Huh, I thought I was pretty clear that I meant an individual researcher employed by industry to do their research ("for CS in general - and especially for AI - you'll be just fine in industry.... Go where the incentives are better aligned for you.") - was it not?
So, limiting research to projects small enough for a single individual, then? Because similar situations will and do arise in industrial research groups.
Ah, I see the confusion. By "individual researcher" I do not mean "independent researcher" - I mean the researcher, considering their motivations as an individual person. They can be part of a group of researchers, and they're generally working for some employer. After all, the "individual researcher" in academia is generally working with a group - e.g., the example given about the grad student who is "every professor's dream" only makes sense in the context of that relationship - and that produces the negative pressures described.
In particular, I mean that a researcher in academia, as a person (an "individual researcher"), is motivated by the demands of academia to get grants and fill their CV and is therefore incentivized to conduct dishonest science to make that happen, and a researcher in industry, as a person (an "individual researcher"), is not directly incentivized to conduct dishonest science - perhaps there's dishonesty in how their employer gained funding or what they do with the research, but that doesn't compromise the accuracy of their research, motivate them to game the peer review system, etc. The researcher as an individual has the choice about whether to be in academia or industry.
So, I don't think I follow how similar situations will arise in industrial research groups. (Though, as mentioned in my original comment, I'm probably missing something, because there were researchers from industry who coauthored these papers.) Even among a group of researchers in industry, the incentives should be to produce things of value to the employer, not to play the part of productive-looking researchers.
I'm specifically not claiming that independence will solve anything; the fundamental problem is funding, and (as you say) nobody is going to want to live out of their car to do good research. And you need access to facilities/tools of some sort to do your research; my claim is that industry can provide those at least as well as academia can, not that they are unneeded. Admit that you're constrained to work at a place that can fund your research and that no place exists that will pay you well and leave you to your own devices, and then find the place whose incentives to fund you are least likely to compromise your research integrity and most likely to reward you for actual good work. At the moment, at least in the society where I live, that happens to be industry.
