 years from now, struggling from impacts of global warming and sea level rise. The book is infused with humor and satire to create a unique blend of entertainment and education.
Ziegler gives us a glimpse of Hawaiʻi in 2054 through the eyes of a young couple who find Waikīkī, the ʻVenice of the Pacific,' replete with gondolas, Chinatown under water, Downtown with a sea wall barrier, Leeward Oʻahu torn by deepening social and economic divisions, and new political coalitions and technology advances offering hope for the future.
"Earthquest Hawaiʻi 2054 addresses the most serious environmental problem we face today," said Ziegler. "The book takes a mix of science and social commentary and reveals some facts and possible solutions on what we can do today to build a safe future for our children and our children's children."
Note to media: To review a copy of "Earthquest Hawaiʻi 2054," please contact Rick Ziegler at
(808) 261-4154.


text:
Jun 23, 2009
from 03:00 PM to 03:00 PM
|Contact Name
|Martha Wells
|Add event to calendar
URISA is hosting a webinar entitled "The New FGDC Draft Address Standard: What does it mean to you?" It will take place on Tuesday, June 23.
The session, presented by Martha Wells, GISP, of Spatial Focus, Inc., and a member of the Standard Update Committee, will be one hour in duration, including time for questions.
Session Overview: Addresses are the most used locators of people, places and events. But our address data at the local level is so variable that it is often difficult to determine what the right address is. This webinar will review the new draft Address Data Standard. The Standard is being developed by URISA for the FGDC and talks about street addresses as data in terms of their content, classification, quality and exchange. Learn how using the standard will bring order and quality to your address data.
When: Tuesday, June 23 - 3pm Eastern/2pm Central/1pm Mountain/12noon Pacific
Cost: $25 for URISA members / $30 Non-members
Registration: http://www.urisa.org/webinars


text:
Whoa. Someone with common sense. Someone in charge with common sense! I need to get some people around my workplace to read this blog entry.
Based on a few years of observation, we noticed that there was little or no correlation between academic performance, as measured by grades [and] the type of college a person attended, and their real on-the-job performance.
While I'm sure that everyone's personal experience is different, this observation matches perfectly with what I've seen over the last 30 years or so in the field. On-the-job performance is the application of skills that are atually needed somewhere. Education in school is teaching something that may be needed at some future date. A new graduate still has to learn how to adapt their knowledge to the real world. Given what schools seem to be teaching these days, and the typical student's retention rate and enthusiasm, I'm not surprised that grads and non-grads are about equal in skill after working for awhile.
... That was a genuine surprise, particularly for me, as I grew up thinking grades really mattered.
Kudos for admitting that, Vembu. I hope others follow your example.
Many, many people have gotten themselves trapped into paying off student loans for the rest of their lives for a degree that is inherently worthless. Expect a lot of denial of this truth contained in this article because for some people the idea that they sold themselves into debt slavery for nothing is too much to bear.
Many, many people have gotten themselves trapped into paying off student loans for the rest of their lives for a degree that is inherently worthless.
On the other hand I got a 4 year electrical engineering degree from a respected university for a grand total of about US$500. Thats what you get growing up in a country where the government thinks that education was important. I have no idea what student loan is and I think made my money back about 25 years ago.
You paid for it just like the rest of us. The only difference is that your payment came (and comes) in the form of taxes, rather than student loans (or whatever else).
I'm not trying to make judgements as to which way is better. I'm merely saying you shouldn't be deluded into thinking that it was free (or nearly free, in your case), simply because you didn't write a check to your school.
You paid for it just like the rest of us. The only difference is that your payment came (and comes) in the form of taxes, rather than student loans (or whatever else).
Sure it was paid by taxes. But once I had that degree it was never incumbent on me to have to earn money to pay it back
Sure it was paid by taxes. But once I had that degree it was never incumbent on me to have to earn money to pay it back
You keep digging a deeper hole.
