https://medium.com/@tnvijayk/potential-organized-fraud-in-acm-ieee-computer-architecture-conferences-ccd61169370d Open in app Become a member Sign in T. N. Vijaykumar T. N. Vijaykumar Follow May 12 * 5 min read Potential Organized Fraud in ACM/IEEE Computer Architecture Conferences Many of you are likely to have seen the post by Huixiang's Voice on Medium showing that Huixiang Chen's laptop contained downloads of most, if not all, submissions to more than one conference along with the de-anonymized reviews and PC discussions. These revelations have been troubling to say the least. A Joint ACM-IEEE Investigative Committee has been launched to look into this matter further. Independently, I have come across some disturbing indications of potential large-scale collusion which I discuss next. Before I get into the details, I want to point out two principles I have followed: (1) This post is not to point a finger at the ACM SIGARCH and IEEE TCCA officers, who are volunteers and, above all, one of us. Far from it. We should not be shooting inwards. We should be focused on the culprits and their acts, whoever they may be. (2) If any of us notices something odd but does not discuss it with the relevant officers, then the culprits win. Similarly, if ACM/IEEE officers conduct investigations or have proof of misconduct (not allegations) then they owe it to the community to make public everything they know of the investigations or misconduct, in addition to notifying higher-up officers -- a responsibility that comes with the official capacity. Full transparency is a must for (1) the community members to have confidence in our conferences which have a heavy influence on who gets interviewed, hired, promoted, awarded, and respected, and (2) the culprits to have a low chance of repeatedly getting away with it (e.g., else the culprits may repeat the fraud in multiple conferences over multiple years). Another ACM SIG: Let me start with the details confirmed directly to me by a SIG officer who conducted the investigation but wishes to remain anonymous: Another SIG community has had a collusion problem where the investigators found that a group of PC members and authors colluded to bid and push for each other's papers violating the usual conflict-of-interest rules. The investigators manually analyzed bids and scores going back a few years. At least five papers were affected. I am disallowed from naming the SIG community. I could not get a confirmation on how many years and conferences were analyzed, nor was I told any other details. I have informed the Joint Committee about this issue but you all should know too (principle #2). Here is what I heard from an award-winning professor about what happened. The professor has first-hand knowledge of the investigations and has communicated directly with the investigators, but wishes to remain anonymous: There is a chat group of a few dozen authors who in subsets work on common topics and carefully ensure not to co-author any papers with each other so as to keep out of each other's conflict lists (to the extent that even if there is collaboration they voluntarily give up authorship on one paper to prevent conflicts on many future papers). They exchange papers before submissions and then either bid or get assigned to review each other's papers by virtue of having expertise on the topic of the papers. They give high scores to the papers. If a review raises any technical issues in PC discussions, the usual response is something to the effect that despite the issues they still remain positive; or if a review questions the novelty claims, they point to some minor detail deep in the paper and say that they find that detail to be novel even though the paper itself does not elevate that detail to claim novelty. Our process is not set up to combat such collusion. Relevance to SIGARCH: This case is relevant to us because (1) there is overlap between the SIG community and SIGARCH and (2) collusion is a common thread in this case and ours. This overlap, of course, does not mean that everyone in the intersection of the communities is suspect. Huixiang's Voice revelations of misconduct in multiple conferences strongly point to collusion between PC members and authors. HotCRP does not show you your own submission even if you are a PC member, so how did the de-anonymized reviews and PC comments for Huixiang's paper end up in his laptop? An insider help seems likely. Given that the other SIG's incident has not been made public, I have two options: (1) not make the incident public, potentially letting the culprits continue their fraud in SIGARCH conferences, or (2) warn everyone. In the presence of such potential collusion, imagine what would happen to online accepts, where only a small subset of reviewers who read a paper (often just three) decide to accept the paper without any vetting from the rest of the PC (online accepts are bulk-accepted without reading out even the titles to the whole PC). The so-called split PC, as discussed in this recent post, would make all accepts inherit the online accepts' problems (which exist even without any collusion). The lack of power of subpoena and warrant on the part of the Joint Committee, the ACM or IEEE officers has come up. If the suspects are funded by taxpayer money (e.g., NSF), then the fraud falls in the jurisdiction of the police and FBI, who do have those powers. Our community should consider this point. Conclusion: 99.99% of us are honest but the dishonest 0.01% can cause serious, repeated damage. Huixiang's laptop did have prohibited contents. So misconduct has occurred for sure. There have been confirmed cases of collusion in another, overlapping SIG community. Put together, these revelations point to organized fraud. We can either believe that nothing is amiss and allow potential fraud to continue, or take steps to prevent and to detect collusion. Like you, I would rather be discussing new ideas with my graduate students and collaborators than chasing collusion, but the stakes are too high. PS: The SIGARCH blog declined to publish this post. There is a difference between rumors (Webster: "talk or opinion widely disseminated with no discernible source") and bona fide sources who wish to remain anonymous. See Wikipedia on journalistic standards for sources that wish to remain anonymous. As for concerns about the conferences' reputation, the post by Huixiang's Voice has already raised serious questions about the integrity of our process. Curtailing open discussions on the extent of the problem will neither make the problem go away nor help with the conferences' reputation. Doing so will only help the culprits. If the problem gets worse, our conferences' reputation will only get worse. Until the culprits are caught (which may take some time), a key step in handling potential fraud is to warn everyone. Therefore, I think that it is important to make this post public. About the Author: T. N. Vijaykumar is Professor of Electrical and Computer Engineering at Purdue University and works on computer architecture. Disclaimer: The opinions expressed in this post are the author's and not of Purdue University. 125 * Computer Architecture * Academic Misconduct 125 claps T. N. Vijaykumar Written by T. N. Vijaykumar Follow Follow T. N. Vijaykumar Written by T. N. 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