Scientific conference falls for gibberish prank

ABC ^ | 04/15/2005 | Reuters

[bedolido]

A bunch of computer-generated gibberish masquerading as an academic paper has been accepted at a scientific conference in a victory for pranksters at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT).

Jeremy Stribling said that he and two fellow MIT graduate students questioned the standards of some academic conferences, so they wrote a computer program to generate research papers complete with nonsensical text, charts and diagrams.

The trio submitted two of the randomly assembled papers to the World Multiconference on Systemics, Cybernetics and Informatics (WMSCI), scheduled to be held July 10-13 in Orlando, Florida.

To their surprise, one of the papers - "Rooter: A Methodology for the Typical Unification of Access Points and Redundancy" - was accepted for presentation.

The prank recalled a 1996 hoax in which New York University physicist Alan Sokal succeeded in getting an entire paper with a mix of truths, falsehoods, non sequiturs and otherwise meaningless mumbo-jumbo published in the journal Social Text.

Mr Stribling said he and his colleagues only learned about the Social Text affair after submitting their paper.

"Rooter" features such mind-bending gems as: "the model for our heuristic consists of four independent components: simulated annealing, active networks, flexible modalities, and the study of reinforcement learning" and "We implemented our scatter/gather I/O server in Simula-67, augmented with opportunistically pipelined extensions".

[bedolido]

A computer program generated the research paper complete with nonsensical text, charts and diagrams. (AFP)

[Mikey_1962]

Sounds like some of the Lab reports I did for Thermodynamics Class.

[doc30]

This is too funny, but it does highlight the differences between a conference paper, which is typically a unrefereed oral presentation, and a scientific journal publication, which must pass peer review.

[theDentist]

World Multiconference on Systemics, Cybernetics and Informatics (WMSCI). Just pronounce it as "Whimsy".

[DTogo]

These guys have a guaranteed job with any pro-Kyoto, enviro-whacko group out there.

[add925]

Bwhahahahahaha!

[mnehring]

Brilliant...

I actually know one reviewer on Epinons.com who writes hundreds of reviews by using a quick little program to replace key indicators with features he plugs in... All he does is enter criteria and hit a replace button.. it goes through and changes out specs and product titles.. after flipping a few paragraphs around, he publishes it.. he has made thousands of dollars doing this... (this is, however, one reason I would never trust reviews on epinons.com...)

[dfwgator]

generated the research paper complete with nonsensical text, charts and diagrams. (AFP)

Just like the papers I wrote in college. ;)

[phil1750]

In my college chemistry class, we constantly used S.W.A.G on test. Scientific Wild A$$ Guess.

[Only1choice____Freedom]

A computer program generated the research paper complete with nonsensical text, charts and diagrams. (AFP)

Sounds like he has a job waiting for him at Microsoft. Maybe he'll do a better job writing help files.

[poobear]

"These guys have a guaranteed job with any pro-Kyoto, enviro-whacko group out there."

My thoughts exactly!

[edpc]

Who doesn't love a good geek-prank? It's deserving for those chin-stroking, head-nodding sychophants pretending to be above it all. It's funny how a bunch of multi-syllabic words placed in esoteric context can generate interest.

[RonF]

Makes me proud of my alma mater. MIT has it's share of leftists, but it's by no means a PC campus.

[skinkinthegrass]

In my college chemistry class, we constantly used S.W.A.G on test. Scientific Wild A$$ Guess.

..they used the same term in Hydrology...in Engineering.

[mnehring]

Here's the blog on MIT's Technology Review web site:

http://archives.trblogs.com/2005/04/two_very_funny.trml

If you visit one of the links on the blog, you will find instructions on how to download the program that generated these articles.

[polymuser]

I guess the more educated you are, the easier you'll fall for a bunch of multisyllabic nonsense.

[Polyxene]

Hey, these guys were just trying to win the "Ward Churchill Medal of Academic Excellence"!

[reagan_fanatic]

the model for our heuristic consists of four independent components: simulated annealing, active networks, flexible modalities, and the study of reinforcement learning" and "We implemented our scatter/gather I/O server in Simula-67, augmented with opportunistically pipelined extensions".

[Wonder Warthog]

".... the differences between a conference paper, which is typically a unrefereed oral presentation, and a scientific journal publication, which must pass peer review."

Well, that's not "quite" true. At most conferences I've been to, the "peer review" happens in real time with questions from the audience after the talk. In some cases, those "reviews" have been pretty damned scathing.

[petro45acp]

"Who doesn't love a good geek-prank? It's deserving for those chin-stroking, head-nodding sychophants pretending to be above it all. It's funny how a bunch of multi-syllabic words placed in esoteric context can generate interest."

And don't forget "MASS EQUALS VALIDITY!"

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