This sort of stuff makes me happy I worked on open source research rather than try to get a PHD. Same thing is playing out with LeCun. The excessive, perhaps egotistical need for attribution in academia is in strict opposition to what I consider “good science”.
I don't think this comparison is fair to LeCun. He has literally been at the forefront of ML for over 40 years, starting with his PhD thesis and continuing to the present, and his public fame is entirely a byproduct of the awareness of the impact of his work. (Disclaimer: I've known Yann for decades and worked down the hall from him during his NEC years.)
To be clear, I’m not accusing LeCun of trying to “hoard credit”, rather I’m accusing others of having petty squabbles (often surrounding his published works) around who was “first” and thus “actually” deserves credit. To them, I say “Get over yourself” - progress doesn’t tend to be made when we’re busy trying to win imaginary races for “mindshare”. And LeCun has done more than enough to prove himself in the field (with all the hard work that entails) to have to deal with that sort of thing.
Neither of the things described in the parent comment have to do with ego, they have everything to do with career opportunities and outcomes.
The ability to have your research funded is a practical and existential problem for scientists. And I find it quite natural having issues with someone being able to achieve better outcomes through marketing and fame rather than through the quality of their work.
It's something I find aggravating with Google, OpenAI, and cie in the field of machine learning for example. The amount of marketing they benefit from, before their papers are even published, is unfair and anti-meritocratic. I don't want to have to do SEO to be able to stand on even ground with these people.
(And that's not to say Sagan wasn't a good scientist, or that his work communicating science wasn't useful.)