Good for you, you got a taxpayer funded education and (apparently) it was a good investment for us. Want a cookie with that too?
The taxpayer funded educations that turn out to be BAD investments are arguably a worse situation than what the GP said - people with only personal debt. I don't know, maybe you LIKE the idea of free government handouts with no strings attached?
I'll take their taxes and free higher education over the mess we have any day.
Even if they quadruple my taxes, it's still far cheaper than what I owe for my education + the interest I have to pay. Only a complete fool thinks the USA system is better than elsewhere. Paying 4X my current taxes for 40 years will be cheaper than my student loans.
Even if they quadruple my taxes, it's still far cheaper than what I owe for my education + the interest I have to pay.
Please post the name of your accountant. Because if you quadruple my taxes, I owe a lot more than I make. Actually I think quadruple my current taxes for one year would about pay for my entire college education (at a state school, granted), though that's without interest and without accounting for inflation).
Another way to look is that while your taxes go into funding a couple of wars for reasons you don't even know (no, it's not about terrorism, but I don't want to end up discussing this), his country used that same money to put him through college.
I'm not even going to get into the whole healthcare bit, but if you think paying somewhat higher taxes (and to a goverment who has it's priorities right on where to put that money) is NOT WORTH not ever having to worry about saving up money for your kids' college education (and even after that, watching them struggle to pay off the debt), then I don't really understand your way of thinking.
It all boils down to you (and people who think like you) apparently thinking that having higher taxes lowers europeans' acquisitive power, when that couldn't be further from the truth (could someone back me up with some links?). Now, having a huge-ass student-loan debt to pay... I think that would diminish your acquisitive power for quite a number of years.
That's not true. A degree is a requirement for access to lots of different kinds of high-paying jobs, if only because the HR manager has a degree and decides on wages.
Whether a degree is actually useful in day-to-day work, well there I might agree with you.
[Saying that you have a] degree is a requirement for access to lots of different kinds of high-paying jobs
Fixed that for you. I have never, ever been asked to provide evidence of any qualification or previous employment.
My current employer did a background check that included my high school records. Sadly, the cuniform tablets had crumbled.
Almost every employer will veryify that you in fact worked at each place that you claimed on your resume, and most large companies now have automated systems to facilitate this. Claiming that you worked somewhere that you didn't is a very stupid way to pad your resume.
Just because they're not askinng you for proof means nothing.
That's not true. A degree is a requirement for access to lots of different kinds of high-paying jobs, if only because the HR manager has a degree and decides on wages.
Whether a degree is actually useful in day-to-day work, well there I might agree with you.
and hiring manager....
Two stories:
The first one is about a supervisor I had who felt one must have a college degree to program device drivers. He blew off a really brilliant (I've never worked with a guy since who was that smart - even the PhDs at IBM) guy because he had only a HS diploma.
Second - a bit longer:
There's a company in SE Florida that needed someone to test circuit boards. A two year technical degree was all that was needed: plug board in, read test equipment, note failure.
When they were looking for someone, an EE shows up. They hired him. This guy then takes advantage of the tuition reimbursement and gets a MS EE. He leaves for greener pastures and maybe to actually use his education. Now, they list his job. Guess what? Requirements for thejob: MS EE. A test job. All because this guy got one on the job. They're reasoning? Well, because he got one he must have needed one.
It wouldn't have surprised me if they were one of the companies that said "We can't get any qualified Americans" and eventually hired a H1-b.
None of this musing changes the fact that sometimes solving a hard problem requires a deeper or more theoretical understanding of the problem space. One typically doesn't get that kind of understanding from googling for ready-made solutions.
Indeed. What you need for that is Wolfram Alpha!
If you also add the opportunity cost of the 4 years of pay and experience which you missed out on the degree looks even less attractive....
Gotta disagree with you. College is NOT a glorified vocational school, even if some people in CS treat it as such.
