Comment by timdorr
4 years ago
Aditya's advisor [1] is one of the co-authors of the paper. He at least knew about this work and was very likely involved with it.
[1] https://adityapakki.github.io/assets/files/aditya_cv.pdf
4 years ago
Aditya's advisor [1] is one of the co-authors of the paper. He at least knew about this work and was very likely involved with it.
[1] https://adityapakki.github.io/assets/files/aditya_cv.pdf
There is no doubt that Kangjie is involved in Aditya's research work, which leads to bogus patches sent to Linux devs. However, based on my understanding of how CS research groups usually function, I do not think Kangjie knew the exact patches that Aditya sent out. In this specific case, I feel Aditya is more likely the one to blame: He should have examined these automatically generated patches more carefully before sending them in for reviewing.
Kangjie should not have approved any research plan involving kernel patches knowing that he had already set that relationship on fire in order to get a prior paper published.
>based on my understanding of how CS research groups usually function
If you mean supervisors adding their names on to publications without having contributed any work, than this is not only limited to CS research groups. Authorship misrepresentation is widespread in academia and unfortunately mostly being ignored. Those who speak up are being singled out and isolated instead.
I would say it's less authorship misrepresentation and more an established convention that's well-known to people within the field. Lead authors go first, then supporting contributors, and finally advisors at the end.
Even if they didn't write or perform part of the research, they did act in an advisory or consulting fashion, and therefore could significantly shape the research. Maybe there should be a different way to credit that, but right now convention is to put them in a low position in the list of authors.
Where I went, it was so widespread that it was considered normal and nobody would even think about speaking out about it. Only with hindsight did I realize how despicable it was.
1 reply →