this is hilarious

[Dave Farber <dave () farber net>]

------ Forwarded Message
From: 

>        
>  07 November 2002
> Nature 420, 5 (2002); doi:10.1038/420005a
>
>
> Theses spark twin dilemma for physicists
>
>
>
> DECLAN BUTLER
>
>
> <[PARIS]>  Take a deep breath, and give the following sentence a go. "We
> demonstrate that the lorentzian signature of the space-time metric (+ + + -)
> is not fixed at the Planck scale and shows 'quantum fluctuation' between the
> lorentzian and euclidean (+ + + ) forms until the 0 scale where it becomes
> euclidean (+ + + +)." Confused? Don't worry, you're in good company.
> Physicists around the world have been unable to agree on whether the PhD
> thesis this line comes from is good, bad or a hoax.
>
> Rumours began to circulate after Max Niedermaier, a physicist at the
> University of Tours in France, sent an e-mail on 22 October to Ted Newman, a
> physicist at the University of Pittsburgh. Niedermaier alleged that French
> twins Grichka and Igor Bogdanoff, science writers who starred in a popular
> 1980s science television programme, had "spoofed" their PhD theses.
>
> The line above comes from the abstract to Grichka's thesis, for which he
> gained his PhD at Bourgogne University in 2000. Both this thesis and that of
> his brother, who gained his PhD from Bourgogne earlier this year, drew on
> areas of mathematics and theoretical physics to study the origin of the
> Universe. Niedermaier claimed that the theses, and four of the brothers'
> papers published recently in peer-reviewed journals, had been concocted using
> jargon acquired from interviewing string theorists and other theoretical
> physicists.
>
> "The abstracts are delightfully meaningless combinations of buzzwords ...
> which apparently have been taken seriously," Niedermaier wrote. The claim
> prompted a flurry of e-mails and Internet postings, with many physicists
> echoing Niedermaier's thoughts. After speaking to the Bogdanoffs, Niedermaier
> quickly issued an apology, acknowledging that he had not relied on "first hand
> information". But the message came too late.
>
> With doubt hanging over the Bogdanoffs, physicists rushed to distance
> themselves from the twins' papers. The editorial board of Classical and
> Quantum Gravity took the unusual step of saying that a paper by the brothers
> had slipped through peer review "even though, in retrospect, it does not meet
> the standards expected of articles in this journal".
>
> Frank Wilczek, editor-in-chief of the Annals of Physics and a theoretical
> physicist at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), disowned another
> paper, arguing that it had been accepted by past management and would not have
> been accepted under him.
>
> So are the papers good science or not? Enquiries by Nature show that few
> theoretical physicists, including some who reviewed the brothers' PhD theses,
> are completely certain. Jac Verbaarschot, of Stony Brook University in New
> York, reviewed Igor's PhD. He says it contained original ideas, but claims
> that it was awarded in part because of Igor's contributions to the public
> understanding of science. Others have come to harsher conclusions. "They were
> at best wrong, and most likely just throwing around words with no calculations
> or proofs to back them up," says Lee Smolin of the Perimeter Institute for
> Theoretical Physics in Waterloo, Canada, who has studied some of the papers.
>
> But Roman Jackiw, a physicist at MIT who reviewed Igor's thesis, insists that
> it is of the requisite quality. Robert Coquereaux, from the International
> Centre for Mathematical Meetings in Marseille, has said that the brothers'
> work is certainly no better or worse than that of some established theoretical
> physicists.
>
> The brothers, who are currently presenting a short television programme in
> France, insist that their work is genuine. They say that many critics haven't
> actually read their entire theses, which are available only in French, and
> that none of the criticisms made discredits their work. They also point to
> referees' reports on their theses. Verbaarschot, for example, declared that
> Igor's PhD "ranks as one of the best I have seen in recent years".
>
> With no clear consensus emerging, the credibility of the peer-review system
> and journals in string theory and related areas is taking a battering. Peter
> Woit, a mathematician at Columbia University in New York, says that the
> incident illustrates the speculative nature of much theoretical physics. "The
> Bogdanoffs' work is significantly more incoherent than just about anything
> else being published," he says. "But the increasingly low standard of
> coherence in the whole field is what allowed them to think they were doing
> something sensible and to get it published."

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