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).
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?
themoonisacheese@sh.itjust.works 2 weeks ago
I have a contact at cmu’s student journal (for what that’s worth). They might be interested in this, maybe if they start prodding around the researchers will realize the mistake. What’s the publication?
plantteacher@mander.xyz 2 weeks ago
Oh, wow… I wasn’t expecting that reply. I was actually looking to discuss in general how to address this variety of issue. It was a few years ago but I suppose the code could still be interesting. I dug this up:
dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/2911988
And now that I dug back into this, I must make a correction. ACM replied to say they are looking for the missing material… then they never found it and they dropped the ball at that point and also neglected correct the description. AFAIK, ACM did not try to reach the researchers, who ignored my inquiries.