> This is true, but here the equivalent situation is someone using a greek question mark (";") instead of a semicolon (";"),

No it's not. I think you're trying to make a different point, because you're using an example of a specific deliberate malicious way to hide a token error that prevents compilation, but is visually similar.

> and you as a code reviewer are only expected to review the code visually and are not provided the resources required to compile the code on your local machine to see the compiler fail.

What weird world are you living in where you don't have CI. Also, it's pretty common I'll test code locally when reviewing something more complex, more complex, or more important, if I don't have CI.

> Yes in theory you can go through every semicolon to check if it's not actually a greek question mark; but one assumes good faith and baseline competence such that you as the reviewer would generally not be expected to perform such pedantic checks.

I don't, because it won't compile. Not because I assume good faith. References and citations are similar to introducing dependencies. We're talking about completely fabricated deps. e.g. This engineer went on npm and grabbed the first package that said left-pad but it's actually a crypto miner. We're not talking about a citation missing a page number, or publication year. We're talking about something that's completely incorrect, being represented as relevant.

> So if you think you might have reasonably missed greek question marks in a visual code review, then hopefully you can also appreciate how a paper reviewer might miss a false citation.

I would never miss this, because the important thing is code needs to compile. If it doesn't compile, it doesn't reach the master branch. Peer review of a paper doesn't have CI, I'm aware, but it's also not vulnerable to syntax errors like that. A paper with a fake semicolon isn't meaningfully different, so this analogy doesn't map to the fraud I'm commenting on.

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tpoacher a day ago | parent [-]

you have completely missed the point of the analogy.

breaking the analogy beyond the point where it is useful by introducing non-generalising specifics is not a useful argument. Otherwise I can counter your more specific non-generalising analogy by introducing little green aliens sabotaging your imaginary CI with the same ease and effect.

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grayhatter a day ago | parent [-]

I disagree you could do that and claim to be reasonable.

But I agree, because I'd rather discuss the pragmatics and not bicker over the semantics about an analogy.

Introducing a token error, is different from plagiarism, no? Someone wrote code that can't compile, is different from someone "stealing" proprietary code from some company, and contributing it to some FOSS repo?

In order to assume good faith, you also need to assume the author is the origin. But that's clearly not the case. The origin is from somewhere else, and the author that put their name on the paper didn't verify it, and didn't credit it.

	▲	tpoacher a day ago \| parent [-]
		Sure but the focus here is on the reviewer not the author. The point is what is expected as reasonable review before one can "sign their name on it". "Lazy" (or possibly malicious) authors will always have incentives to cut corners as long as no mechanisms exist to reject (or even penalise) the paper on submission automatically. Which would be the equivalent of a "compiler error" in the code analogy. Effectively the point is, in the absence of such tools, the reviewer can only reasonably be expected to "look over the paper" for high-level issues; catching such low-level issues via manual checks by reviewers has massively diminishing returns for the extra effort involved. So I don't think the conference shaming the reviewers here in the absence of providing such tooling is appropriate.