Randomly-generated 'scientific paper' accepted

New Scientist ^ | 23 April 2005 | Staff

[FreedomCalls]

You can read the paper here (pdf):

http://pdos.csail.mit.edu/scigen/rooter.pdf

[FreedomCalls]

Clickable link:

http://pdos.csail.mit.edu/scigen/rooter.pdf

[JillValentine]

Makes a lot more sense than the crap Mearsheimer and Walt wrote.

[R. Scott]

WOW! This paper must be brilliant! I can’t understand a darn thing it says!

[FreedomCalls]

More details here:

http://pdos.csail.mit.edu/scigen/

It's all very similar to Alan Sokal's hoax paper "Transgressing the Boundaries - Toward a Transformative Hermeneutics of Quantum Gravity." Remember that?

[gondramB]

Interesting story but there are a couple of subtlties - this conference doesn't really review the papers so you wouldn't want to condemn peer reviewed or more reputable conferences based on this.

I'm pretty sure this was almost two years ago, unless it happened again this year in which case the people really are stupid.

[bad company]

Big whoop. Ted Kennedy has been talking like this for years.

[snowsislander]

The "references" are quite amusing.

[cabojoe]

This article is one year old. Your memory is outstanding.

[Names Ash Housewares]

OH sure, laugh now.

But when Rooter creates light without heat you all will be believers!

[Right Wing Assault]

I think, for national security reasons, this paper should immediately be classified. Then some friend of Effing can leak it to the Chinese.

[VOA]

I like the title in ref. 6.

[Enchante]

Ah, the "Social Text" affair.... that was such a classic!! It should be familiar to everyone, but of course the MSM doesn't like to let people hear too much about the frauds of the left. Physicist Alan Sokal exposed the babbling idiots who edit the pseudo-journal "Social Text" but I don't think they ever suffered any sanction or setbacks in their academic careers.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sokal_affair

[steveo]

I'm pretty sure this was almost two years ago,

It has happened before...

[Political Junkie Too]

But the pranksters are still planning to give a computer-generated talk at the conference...

This sounds like a job for Sid Caeser.

-PJ

[CzarNicky]

It is not the same thing but I knew of people who when doing their term papers for college would just write the opening and closing paragraphs and then seed the rest of the pages with stuff blatantly taken out of books denoted with the occasional notation. And they passed the class with B's.

[HangnJudge]

And now in response

http://www.newscientist.com/blog/technology/2006/04/fake-paper-detector.html

You may remember the story of some cheeky MIT students who wrote a computer programme to generate scientific papers. Well, now some researchers at the Indiana University School of Informatics have come up with an Inauthentic Paper Detector to foil it.

[Tribune7]

cold-eye-of-reason-is-never-wrong ping

[xjcsa]

Isn't that how Family Guy is written? At least that's how South Park portrayed it (seals, idea balls, etc.).

[Liberal Classic]

That's a blast!