When a researcher and publisher withholds information then ignores requests -- what’s the recourse? How can science have integrity? (mander.xyz)

submitted 2 weeks ago* (last edited 2 weeks ago) by plantteacher@mander.xyz to c/scicomm@mander.xyz

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The ACM.org website published the work of a team at Carnegie Mellon (#CMU) which was said to include source code. Then the code was omitted from the attached ZIP file, which only contained another copy of the paper. I asked the lead researcher (a prof) for the code and was ignored. Also asked the other researchers (apparently students), who also ignored the request. The code would have made it possible to reproduce the research and verify it. ACM ~~also ignored my request and~~ also neglected to fix the misinfo (the claim on the page that source code is available). Correction: ACM replied and tried to find the missing code but then just gave up.

It seems like this should taint the research in some way. Why don’t they want people reproducing the research? If the idea is that scientific research is “peer reviewed” for integrity, it seems like a façade if reviewers don’t have a voice. Or is there some kind of 3rd party who would call this out?

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[-] drspod@lemmy.ml 8 points 2 weeks ago

Who funded the research? They probably have the source code and want to keep it proprietary.

[-] plantteacher@mander.xyz 7 points 2 weeks ago* (last edited 2 weeks ago)

Maybe the acknowledgments gives a hint?

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS We would like to thank Kelly Idouchi, Manya Sleeper, James T. Graves, and Celine Berger for their contributions to this project. Similarly, we thank Chris Hoofnagle, Daniel Solove, and the attendees of the 2014 Privacy Law Scholars Conference (PLSC) for valuable feedback on an earlier version of this work.

(edit) there is also this about page and perhaps this lab was involved.