Any decent college won't claim that the knowledge you gain is worth anything in 5 years. Their purpose is (and should be) teaching some fundamental principles of a particular major discipline (CS, in this case), and, more importantly, a set of attitudes and philosophies that teach you how to teach yourself. In engineering, you know your basic skill set will be obsolete in 5 years (and the Head of our EE dept. told us this before classes even began), so it's more important to get the basic mental framework in place and learn how to learn.
Even at my place of work, some talented high school students could probably be taught how to do the job about as fast and well as college graduates. The difference comes 2 or 3 years down the road. The people most able to keep up with emerging trends and extending their abilities tend to be the ones with degrees. And it tends to be the ones with PhDs or Masters that do better at it. The ones whose skill sets don't seem to expand as quickly or as much do tend to be the ones with less schooling.
Teaching someone how to learn is like fucking them into a slut. Except not as fun.
Hm. You have a very charming witticism, but I think you're wrong.
You can teach critical thinking, which is a major component in learning how to learn. True, some people are better at it than others, but it can be a skill you pick up. If not, everyone would be born understanding Plato and Wittgenstein.
Teaching someone how to learn is like fucking them into virginity.
The difference between smart (apparently lacking in this thread) and witty (as seen above) is pretty much the same as between an educated person and someone who cuts and pastes C++ source from tutorial.
Operating Systems -- The underlying principles are mostly the same Algorithms -- New ones are constantly being discovered but the most popular ones have been the same for 30+ years mostly (the undergrad level ones are generally not newer things)... Networking -- Some changes with wireless but most of the TCP/IP protocol that is taught in undergrad courses is the same Discrete Math -- Again mostly the same for the past 30 years Computer Organization -- Mostly this is the same (assuming the course on digital system design/k-maps/binary number systems/etc...)
My experience is that the ability to grasp the complexity of the above areas varies widely but generally the higher the degree, the better one is able to appreciate trends and anticipate them. The above areas only look static to one who hasn't studied them very deeply.
A higher-level degree is not an advanced apprenticeship. It is about knowing what came before and anticipating what's coming next. Someone with a B.S. is likely to think he knows everything. Someone with a Ph.D. is smart enough to know how ignorant he is.
Not everyone needs or should get an advanced degree. But to claim that such degrees are worthless is the height of hubris
Zoho only writes very basic online office applications. I'd imagine they've got people who know some statistics working on those functions for their spreadsheet, but otherwise we're not talking very advanced programming work. Imagine you're writing a Farmville knockoff, would you hire a PhD or a high school kid?
Google otoh sees themselves on a mission to change the world by making all human knowledge accessible. Ain't so surprising they want PhDs even when just building web applications now is it?
Yup.. Cue up the people that spent too much for their Masters and PHD clamoring how they are far better than the unwashed masses...
I know high school dropouts that are smarter than some that hold multiple Masters degrees.
I also have met many people that work in a foundry or factory that know far more about engineering than the idiot engineers that the same company hires.
When you are in IT, you get to watch the fun of the engineers that have never assembled the item fight with the guys that actually touch their design and know it's a mess.
College is a mix of vocational training (particularly important for some professions) and personal growth in the "learn to be a good citizen" sense. It's socially irresponsible to encourage people cut back on the latter, and being lax on the former results in a lot of "not seeing the big picture" kind of thing. I suppose it might be good for businesses that want to lock their employees into working for them long-term, but it's bad for society.
These high school graduates will get much more "learn to be a good citizen" benefits
from merely being encouraged to better themselves on their own time and to travel
outside their little bubble and visit another continent.
University in the United States is not a mix of vocational training and citizenship.
That's what the United States military does, they take someone out of high school and train them up to steer 4 billion dollar warship or "own" a 140 million dollar fighter-bomber in 2-4 years as a maintenance tech. While installing a work ethic and respect for elders, society and other citizens.
