Collusion rings threaten the integrity of computer science research
This is a bit surprising, but hardly the biggest problem. I’ve posted before about it, but academic has to get away from the infantilism of using KPIs to judge creative intellectual work.<p>Part of the problem is that people seem to want an objective evaluation of a piece of research, and measure the value for taxpayer money. Well, you can’t get an objective evaluation. It’s all subjective. And “impact” as a quantifiable entity in general is nonsense, for one thing the timescales prohibit its measurement at the point where it may be useful.<p>The solution is to use management. Lots of people object here and say “but nepotism, favouritism” and yep that’s a problem, but it is less of a problem that the decline of western universities. You can circumvent it somewhat by rotation, by involving external figures, by a hierarchy that ensures people are not colluding, but ultimately you just have to trust people and accept some wastage.<p>People aren’t in academia for the money. It’s a vocation. You’re not going to have many people milking the system. Things went pretty well before the metric culture invaded the academy. They can go well again.