Academic Ethos, Pathos, and Logos

Academic Ethos, Pathos, and Logos
Mainly it roughly means:
Ethos : credibility in the process of communication
Pathos: adequate emotions in the process of communication and motivation for information and
knowledge sharing
Logos: via technical and natural language, as well as the use of adequate logics
In the activities of Research, Education, Consulting, or Real-Life Problem Solving
At least NINE areas of research, reflection, position papers, etc.
Plus 36 potential relationships and 9 second-level perspectives: Meta-Ethos, Meta-Pathos, and MetaLogos
Consequently,
1. Practice-based reflections, position papers, Action-Research and Action-Learning projects might be done
in the context of many areas.
2. In this conversational session we will input seemingly simple and isolated questions. Questions and
problems usually characterize the inputs of a conversational session, contrasting with traditional
conference sessions where inputs are solutions to problems or answers to questions
3.We will provide input for one of the NINE potential areas: Research Ethos.
One of the Latest Examples Generates Several Questions
http://www.nature.com/news/publishers-withdraw-more-than-120-gibberish-papers-1.14763
Some Important Questions Requiring Answers in Order to Identify
the Real Problems, their CAUSES, and their Potential EFFECTS
Did the Publisher have Scientific Misconduct or Unethical Behavior?
No, in our opinion. A
publisher like IEEE and Elsevier would not do it for different reasons. The amount of money involved is negligible as
compared with their annual revenue and they would never risk their prestigious image and high credibility level.
This is just pragmatic reasoning. There are many other reasons, especially related to their history and the great
service they provided, for a long time, to credible channels for scientific communications via publications of papers.
Did the respective Editor-in-Chief have Scientific Misconduct or Unethical Behavior?
Not
necessarily, in our opinion.
The conference Organizers?
Not necessarily in our opinion, because reputable journals with high scientific
prestige also had the same kind of ethical problems. We will present one example later.
The authors? Not necessarily, because of the intentional hoaxes that have been submitted in order to later
announce them. We will see some of these cases.
The reviewers of these papers? The Peer Reviewing Methodology Applied? Very probably.
In a survey of members of the Scientific Research Society “only 8% agreed that ‘peer review work well as it is’.”
(Chubin and Hackett, Peerless Science, Peer Review and U.S. Science Policy; New York, State University of New York Press,1990, p. 192). Is
the whole academic promotional system based on something that just the 8% think is working? Is this ethical?
Anyone else?
We think that there are definitely ethical problems based on several potential sources,
but there is also a meta-ethical problem that should be addressed. This meta-ethical
problem is also addressed in our methodology thanks to David Kaplan’s article: how to
fix peer review. We will return to the important dimension of Meta-Ethos.
Among the Latest Examples Generates Several Questions
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/04/17/science/rise-in-scientific-journal-retractions-prompts-calls-for-reform.html?_r=1&src=dayp
Dr. Fang and Dr. Casadevall looked at the rate of retractions in 17 journals from 2001 to 2010
and compared it with the journals’ “impact factor,” a score based on how often their papers
are cited by scientists. The higher a journal’s impact factor, the two editors found, the higher
its retraction rate.
The highest “retraction index” in the study went to one of the world’s leading medical
journals, The New England Journal of Medicine. A statement from this article questioned the
study’s methodology, noting that it considered only papers with abstracts, which are included
in a small fraction of studies published in each issue. “Because our denominator was low, the
index was high”
“published retractions had increased tenfold [1000%] over the past decade,
while the number of published papers had increased by just 44 percent.”
Second of Many Examples Generates Several More Precise Questions
http://www.nature.com/news/2009/090615/full/news.2009.571.html
"The peer review didn't work," says Parmanto, who now fears that the journal's publishing system could be
open to abuse. "The publisher could take advantage of the fees, and that is why I want to leave," he says.
In a statement, Mahmood Alam, director of publications at Bentham Science Publishing, told Nature in an email that "submission of fake manuscripts is a totally unethical activity and must be condemned."
He defended Bentham's peer review process saying "a rigorous peer review process takes place for all
articles that are submitted to us for publication. Our standard policy is that at least two positive comments
are required from the referees before an article is accepted for publication." In this particular case, "the
paper was reviewed by more than one person".