I've lived in the dorms with 17-22 year olds and now I live in an apartment complex with a mix of 18-25 year old soldiers and a
Why would I spit on the military? What they do is necessary.
What university offers is a chance, not a guarantee. A chance that that kid who comes from a small town with evangelical parents might hear some things his town and family didn't plan. A chance that the kid whose family told him that not to be of a particular ethnic group marks someone as inferior. A chance that the kid whose high school science teacher believes in astrology might be exposed to actual science. A chance that the kid raised in a Yesh
Do you have any data to back up your claim that non-college educated folk are dim-witted drains on society? Or are you just being a douche?
I know a lot of people that have no college at all. Some volunteer at shelters, most have traveled the world extensively, and continue to challenge and learn new things on their own just fine. The difference being is they don't pay some stuffy institution for the privilege.
Attending college doesn't make you better at anything. In fact most people I knew back in college were a bunch of binge drinking twats that hardly turned out to be better citizens.
Some people manage to make up some or all of the loss on their own. Many people do not. Knowing people in many smaller towns, the ones who didn't get a college degree almost all ended up staying in their home towns, believing almost the same as their parents did, and failing to really understand the world. Among those who went to university, far more (but not all) journeyed in mind and/or body and had a lot more personal growth. Sure, it's possible to waste one's time in university, but many people do not,
Some people manage to make up some or all of the loss on their own. Many people do not. Knowing people in many smaller towns, the ones who didn't get a college degree almost all ended up staying in their home towns, believing almost the same as their parents did, and failing to really understand the world. Among those who went to university, far more (but not all) journeyed in mind and/or body and had a lot more personal growth. Sure, it's possible to waste one's time in university, but many people do not, and those people are not the sort you'll see drawing attention to themselves with alcohol and misbehaviour.
I don't buy it. Who's to say those people would actually succeed at college? Who's to say they would change their belief structure if they attended college?
I find that recent college graduates almost always share the mutually reinforced views of their social clique, and have no ability to relate to anyone who is of a different age group or has a different worldview.
In fact most people I knew back in college were a bunch of binge drinking twats that hardly turned out to be better citizens.
You are either your own counter-example or just another binge-drinking twat.
>>Do you have any data to back up your claim that non-college educated folk are dim-witted drains on society? Or are you just being a douche?
In a startup, I took a group of 6 very bright community college guys (active game modders and the like, but no formal training) and taught them technical skills, like programming, sys admin stuff, etc.
Verdict: I'd rather hire people with a four year degree in computer science.
As much as I liked the guys, they just didn't have enough background in computer science to succeed. I'm not in the business of running a four year university to train them, and they had the net effect of increasing my workload instead of decreasing it. Being involved in three other businesses already, I had to scrap the experiment after a half year.
Graduate of the school of hard knocks here.
I've grown personally so much since I quit school. I look at the whole world and its issues way differently. It's very sobering to see how the real world works, and I think that the very insulated and imaginary environment that a classroom creates hinders growth as much as it develops it.
College is a mix of vocational training (particularly important for some professions) and personal growth in the "learn to be a good citizen" sense.
I would define it as a year's worth of review of junior high and high school material followed by a year's worth of actual new material spread out over three years.
But maybe that's just the schools I've been to.
The company gets crappy code written by people who understand the syntax of the language, but has no deep understanding of algorithms or data structures. They might think they know what they're doing, but having been at that point myself once, they really don't.
The workers end up not really knowing their craft, and have a much harder time getting their next job without a degree.
The only winner here is management, who makes a quick profit off bonuses for cutting costs so much, and don't need to worry about
This could be done right. But you will need a mix of those who know and those who dont. Like what other types of work do such as electricians, plumbers, carpenters...
