Technically I'm going to be Godwinning the discussion, but for what it's worth, I'm not accusing anybody of anything, just throwing in some historical background...

Early in the 20th century, a lot of very prominent, very reasonable people thought eugenics was a good idea. People like Teddy Roosevelt, Woodrow Wilson, and Alexander Graham Bell were all supporters. It's only with the perspective of history (the horrors of WWII) that eugenics has been so widely viewed as a bad thing, because the holocaust was (among other things) a case of eugenics taken to an extreme.

As a result, I think the historical evidence gives a lot of people enormous hesitation and unease about whether and how genetic screening / artificial selection can be done ethically. The Nazis were an extreme case and nobody is saying we're anywhere near that. (Tangent: Is that like an anti-Godwin? Does that mean I win the discussion?) But we need to figure out, as a society, where to draw lines so that we don't go down a slipperly slope. And for many people, the line is that we can screen out traits that will cause clear and unambiguous suffering, as long as the suffering is an intrinsic part of the condition and not a societal response (as would be the case, for example, for somebody born gay in a homophobic society).

Bottom line, I think things like eye and hair color remind people too much of where eugenics has gone horribly, horribly wrong. And it's not just a matter of parents' individual choice, because if enough people do it, it changes the makeup of society and the gene pool for all future generations. So I think it is very reasonable that people want to make sure the technology doesn't outpace the ethical deliberations, so we can figure out rules and lines to draw.

US News uses thresholds of 50 in evaluating class size

Correction, that should have read "thresholds of less than 20 and greater than 50..."

You just have to lie.

And to generate a controversy on slashdot, you just have to lie in the article summary.

Look, I have no doubt that all kinds of universities do all kinds of crazy things to influence their rankings. But the summary gets a lot of stuff wrong.

For example, on the faculty salaries... Apparently, Clemson did two things. Firstly, they raised actual salaries, which would have a real and legitimate impact on their ability to recruit and retain outstanding faculty. Second, they corrected a previous under-reporting of compensation. US News bases its formula on total compensation (which combines salary and benefits), and apparently Clemson had been previously only reporting salary. (Here's the money quote: "Clarifying Clemson's approach after the panel for a reporter and an interested Robert Morse, director of data research for U.S. News's college rankings, Watt said that the university had added benefits to its faculty salary reporting to U.S. News after previously having failed to do so, as the magazine requires. So its jump came not from double counting or including information that it should not have, but from playing catchup." [source]

On class sizes, the way Clemson "manipulated" the data was by... um, actually changing their actual class sizes. They made their smaller classes smaller and let their bigger classes get bigger, because US News uses thresholds of 50 in evaluating class size. Sure that helps their numbers... but it's also not a bad thing from a pedagogical point of view. With a discussion-oriented seminar, reducing below 20 makes a real difference. And with a big lecture, 55 versus 100 is not that much of a difference. So they might have actually improved their delivery of education.

As for the fake applicants mentioned in the summary, I couldn't find that in any of the linked articles. But one of the articles said that Clemson tightened their actual admissions standards (i.e., required higher high school class ranks and SAT scores). That isn't manipulation, that's objectively becoming a more selective institution.

The dirtiest accusation is that in the peer rankings, Clemson deliberately gave low scores to close rivals. If that was really done intentionally (which Clemson denies), that is genuinely dirty, but not terribly shocking. And that kind of a pattern should have been easily detectable by US News, if they had bothered to look for it.

you cant even put together a couple of sentences and send out an email?

Funny, I can remember a time when it would have been considered rude to do any serious personal stuff over email, which was considered too informal. If you're the original holder of that 4-digit account, you should be old enough to remember that time too.

Sure, you don't have to be a punk like he was... but the existence and use of these sites certainly encourages people to do just that.

I think you're too hard on the medium. To me, Facebook actually discourages this kind of serious and intimate communication. The hard character limits on many communications, and soft UI nudging on others (like the small input box for direct messages), make Facebook great for frequent casual interaction, but worse than email for Big Important Stuff. So both have their place, and it's up to the person to pick the right one. Facebook didn't deactivate your buddy's email account.

you rarely become a professor at a major university or some other distinguished position only on the basis of being talented

I assume you mean "book-smart at science," in which case, you're right.

it is much more important that you are skilled at writing

Being able to effectively communicate your results is critical for scientists. That isn't a bad thing. There's no point in doing science if you don't or can't tell anybody what you did and why it matters.

and inter-personal politics, manipulative both in terms of being able to sell your research and in terms of luring grad students, junior researchers and funding agencies to work for you or to pay you.

