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A comment on Stanford president resigns over manipulated research, will retract 3 papers. Parent comment

Re:Stanford president resigns over manipulated research, wil... by dekhn on Wednesday July 19, 2023 @06:16PM (#36794244)
One of the best advices I got: "stop acting like you're the smartest person in the room, even if you are" so I started acting like the stupidest person in the room. Often times, by asking the dumbest question in the naivest way possible, you can expose a lot of bad ideas.
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Re:Stanford president resigns over manipulated research, wil... by lo_zamoyski on Wednesday July 19, 2023 @07:05PM (#36794753)
A thousand times, yes. They're not dumb questions, of course. They're pure, simple, and relevant. They're the strongest questions one can ask. The best.
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Re:Stanford president resigns over manipulated research, wil... by specialist on Wednesday July 19, 2023 @07:26PM (#36794957)
The Columbo Method
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Re:Stanford president resigns over manipulated research, wil... by mbork_pl on Thursday July 20, 2023 @04:20AM (#36798048)
Or the Feynman one.
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Re:Stanford president resigns over manipulated research, wil... by roughly on Wednesday July 19, 2023 @07:41PM (#36795079)
Oh my god yes. It's also So Much more fun and interesting! You get to learn from people!
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Re:Stanford president resigns over manipulated research, wil... by dekhn on Wednesday July 19, 2023 @07:48PM (#36795131)
Well... it's more like by asking an extremely dumb question helps other people in the room know when they're being bullshitted.

"So, I see your business model is to make widgets. But ... uh... I don't really understand these ideas but that's called capital intensive, right? So, you're gonna have a factory, with a bunch of workers... in San Francisco? Won't that be really expensive, and ... uh, I guess that means your profit margin will be small? Could you put your factory in Kansas?"

(paraphrased but essentially accurate question I asked when being pitched by a hardware startup at a major VC that I advised)

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