Randomly generated papers accepted by MIT

["Dave Farber" <dave () farber net>]

------- Original message -------
From: Bob Frankston  <Bob19-0501 () bobf frankston com>
Sent: 15/4/'05,  12:47

In case Greg's post didn't rise above the noise I think this one is
important for setting the record straight. I also denatured the cross-list
aspects to keep more public lists separate from more private

-----Original Message-----
From: Greg Elin <elin () unitboy com>
Sent: Friday, April 15, 2005 01:17
To: ian.peter () ianpeter com; dave () farber net
Cc: 'Doc Searls'
Subject: Re: [jerrys-retreat] FW: [IP] Randomly generated papers accepted by
MIT


Don't believe the slant of this new story, or forward it on to others 
to poke fun at the excesses of the academic / scientific community.

The conference which accepted the computer-generated gibberish paper is 
a *vanity* conference, a fact that becomes clearer deeper in the story, 
where the organizer speaks of accepting non-reviewed papers and the 
students purposely targeted this conference because of the invitation 
spam they were receiving from, spam I also received. I first thought 
the conference might be legit, when I was invited to submit, but 
something didn't look right. I grew more suspicious when the 
registration fees were based on when you submitted camera ready art 
(http://www.confinf.org/soic05/WebSite/callforpapers.asp), and the 
listing of the organizing committee only listed country affiliations, 
not institutional.

For more details, see my blog post 
<http://duhblog.com/space/start/2005-04-15/1>, but PLEASE help stop the 
further spread of an urban rumor about a scientific conference 
accepting gibberish. Next thing we know it will be on Fox and Rush 
Limbaugh will be saying, "there they go again..."

Greg



On Apr 14, 2005, at 8:27 PM, 'Bob Frankston' wrote:

> In light of my earlier comments about the need to be specific enough 
> for
> refutation.
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: owner-ip () v2 listbox com [mailto:owner-ip () v2 listbox com] On 
> Behalf Of
> David Farber
> Sent: Thursday, April 14, 2005 19:38
> To: Ip
> Subject: [IP] Randomly generated papers accepted by MIT
>
>
> ------ Forwarded Message
> From: <ian.peter () ianpeter com>
> Date: Thu, 14 Apr 2005 18:33:49 -0500
> To: <dave () farber net>
> Subject: Randomly generated papers accepted by MIT
>
> Dave your readers might find this amusing. The paper in question, and 
> the
> radmon
> scientific paper generator, can be found at
> http://www.pdos.lcs.mit.edu/scigen/
>
>
> Ian Peter
>
>
>
> Scientific conference falls for gibberish prank
>
> (copied from http://www.abc.net.au/news/newsitems/200504/s1345732.htm)
>
> 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".
>
> Notorious
>
> Mr Stribling said the trio targeted WMSCI because it is notorious 
> within the
> field of computer science for sending copious emails that solicit 
> admissions
> to
> the conference.
>
> "We were tired of the spam," Mr Stribling told Reuters in a telephone
> interview,
> adding that his team wanted to challenge the standards of the 
> conference's
> peer
> review process.
>
> Nagib Callaos, a conference organiser, said the paper was one of a 
> small
> number
> accepted on a "non-reviewed" basis - meaning that reviewers had not yet
> given
> their feedback by the acceptance deadline.
>
> "We thought that it might be unfair to refuse a paper that was not 
> refused
> by
> any of its three selected reviewers," Mr Callaos wrote in an email.
>
> "The author of a non-reviewed paper has complete responsibility of the
> content
> of their paper."
>
> However, Mr Callaos said conference organisers were reviewing their
> acceptance
> procedures in light of the hoax.
>
> Asked whether he would dis-invite the MIT students, Callaos replied: 
> "Bogus
> papers should not be included in the conference program".
>
> Mr Stribling said conference organisers had not yet formally rescinded 
> their
> invitation to present the paper.
>
> The students were soliciting cash donations so they could attend the
> conference
> and give what Mr Stribling billed as a "randomly generated talk".
>
> So far, they have raised more than $US2,000 ($2,601) over the Internet.
>
> -Reuters
>
>
>
>
>
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============================================
Greg Elin
greg () fotonotes net
917-304-3488

http://fotonotes.net - "Because photos have stories.(tm)"
blog: http://duhblog.com - "Articulate the obvious."



 
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