When I was hired out of college my first boss pulled me to the side and said "your *REAL* study begins now, you have the theory but none of the knowhow". He was right, it was also why I got paid very little. However, as you rightly point out you can have tons of knowhow but none of the theory. Which is just as bad. You want the master/app
Where exactly do you get the notion that people are still learning to write real algorithms in university ? Sure they get shown the result of algorithms. They might even get to implement a binary tree search algorithm (though without the memory allocation part that makes all the difference in real programming). But that's pretty much it.
The days of getting 2 years of education with only Maths + Scheme and C with at least 2 hours per day spent programming are over. Long over. I don't think these kids will be
Oh, I don't know... coming from an environment where there are lots of well-degree'd coders writing crap code and doing stupid things with computer systems, I can see why there's a backlash. Many of my magnet high school friends did great academically in high school, but floundered in college for several years, despite being very clever coders. CS education in particular was crammed with weed-out classes and poorly-arranged "team" projects where most of the effort had to be carried by the 1-2 competent se
Any other reason? Perhaps they are a bit cheaper?
I do think he has a point that a degree in anything doesn't mean you're going to be any good, and I learned a heck of a lot of programming back in the 80's on my own, in my basement.
But, the motive here seems to be cost, not anything else.
And Zoho products show it. They are poor quality knock-offs of other, more commercially popular packages.
The are the Rodger Corman of software.
(Apologies to Mr Corman)
Funny story, my grandfather was an electrical engineer and did a lot of design stuff for a big aluminum smelting company on the west coast. He decided to teach me to code at the tender age of 6, and I really took to it. I kept teaching myself right through high school (QBasic, VBasic, PHP, Java, C/C++, C#, ASM (using debug, not pansy NASM junk)) and decided to go to college for CS. I flunked out after the first year of doing idiotic crap in ADA.
Joined the military, now I'm back at university (BE in EE) with
The students are taught very little theory, avoiding computer science altogether.
Yes there are many things you can do in programming without a formal education, and I'm all for rewarding people who want to make an effort. But by not studying theory they are missing out on all those giants whose shoulders they could be standing on. This will lead to wasted effort as they reinvent everything from the wheel to Unix badly.
It's full of self-taught, degree-free programmers who learned on the job... just like what this bozo wants. It also kills two out of every three projects that it starts. Job security is terrible. Much of the code is unmaintainable. Software engineering discipline is regarded as a waste of time for bureaucratic wusses.
Teaching people on the job means they make their costly, disastrous mistakes on the job instead of making them in college, where nobody gets hurt.
In fact, the game industry thrives on just-out-of-college developers, or technically-interns-but-not-going-back.
You've all seen the articles, they burn through developers like mad. They need the young and inexperienced because they don't complain when they make 1/3 of industry average for 2x the hours and no job security. There are only a few senior members that stay on. The 'complex' parts of the program are bought from middlewear or game engine companies or developed by their seniors. The tailoring - that's left to the newbies. I got to see the team for one of the cookie-cutter Madden-20xx games, and 80% of them appeared within a year of 20.
You hire young, keep the price and expectations low, train em how you want, and ditch them as soon as they become too expensive, or you can find another kid who costs less.
Would Google's index (and infrastructure) be as good as it is if they relied on high schoolers?
Non-cookie cutter programming requires serious, well-educated people.
It might not be any better without PhD's, but then again, they might actually have a product that's not eternally in Beta, either.
Programming isn't that hard. I began at the age of 8 myself. You can go from zero to a hacking code monkey in a month, and from there to a decent programmer in 6 months if you are willing to learn.
But when it comes to the hard problems: design, algorithms, efficiency; most everyone is going to need a broad spectrum of formal education to be able to handle that properly.
We follow a similar strategy only at the college level. I have degrees in international business and german, but spent the last 10 - 12 years doing systems work. Roughly half was systems admin, the other half systems integration. I know enough programming that I could get the job done and build something that worked. The company I now run, I wrote the initial the two versions of the software myself. But we started hiring CS & ECE students as interns first and then some full time when they graduated
How about looking tech schools not dropping resumes from people who when to them they tech stuff that uses in the real work places vs the big schools that some are more about sports then classes also they have less filler classes that have little to no use in the work place that most IP people / codes are in.
