alt Hacker NewsI'm not in academia, so I might be fully ignorant about how things operate, but if professors don't reaed the actual paper, can do they know if it's BS or not?
I'm not in academia, so I might be fully ignorant about how things operate, but if professors don't reaed the actual paper, can do they know if it's BS or not?
Here's how it works in our group. The professor gives papers to the PhD students or PostDocs, who read the paper completely. I regularly 'sub-review', as it is called, meticulously looking for issues. I have heard that there are professors who review entire papers in 2-3 hours, since they have a lot (10+) of papers per conference to review without any compensation while they have their own research, teaching, and funding to juggle.
It's not a pretty system sometimes.
Edited to add: Conference's also require declaring that there was someone who sub-reviewed the paper. The professor / PI mentions the PhD student's name in the review form of the paper. Of course, the professor also double-checks all the sub-reviews