[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. ;)

[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.

[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.

[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".

[Constitution Day]

Hilarious Academic Postmoderm Gobbledegook Random Generator

[ihatemyalarmclock]

This reminds me of something I hadn't thought about in years. The hoax is from 1969. The faces are still red.

From Google:

Naked Came the Stranger was a novel that was designed to test just how low the standards of taste of the American public had sunk.

25 Newsday staff members each wrote a chapter of this novel. Their only requirements were that their chapters could contain no plot or character development, no social insight, and no verbal skill. Only one thing was required: a minimum of two sex scenes per chapter.

The resulting novel was attributed to a fictitious author (Penelope Ashe), who was played by the attractive sister-in-law of Mike McGrady, the columnist who conceived the idea for the hoax. McGrady's sister-in-law played her role to the fullest, appearing in interviews wearing low-cut dresses and bubbling about the joys of sexual liberation.

The American public predictably ate it up and sales of the book soared. The Newsday writers eventually began to feel guilty about all the money they were receiving from the farce, and confessed. But the resulting publicity only made the book sell even better.

[longshadow]

hoax-like ping

[Dumb_Ox]

Folly runs both ways. To combat student plagiarists, some people are writing term papers that sound plausible to the ignorant and hilarious to the informed and submitting them to essay mills. Check it out. One would-be plagiarist accidentally submitted her request for a paper to a comedy writer, with both humorous and saddening results.

[Diamond]

More people have written about computer-generated gibberish than I have.

Cordially,

[hocndoc]

Great! It almost sounds as though the generation of the paper would be relevant to the conference, though.

http://www.cnn.com/2005/TECH/science/04/14/mit.prank.reut/index.html
""The trio submitted two of the randomly assembled papers to the World Multi-Conference 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.""

What could be more appropriate than a presentation about a computer generated paper at a conference on Cybernetics and informatics?

The paper is also linked by Art Caplan at http://blog.bioethics.net/