How about looking tech schools not dropping resumes from people who when to them they tech stuff that uses in the real work places vs the big schools that some are more about sports then classes also they have less filler classes that have little to no use in the work place that most IP people / codes are in.
How about hiring people who can construct sentences that make some fucking sense?
Good god man, this is the Internet in 2010 not a telegram in 1910. There isn't an extra charge for punctuation.
The students are taught very little theory, avoiding computer science altogether. Instead students practice solving problems and doing real work. They learn programming, English (many only know Tamil), and math. None of the students really like math and they learn just enough. Sridhar made a comment that might shock educators and employers: "Math is the new Sanskrit, the new Latin." He believes we overestimate the value of math as a tool to assess a student's ability.
With almost no computer science and a disdain for math, these guys will fit right in with the majority of the programming workforce, probably on par with a technical college grad (and perhaps myself) in coding ability. However, in my experience, I have seen very little correlation between raw ability to code and the success of projects. Zoho better have some kickass business analysts and project managers for these coders.
I have seen masters for help desktop level 1 that is way over the top even 2 years with tech schools being passed over is way to high.
Same thing with jobs hoppers and people who have been out work for more then 3-6 months. I thing that HR is to stuck in the old ways doing things and today high cost of school / hard to find jobs. Also places don't like to hire people who been in the work place for a long time for low level jobs.
This might work. This might not work. One thing, though, is clear from Google's example: hiring a huge number of incredibly well-educated people does, apparently, also work.
My two Google friends are both motherfucking good programmers. I was in college and asked one of them his strategy for handling exceptions in his code. He shrugged and said, without any sense of irony whatsoever, "I don't really know how to handle exceptions. I find it easier to just write code without any bugs in it."
For almost anyone e
He must be one of the guys that thought that building an entirely new computer language without exceptions (Google Go, for a name that doesn't Google) was a good idea too.
Oh, how I love code that is written like this:
boolean ok = true;
if (!someMethod()) {
ok = false;
if (ok && !someOtherMethod() {
ok = false;
return ok;
Now you've got rid of all the exceptions. Oh, but the method calls are hidden within if statements, and although you have a single return at the end, the *
This actually isn't new... it's a return to the classic "apprenticeship" model. I think it's a great idea.
Consider the benefits. It's all real-world experience, learning how things actually operate and how they are actually used. The modern academia "ivory tower" model, in which people with no industry experience are teaching students only a small portion of what they need to know, isn't serving the industry particularly well. There is also the issue that college/university these days seems to be at least as much about political indoctrination as job skills, but that's another discussion.
Additionally, the instruction in the apprenticeship model is much, much more effective. The mentor-to-apprentice ratio is far better than the teacher-top-student ratio, and the instruction is always what the apprentice needs (you're not going at the least-common-denominator pace, time isn't wasted on rehashing things you already know, you can ask questions as they arise, and you can't hide what you don't know behind standardized Scan-Tron style tests). As a result, the apprentice learns much more quickly, and will become a seasoned veteran in less time.
The one hazard I see is that there is the potential to lowball the apprentices on pay. At the very least, a conventionally-trained college grad has demonstrated they have what it takes to make a four-year plan and get it done in... um... let's call it five years. They aren't going to settle for minimum wage (except in the video game industry), and they aren't going to pull down the average wage for others (again, except in the video game industry). The potential does exist for these issues arising, but it's by no means certain that they WILL arise, and if an employer gets a rep for either turning out ill-trained apprentices or for being an exploitative sweatshop that leverages the naivete of an 18-year-old (sorry, if you're 18 you're a rookie no matter who you are or what grades you got), that employer is going to get blackballed by the rest of us real quick-like.
I do hope Zoho's approach succeeds and gains traction.
