Apparently one of the most common uses of LLMs in #academia is copy editing: cleaning up your #writing on points of spelling, grammar and style. This is wildly unattractive to me. I love writing. My personal style, my personal voice, are extremely high priorities to me. It annoys me no end when a journal editor replaces one of my unconventional style choices with something bland. If an editor ran a paper of mine through an #LLM I would scream bloody murder.
@mrundkvist I agree, but every spell-scheck, every grammar-check etc in Microsoft Word is a result of AI. I would like to find a word-processor that does NOT use AI at all.
If you are gonna nitpick authors about an arbitrary overlap percentage in Crossref reports, then don’t run the report including the affiliations, author list, references, standard disclosures, and mandatory statements in the cover letter (not even part of the manuscript!) all counting toward the overlap.
So annoying. Authors are stuck dealing with manuscripts that obviously do not have problems with text borrowing
@FlockOfCats or you know, just have a human look at the report after it’s spat out to see where the issues are and ignore those where similar wording is completely appropriate (yes my company does this).
@clare_hooley yeah that’s really what gets me. They push this work onto the authors, instead of just looking for 2 seconds, yet Elsevier is the one making billions 🙄
We've all suspected this one, but here's an actual experiment: if the people deciding on grant proposals get only a 1-page summary instead of the full proposal, it doesn't really make any difference. 😑
(Probably even more noteworthy: even if both panelists see the full proposal, they're only in agreement 53.4% of the time, which is basically random chance 🙄)
So it's all one big lottery, who would have thought.
"A university fired a faculty member almost immediately not for out-of-classroom speech but for an optional course assignment. The assignment asked students to, among other things, explain “the impact of genocide/ethnic cleansing on the health/biology of the people it impacts.”"
@AlexSanterne@academicchatter I don’t think scientists have changed because people haven’t changed, and man is the history of science littered with petty shit
We had a great time yesterday at our session on "Mobilizing academia for just post-growth futures" at the Wellbeing Economy Alliance conference at the University of Copenhagen.
Through panel and small group discussions, we explored how academics are helping to bring about major transformations in society, in ways that go beyond the conventional realm of the academe. We realize that research is critical, but so too is the mobilization of power wielded by academia today in the struggle to push power holders in spheres of decision-making towards social and ecological justice.
We discussed different ways in which academics can step beyond their conventional activities, together with our wonderful panels: Linda Luciani (#Degrowth Copenhagen), Vasna Ramasar (Collective against environmental racism), Line Marie Thorsen (Klima- og Omstillingsrådet) & Laura Horn (Scientist Rebellion).
Special thanks to Rebecca Rutt and Fernando Racimo for organizing this session, to the UCPH Degrowth Network and Degrowth Copenhagen, and to the Wellbeing Economy Alliance for letting us hold this wonderful session!
The Wellbeing Economy Alliance has a nice-looking website with interesting content.
Yet I can't help but notice that it loads 14 trackers by default, and when disabling in the dialog ALL trackers, it first goes back to 8 trackers and then reloads the page taking the count back to 13 trackers.
To me both the trackers and all the corporate social media channels are hallmarks of surveillance capitalism and undermine the story that the alliance is telling us on their website.
"While suggesting that there is individual work to be done often gets derided as ‘neoliberal’, it’s often the personal connections we can make and the way we can use data to show people how climate crisis affects their lives that can help us mobilise for broader forms of advocacy at structural levels." (@roopikarisam)
This is a very good piece by a colleague accusing university presidents of lying, in their own narrow self-interest, about what's happening on campuses. Their craven behavior barely protects them and makes everyone else far less safe. Including Muslim and Jewish students, faculty, and staff.
I should have also tagged #UCLA which is also featured in this piece, though the author is at USC. UCLA had the horrorshow of protesters getting attacked for hours by far-right counterprotesters including Nazis and violent right-wing Israel supporters (below).
The only violence at USC (my campus) was #LAPD. On both campuses (and nearly all others), the actual student protesters were peaceful.
Academic associations: when you are looking for graduate students to do work for a conference, perhaps don't offer an honorarium equivalent to less than minimum wage in 12 out of 13 provinces and territories.
That's not even counting the unknown (uncompensated?) time for the mandatory orientation session.
"To support the training and legitimacy of their own on-campus police force during the 1960s and 1970s, university leaders increased police budgets and lobbied for expanded statutory authority. University leaders steadily increased budgets to outfit and support police officers."
@elduvelle_neuro
In the US, some institutions will extend a complementary faculty title to any postdoc ambitious enough to submit a grant. And sometimes they are awarded! In that case, many grants are open to you.
That said, grants to do data analysis are a bit few and far between.
@mxp@yrochat I was happily surprised that the conference I went to recently, was nearly 80% "you can find me on mastodon", and loads of people using the hash tag here, but not on Xitter.
I don't know how a judge can feel good after sentencing a 77 year old theoretical physicist to the penal colony. Especially, if what apparently counts as treason is the vetted(!) publication of research papers.
(He is the second in a series of four similar cases; where the first one "testified" to shorten his own sentence.)
It looks like #Academia should be intimidated, to silence the remaining critical voices. #HumanRights#Russia#Treason https://www.reuters.com/world/europe/russian-hypersonics-expert-jailed-14-years-treason-2024-05-21/