Another example but in a highly prestigious printed journal which is financially
supported by subscriptions http://pdos.csail.mit.edu/scigen/sharif_edited_paper.pdf
“Students at Iran's Sharif University of Technology published a paper in the Journal of
Applied Mathematics and Computation (which is published by Elsevier)... The paper was
subsequently removed when the publishers were informed that it was a joke paper.”
(Wikipedia). The accepted and published paper can be found at
http://ce.sharif.edu/~ghodsi/soft-group/misc/AMC-paper.pdf
Another example but in a highly prestigious printed journal which is financially
supported by subscriptions http://pdos.csail.mit.edu/scigen/sharif_edited_paper.pdf
The removal of the paper after being published can be found at
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0096300307003359
Among the Initial Examples: Questions, answers, and new peer reviewing methodology that takes into account not just the
Ethic but also the Meta-Ethical level. http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v434/n7036/full/nature03653.html
This article was accepted for presentation as a NON-REVIEWED one and its acceptance was based on the CVs of the
authors. The acceptance letter said clearly so, and the authors were informed that the paper might be accepted later as a
REVIEWED one as soon as its reviewing process is finished. In such a case, it would be published in the proceedings. The
conference’s web site said clearly that about 15% of the submitted articles might be accepted on a non-reviewed. Is it an
ethical activity to inform about some of the truth but not all the truth? We never received a call or an email from Nature.
They took part. of our explanation, and out of context. This situation was input to a “case Study” that generated about
150 written and published pages. Thank to this case study a new Peer Reviewing Methodology emerged that took into
account not just the ethical dimension but also the meta-ethical one. This Case study was presented at a Workshop
sponsored by the USA’s National Science Foundation which included Faculty and PhD Students in Business Administration
of the University of South Florida.
AN UNETHICAL BEHAVIOR MIGHT BE A FERTILE INPUT TO AN EFFECTIVE ACTION-RESEARCH PROJECT
Computing writer Stan Kelly-Bootle noted in ACM Queue that many sentences in the
"Rooter" paper [accepted for presentation at WMSCI 2015, not for publication] were
individually plausible, which he regarded as posing a problem for automated
detection of hoax articles. He suggested that even human readers might be taken in
by the effective use of jargon … He concluded as follows “I suppose the conclusion is
that a reliable gibberish filter requires a careful holistic review by several peer
domain experts. Each word and each sentence may well prove individually
impeccable, although nonsense in toto, which probably rules out for many years to
come a computerized filter for both human and computer-generated hoaxes.”
http://delivery.acm.org/10.1145/1090000/1080884/p64kellybootle.pdf?ip=68.204.105.31&id=1080884&acc=OPEN&key=4D4702B0C3E38B35.4D4702B0C3E38B35.4D4702B0C3E38B35.6D21814451
1F3437&CFID=388494540&CFTOKEN=54287606&__acm__=1405210663_05d6bafc7ef0d9fe155012d182470c75
STAN KELLY-BOOTLE (http://www.feniks.com/skb/; http://www.sarcheck.com), born in Liverpool, England, read pure mathematics at
Cambridge in the 1950s before tackling the impurities of computer science on the pioneering EDSAC I. His many books include The Devil’s DP
Dictionary (McGraw-Hill, 1981) and Understanding Unix (Sybex, 1994). Software Development Magazine has named him as the first recipient of
the new annual Stan Kelly-Bootle ElecTech Award for his “lifetime achievements in technology and letters.” Neither Nobel nor Turing achieved
such prized eponymous recognition. Under his nom-de-folk, Stan Kelly, he has enjoyed a parallel career as a singer and songwriter.
Consequently, it is evident that the problem is not just an
ethical one, but it also has a meta-ethical dimension, in the
methodological context of Peer-Reviewing.
A printed copy of this article has been attached to the hand out provided to the
attendees of this conversational participative session on Academic Ethos, Pathos, and
Logos. It is a short article with pointers to larger articles with more details regarding the
Action-Research project which supported (and still supports) the finding of potential
solutions (or improvement of the implemented ones) for this ethical and meta-ethical
problem
Any verbal or written comment that might improve what we implemented up to the present
or regarding what we wrote on this issue will be appreciated and valued. Any reflection, or
position, article regarding the main topic of this conversational session, or on any of the
specific information or knowledge shared in it is a candidate for its publication in the post-