People with little or no formal education in programming can very well be capable of programming whatever tools you need, but they are much less likely to be able to do it well. Before I took any classes in programming, all I knew how to do was make things work for myself. That didn't mean they were secure, and that didn't mean they were optimal or user-friendly. They just accomplished a single task, and it took me much longer to create those tools than it would take me now.
This is only kind of rela
After some 15 years in the industry one thing is amazingly clear; Formal computer science education is more of a warning sign then a merit badge.
The vast majority of people I've worked with that actually had a CS degree have been inept to put it kindly. Regardless of experience, if they went to college for computers chances are good they have trouble wiping their own ass. While I've worked with a few very notable exceptions, the rule still firmly stands. Maybe it's because I'm a product of the dot.com boom, but most people that get a CS degree did it purely for the money and not at all because they had a talent or interest in computers.
The one unifying trait in good, practical computer professionals is an aptitude for music. Pretty much all played an instrument and most still regularly do. Any college degree they have tends to be in something random that interested them, like sociology, if they have a degree at all.
I agree about the music. I think everything else you said was horseshit (and I say that as someone who matched your profile - my degree was EE - who programmed for twenty years and has been managing programmers for the last twenty). Those of us who were not formally trained in CS and succeeded in the software world learned material that was the equivalent of a CS degree. I took my own time to study algorithms, data structures, compilers, databases, complexity theory, programming language theory, project management, and other topics that a well-rounded software engineer should know. It would have been a lot easier if I had done this in college, rather than studying transistors, amplifiers, power systems, and antenna theory. However, I got into programming via the electronic CAD field and I needed to become a good software engineer, too, so I learned the other stuff on my own.
I've worked with plenty of folks who had CS degrees and they did fine. I've also worked with plenty of folks (sometimes CS trained and sometimes not) who were idiots. In general, a CS degree was not sufficient to show quality, but neither was there any indication that it marked the bearer as deficient. However, it usually meant that when I asked them why they didn't use a hash table, they were able to understand what I was talking about and usually were able give me a good reason for it. But then, maybe I was programming in fields where you actually needed to know this material. I guess if you were hacking Perl scripts for some craptacular website, you wouldn't need to know any of this stuff - the site you built wouldn't scale, but then, chances are you wouldn't ever have been successful enough for it to need to anyway.
Only an idiot would hire a PhD for a programming job. PhDs are research scientists.
Hiring coders out of high school may very well work for some projects, and those kids may be happy to have a "real job". But in the long run the joke will be on them. Unless they plan to spend the rest of their life in that company (unlikely, as they seem intent on using a cheap supply of fresh young kids) they will find that most projects do appreciate (and need) a bit more education. Back to school for them, and not at the time when it's most convenient - it's hard to go back.
On the specific issue of coding vs. education. 20 years ago I started working as a software developer full time before I had any education above high school. I did some useful things that seemed "cool" then and worked out well enough for my employers. 20 years forward and two masters degrees later (Comp. Eng and Comp.Sc./Infosec) I can see that I am by far a better engineer (and coder too, but that's almost secondary), in part due to all the experience and in part due to education. I would have never been able to do what I do now without additional years of studying.
I'd prefer English majors. Then I'd teach them to program. I find communication is easier.
I've worked with god awful programmers, and a few excellent ones. My conclusion is that the majority of programmer graduates of elite schools are very good; but the reason is probably that their degree affords them plenty of choices of career, and they would have no reason to stick to programming if they didn't excel in it.
There's another problem, though, and it hasn't got much to do with the reputation of their alma mater, but the vast majority of programmers did not study CS. I didn't (and I'm a sysadmin anyway) but I tried to educate myself in theoretical stuff. Take for instance compiler theory; formal grammars and what not. Most programmers I've worked with have absolutely no idea what the fuck it is. The result is brain dead regex-only based parsers full of glaring bugs. The other day I discovered that a piece of software I had been delivered stored financial transaction amounts in floats. I dare to advance that no CS graduate who didn't get his degree from a diploma mill would commit such a sin. But here the self-taught developer looked at me as if I was nitpicking.
