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MIT asks arXiv to withdraw preprint of paper on AI and scientific discovery

(economics.mit.edu)
268 points carabiner | 1 comments | 16 May 25 15:09 UTC | HN request time: 0.217s | source
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ayhanfuat ◴[16 May 25 18:30 UTC] No.44008481[source]▶
> by a former second-year PhD student

Seems pretty serious if they kicked him out.

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dhosek ◴[16 May 25 19:13 UTC] No.44008865[source]▶
I always wonder what happens with these high-profile transgressors. I once created a Google News alert for a high-level Apple employee who went to jail for some criminal act at Apple and never saw any indication of him again. I’m guessing his career in economics is likely over (he’d previously worked at the NY Fed before starting at MIT) and I wonder what he’ll end up doing—will he be able to find some sort of white-color work in the future or will he be condemned to retail or food-service employment.
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1. Aurornis ◴[16 May 25 19:37 UTC] No.44009059[source]▶
The MIT announcement says they asked him to retract the paper but he wouldn't, which led to them making the public statement about the paper.

They may have thought they could jump into an industry job, including the paper and all of its good press coverage on their resume. Only the author can retract an arXiv paper, not their academic institution. It wouldn't be hard to come up with a story that they decided to leave the academic world and go into industry early.

MIT coming out and calling for the paper's retraction certainly hampers that plan. They could leave it up and hope that some future employer is so enamored with their resume that nobody does a Google search about it, but eventually one of their coworkers is going to notice.