You're putting a bad spin on this with "manipulative." Most science nowadays involves teams and collaborations; very few discoveries are made by the lone guy in his garage with a bunch of test tubes. If you are working in any area where you cannot go it completely alone, you need to be something that's an even dirtier word on Slashdot than "manipulative." On top of knowing your science, you need to be an effective... wait for it... manager (gasp!).

As for the funding... most funding is peer reviewed. What is wrong with telling scientists that they cannot have scarce resources unless they can convince experts in their field that the research is worth funding? Can you think of a better way to fund science?

Unfortunately, the same manipulative skills you need to acquire to become successful make you potentially more capable of cheating.

Do you have any evidence to back this up? Good people skills and Machiavellian manipulation are not the same thing.

It seems more plausible to me that if you're a scientist who works in a highly collaborative team environment and regularly gets funding from the bigs (NSF, NIH, etc.), it would be harder to last as a successful cheat. Somebody who works mostly solo or with just a couple of grad students can send off their results to a journal, and they just have to look plausible to the editor and journal referees. The socially skilled scientist who has a big team has to slip their cheating past the grad students who did the hands-on work. If they're attracting lots of funding, they are going to get close scrutiny, and it's going to be hard to keep getting grants if nobody can replicate their work. And if they are well networked and therefore well known, there are going to be lots of people trying to replicate the results so they can build on them.

I have witnessed it on multiple occasions, when a famous professor would write a pile of an outright bullshit in a paper; not intentionally, but because his bullshitting skills and confidence were orders of magnitude above his raw technical competence.

I don't know about your field, but in my experience these are the people with enormous targets on their backs. Good scientists are smart enough to recognize bullshit, or at least suspect it. And the young upstarts, who haven't been around long enough to be impressed by Professor X's reputation, see an opportunity to make their bones by taking down a famous blowhard. The system ends up self-correcting pretty well.

From your link:

only iPod can play AAC Protected songs

That's the big deal.

Haven't people realized by now that the fact that some people are misdiagnosed with ADHD doesn't mean that the condition isn't real?

The problem is that there is a gap between the fairly extensive diagnostic procedures that should be used and what sometimes happens in practice (5-minute office visit where general practitioner hands out prescriptions on the school's or parent's sayso). I don't blame people for being skeptical, but that doesn't mean there aren't real kids (or adults) with a real disorder.

The follow up to this is that you might as well assume that anything that gains sentience also would most likely have developed a theory of mind. With theory of mind you now have something called empathy. Only sociopaths lack this.

Theory of mind refers to the ability to understand that other persons have mental states -- knowledge, intentions, thoughts, feelings, etc. However, theory of mind does not automatically lead to empathy, the capacity to experience what others are feeling (or to empathic concern, the feelings of care that follow from empathizing with someone else's distress). Sociopaths don't have trouble recognizing that other people have intentions, feelings, etc.; it's just that they don't particularly mind or care when others are in distress.

To point to another example from fiction, think of Hannibal Lecter. He was trained as a psychiatrist, and he has a very sophisticated understanding of other people's minds ("Clarice, are the lambs still bleating?"). But he uses that understanding to advance his own goals and gratification, not to form bonds or help others.

The upshot, going back to the thread: if I was designing a robot, I wouldn't assume that just because it has a theory of mind, it will behave in ways we want it to. ToM alone might just make it better at predicting our behavior and killing us.

Cory Doctorow has apparently found a business model that works for him. The reason he thinks obscurity is a threat is because he doesn't appear to be trying to fully support himself from his writing. Instead, he gives away his books for free, which drives people to his ad-supported weblog, earns him speaking fees, and gets him government-sponsored fellowships.

That doesn't mean that his business model will work for everyone else.

Games, DVDs, junk food? This isn't a war on fat, this is a war on nerds.

Mark my words, next up will be a special property tax supplement on basement residences.

Actually, it'd be great if the current laws were consistent with the 200-year-old stuff:

To promote the progress of science and useful arts, by securing for limited times to authors and inventors the exclusive right to their respective writings and discoveries

Congress has gone way beyond the Constitutional intent or meaning, and the Supreme Court has unfortunately upheld them on it. That is why copyright has so many problems. Copyright terms have been extended to make money for business interests, not to support creators and promote progress.

Congress should take seriously the task of calibrating the "limited time" to be just long enough that artists and inventors can earn a reasonable living -- and then inventions and cultural products go back into the public hands (where they can be modified, extended, and improved by anyone). If that were the case, copyright would be doing its job.

If you detonate a nuclear bomb in Berkeley, you could be fined up to $500 and go to jail for thirty whole days.

No, I am not kidding.

What I want to know is, what's up with the "hardhack" tag? Did the Brazilian pirates go into space to mod the satellites?

Because if this story involves space pirates, it's even more awesome than I thought.