“Publish or perish” is an expression that’s been around since forever and it’s well ingrained into every researcher’s mind so…

What did society expect?

(Not so) Fun story: when a friend of mine was doing her PhD she was trying really hard to reproduce an experiment published on Nature by two Harvard postdocs at the time. She was so frustrated because she couldn’t reproduce it, so she approached one of the authors during a conference and he candidly admitted the experiment was utterly wrong, since after publishing it they realized they made a fatal mistake in interpreting the result which invalidated their claims.

They published the original paper honestly, since they were not aware of the mistake at the time, but they willingly decided not to retract it since a paper in Nature is always a paper in Nature and the citations piling up were too important for their career… How about that for the intellectual honesty that scientists project having as an aura?

Anyhow, this nearly killed my friend’s PhD, but luckily she switched to something related she managed to understand and graduated…

So pollution does indeed bind with water and gets carried around. I wonder how well chlorine helps destroy or clean such filth

So we’re doomed, or rather, I am. Well, theoretically speaking we’re all doomed, but it would be pleasant to last as long and healthy as possible

I suppose guillotines help in a variety of situations, though I would have not imagined them as an extreme way of filtering the lack of actions by politicians and corporations towards the environment 🤔

Ah, interesting. I should hope not all pollutants dissolve into water, but I wonder: wouldn’t they still be bad when ingested even if not dissolved into water?

Thanks! You’re right that I wasn’t thinking about chlorine which does get added to the water where I live. I suppose that doesn’t entirely kill all germs and pollution going into the water, but it helps getting rid of it.

Also, yeah. When I am out breathing pollution, it feels really bad for me

True, lots of places (but I suppose maybe not everywhere) have really wide roads with tons of lanes so it’s easy to drive around with SUV’s, but this is generally not true in Europe where, even in large cities, often roads/lanes are narrower, making SUV’s unwieldy for those driving around them.

Then there’s the pollution aspect which I can’t address, but I imagine SUV’s pollute more on average than other cars (and probably Europe is currently being a bit more stingy on allowing this)

I’ve had the pleasure (?) To eat KFC in the US and in Europe. Besides the fact that it was junk food either way, the European version was just so much better.

I can believe that in its distant origins, KFC was actually tasty, but right now I’d sooner enjoy being punched in the stomach than eating there (a similar statement is true by replacing KFC with McDonald’s or Burger King or several other fast food chains, though for only these three I’ve tried both US and EU versions of these products)

Well, I’m sure you can buy delicious fried chicken elsewhere at a local joint (those people won’t block your ads)!

That’s a lot of nuts!

I have very limited, but non-zero knowledge of Korean society and I agree with what you say at the higher echelon of the most ambitious students (of which I actually met several and fit your remark perfectly), I guess when I wrote I had in mind the various ones I met who just weren’t chasing the same goals and were content (or not fussed) to study elsewhere.

Rethinking the article though, I’m in agreement with you that the percentages mentioned are not really surprising (especially the second one)

I understand that prestige is super important, especially for those who want high achieving careers, so it makes sense kids decide to hold off one year if they can get in a school that will greatly improve or maintain the type of life they’re used to, but I’m still a bit surprised to hear that so many kids do that.

The other universities are good too! A friend of mine graduated from one in Daegu and now has a good job in Seoul living well and supporting his family.

Sure, I suppose if they’d graduated from Seoul university, they might be doing even better, but I wonder if going to Seoul university and ending up being average is considered better than someone graduating with flying colors from a “less important” university. Hell, I’ve seen tons of people graduating from “less important” US institutions and now doing as well than peers from top institutions

Anyhow, it’s complicated: ambition is important, but if kids don’t get in they might feel like their life is over, when there are plenty of other good options

… And so it begins…

So you’re texting while driving, uh?

We should all report you, but we’re too curious to know the source of perpetual motion that’s been powering you since May!

Thanks! So it’s some sort of guidelines Google and other search engines laid out which can be exploited to maximize visibility. Very annoying indeed

I’m late to the party and I don’t understand several things I read in the comments, so I need to ask for clarification.

What is Google’s Search Engine Optimization (SEO)? I looked it up, but the websites StartPage was giving me were not useful (probably ads or spam sites). Is finding these ads/spam sites the problem?

How is this a search engine’s fault? I mean, if the internet is now made by walled gardens and spam sites, search engines have trouble finding something really relevant, but how is it their fault?

I should add I navigate logged out on Firefox with the Ublock Origin and NoScript extensions (among others) so I at least don’t see Google’s ads.

I agree there are some searches where it’s next to impossible to find informed sites from spam ones: just a week ago I was looking for “Best Nintendo Switch games released in 2023” and I got lots of dubious blogs, and even when I got hits from IGN, GameSpot or PcMag sites, I realized I don’t know if any of these last sites are genuine or bought out (and checked the Wikipedia for more wisdom about their veracity), but how is it the search engine’s fault to not navigate through seas of crap?

When I search for academic things, Google or StartPage still seem to give me useful answers.

I have been wary about searches related to reviews about anything, but it just seemed to me the internet is a worse place now in general (because of walled gardens and spam)

Disclaimer: I’m late to this whole discussion and I also don’t understand some things (I don’t fully understand what SEO is and why it’s bad, though from the comments I understand it’s part of what’s making search engines worse nowadays)

Given that: I also made some searches where I wouldn’t get anything good in the first pages, but that seemed to be dictated by the amount of spam sites too, isn’t it?

I mean, I use the Ublock Origin and NoScript extensions for Firefox and search logged out of Google, so I don’t get advertisements, but I agree that, depending on what I search, I need to fight through large amounts of crap to find something good. Still I don’t understand (and it’s my lack of knowledge in this) why it’s the search engine’s fault for not being the best and hiding spam sites

Honest question: what you’ve described is very disturbing (having to wade through lots of bot reposts), but why would this be Google’s fault (or DuckDuckGo’s or Bing’s or StartPage"s or Kagi’s)?

I’m not trying to save the search engines since they’re also out to make a profit, but if half the internet is spam, why would this be a search engine’s fault? I mean, we can complain it’s not sophisticated enough to navigate through the crap

Fixed: added second paragraph

You too, mate?

I get that this is yesterday’s news, but I did not hear of this development in 2018 when the article came out. So for me this is a “Today I learned” (even if it’s old news for everyone else).

I learned about the Stanford Prison Experiment from the crappy German movie “The Experiment” they made in 2001 and then listened to some interviews by Zimbardo around 2006 or so.

In fact, though the linked Vox article provides several examples of experiments that cannot be well reproduced, it is interesting that the Wikipedia article says Zimbardo is still very much convinced his experiment is sound (at least he still was in 2018).

Edit: fixed grammar