Connectionists: [EXT] If you believe in your work ...

[Fellous, Jean-Marc - (fellous)]

Assuming there are funders on the list, and funding-related people, including program officers (and believe or not, there are!): if you had $20M to invest in the sort of things we do on this list: how would we make things better? Can we brainstorm an alternative system that allows for innovating publications and effective funding?

Jean-Marc
________________________________
From: Connectionists <connectionists-bounces at mailman.srv.cs.cmu.edu> on behalf of Richard Loosemore <rloosemore at susaro.com>
Sent: Monday, July 18, 2022 1:28 PM
To: connectionists at mailman.srv.cs.cmu.edu <connectionists at mailman.srv.cs.cmu.edu>
Subject: [EXT]Connectionists: If you believe in your work ...


External Email

On 7/17/22 11:52 AM, Grossberg, Stephen wrote:

> ... if you believe in your work, and the criticisms of it are not valid, do not give up. ...


> ... all criticisms by reviewers are valuable and should be taken into account in your revision.

> Even if a reviewer's criticisms are, to your mind, wrong-headed, they represent the
> viewpoint of a more-than-usually-qualified reader who has given you the privilege
> of taking enough time to read your article.

Really?

1) I believe in my work, and the criticisms of it are not valid.  I did not give up, and the net result of not giving up was ... nothing.

2) No reviewer who has ever commented on my work has shown the slightest sign that they understood anything in it.

3) Good plumbers are more than usually qualified in their field, and if one of those gave you the privilege of taking enough time to read your article and give nonsensical comments, would you pay any attention to their viewpoint?

** - **

I have spent my career fighting against this system, to no avail.

I have watched charlatans bamboozle the crowd with pointless mathematics, and get published.

I have watched people use teams of subordinates to pump out streams of worthless papers that inflate their prestige.

I have written grant proposals that were exquisitely tuned to the stated goal of the grant, and then watched as the grant money went to people whose proposals had only the faintest imaginable connection to the stated goal of the grant.

** - **

The quoted remarks, above, somehow distilled all of that history and left me shaking with rage at the stupidity.

I have been a member of the Connectionists mailing list since the early 1990s, and before that I had been working on neural nets since 1980.

No more.


Best,



Richard

--

Richard Loosemore

Cornell University

...

rpl72 at cornell.edu<mailto:rpl72 at cornell.edu>

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