"There is no distinctly American criminal class except Congress." -- Mark Twain


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THE board and management coup this week at publishing group APN News & Media was as brutal as it gets in the world of big business.
The dumping of chief executive Brett Chenoweth and four other directors including the chairman of only six months, Peter Hunt, is the kind of action taken when a company is struggling badly. Earnings are in decline and its prospects for recovery are clouded at best.
As of 9am on Tuesday morning this team of APN governors will no longer be employed, having been forced to walk the plank by the company's two major shareholders - a struggling Irish media company, Independent News & Media plc and institutional investor Allan Gray, who together account for just over 50 per cent of the stock.
The strategies of the two camps diverged and the party with voting control got to call the shots. Make no mistake, APN's earnings are under intense pressure and neither of the protagonists in this saga would disagree.
The issue on which there is a split is whether the company's balance sheet is in such a perilous state that it needs to be repaired by raising more capital from shareholders.
The majority of the board and management had a plan to raise about $100 million and sell assets to reduce the company's $470 million in net debt. The strategy involved the issue of stock at the discounted price of 20¢ a share.
The talk in the ether suggested APN had a near immediate need to raise cash or risk being in breach of loan covenants - which are agreements the company has with its lenders upon several metrics. In this case, the concern was about the ratio of debt to earnings before interest, tax and depreciation.
Most of the now-sacked board - those that were not associated with the major shareholders - suggest the ratio of three times was too high.
It certainly is one of the highest among its peers, but analysts are not suggesting it was at risk of breaching bank covenants imminently.
But how much leeway APN had was as much a factor of its near to medium-term earnings prospects as anything else. Those in favour of an equity raising believed APN needed a capital buffer to ward against uncertain times ahead. Thus the independent majority of the board had taken the view that it needed to raise money.
The two major shareholders disagreed.
There is little doubt that the largest shareholder - Independent News & Media plc - had its own financial issues. It is struggling under its own pile of debt and a penny-dreadful share price. Its market capitalisation is now sitting at a precarious $20 million.
Thus its reluctance to stump up fresh capital to prop up its Australian associate is no surprise.
The second major shareholder, Allan Gray, has taken a big punt on challenged Australian media company shares over the past couple of years - including Fairfax - and is sitting on substantial losses on these particular punts.
It is estimated that Allan Gray's average buying price for APN is about $1.30 a share, against the current share price of 30¢ a share.
The backstory from the now-former APN directors is that the major shareholders did not have the readies to invest any more in the company and thus could not support a capital raising.
None of this came up until late last week when Independent Media issued a statement saying it no longer supported Chenoweth as APN chief executive.
The response from the board and the non-aligned directors was to support the chief executive.
Until last week the entire board are said to have supported the idea of a capital raising - which was due to be announced this Thursday along with the APN results.
The major shareholders are telling the story a different way. They say the expelled CEO and chairman were financial engineers with no understanding of media and should be replaced with experienced industry operatives.
The major shareholders contend that the decision to proceed with a capital raising was a suicide mission.
Regardless of who one believes, the fact remains that APN is under intense earnings pressure thanks to its reliance on the traditional print media assets.
It has a couple of more resilient media assets - investments in outdoor advertising and radio - but these could not offset the declining revenue contributions from print businesses in Australia and New Zealand. The migration to digital had also been an issue - as APN had been late to the game in developing that side of the business.
These are issues for the yet to be announced new members of the board and management. It is likely that one of the few remaining board members, Peter Cosgrove, will be replacement chairman - and he may need to deliver the company's 2012 full-year results on Friday.
Capital-raising prospect led to shareholder coup
THE board and management coup this week at publishing group APN News & Media was as brutal as it gets in the world of big business.
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