Prank Paper Wins Slot at Academic Conference

[Squaredancecalling Steve]

"The model for our heuristic consists of four independent components: simulated annealing, active networks, flexible modalities, and the study of reinforcement learning."

**

"Many scholars would agree that, had it not been for active networks, the simulation of Lamport clocks might never have occurred."

**

Sounds heavy! From a paper heavily titled: "Rooter: A Methodology for the Typical Unification of Access Points and Redundancy." Ah, but there's less here than meets the eye:


MIT nonsensical prank paper fools academics

Justin Pope
Associated Press
Apr. 21, 2005 12:00 AM

BOSTON - Three MIT graduate students set out to show what kind of gobbledygook can pass muster at an academic conference, writing a computer program that generates fake, nonsensical papers. Sure enough, a Florida conference took the bait.

The program, developed by Jeremy Stribling, Max Krohn and Dan Aguayo, generated a paper with the dumbfounding title: "Rooter: A Methodology for the Typical Unification of Access Points and Redundancy." Its introduction begins: "Many scholars would agree that, had it not been for active networks, the simulation of Lamport clocks might never have occurred."
The program works like the Mad Libs books, generating sentences taken from real papers but leaving many words blank. It fills the blanks with random academic buzzwords.

Earlier this month, the students received word that the Ninth World Multi-Conference on Systemics, Cybernetics and Informatics, scheduled to take place in July in Orlando, had accepted the four-page "Rooter" paper.
The offer accepting a paper and inviting the students to present it in person in Orlando was rescinded after word of the hoax got out, and the students were refunded the $390 fee to attend the conference and have the paper published in its proceedings.

But they still hope to go, using the more than $2,000 raised in contributions to their prank, much of it from admirers who tested the program on the students' Web site.

"We wanted to go down there and give a randomly generated talk," Stribling said.

E-mails to a conference address and to organizer Nagib Callaos were not immediately returned Wednesday, and there was no answer at the Orlando telephone number listed under Callaos' name.

According to e-mails sent to the students and information posted by Callaos on the conference Web site, reviewers detected several bogus submissions. But the reviewers provided no "formal feedback" on the "Rooter"
so it was accepted as a "non-reviewed paper."

Stribling doubts the paper fooled anyone who actually read it, which keeps the hoax a notch below a 1996 prank in which physicist Alan Sokal persuaded a Duke University journal called Social Text to publish a bogus article titled "Transgressing the Boundaries: Towards a Transformative Hermeneutics of Quantum Gravity."

But in addition to mocking academic jargon, the pranks shed light on what Stribling sees as a problem: conferences with low standards that pander to academics looking to pad their resumes, but which harm the reputations of more reputable gatherings.

"We certainly exposed this conference as being willing to publish any paper regardless of whether it's been peer-reviewed, which is kind of a dangerous precedent to set," Stribling said. "It's kind of dangerous to be able to pass anything off as scientifically valid."

[crawjo]

I would love to hear a randomly-generated talk. Seriously!

[Monte Smith]

Originally Posted by crawjo

I would love to hear a randomly-generated talk. Seriously!

You're in the right place, brother.

Hahahaha..............I was just thinking the same thing.

[GoodSpeak]

Originally Posted by Monte Smith

You're in the right place, brother.

[ahem]


Monte....you left me an opening here a mile and a half wide....but I won't go there.



You owe me one, Brother

[Monte Smith]

Originally Posted by GoodSpeak

[ahem]


Monte....you left me an opening here a mile and a half wide....but I won't go there.



You owe me one, Brother

Dude, if anyone embodies the phrase "randomly-generated talk" on this board, it is you, my esteemed Goodster.

[walto]

Aw, quit yer annealing before I clock ya, Lamport.



BTW, I'll take music generated that way over "scholarship" any day:
http://eigenradio.media.mit.edu/

[Gary Sisco]

Real scholarship is a thing to be admired.

Unfortunately, it's almost absent in academe today.

I've been reading Werner Jaeger's great work lately, just to remind myself what real scholarship and real erudition look like, because they're both on the nearly extinct list.

[Dr Dave]

Don't forget our old friend, The Postmodernizer

[walto]

Hey man, those are semiotics classics!!

[Gary Sisco]

Exactly.

Marvel Comics has classics, also.