Saturday, April 16, 2005
Sometimes "science" isn't very scientific
Among the scientific papers scheduled for presentation at the World Multiconference on Systemics, Cybernetics and Informatics (WMSCI), scheduled to be held July 10-13 in Orlando, Florida, is "Rooter: A Methodology for the Typical Unification of Access Points and Redundancy".
"Rooter" describes in detail the researchers’ methodology: "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."
WOW! That is so technical I have no idea what they’re talking about! I’ll bet you don’t understand it, either. But don’t feel bad. Nobody on earth can understand it. It is computer-generated nonsense, as reported here:
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.
Jeremy Stribling said on Thursday 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.
So how in the world does a “scientific” conference schedule for presentation a paper which amounts to random gobbledygook? Well, for one thing, apparently nobody connected with the conference ever even read it:
Nagib Callaos, a conference organizer, 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," Callaos wrote in an e-mail. "The author of a non-reviewed paper has complete responsibility of the content of their paper."
In other words, as long as it was submitted close enough to the deadline, and looked like a “scientific” research paper, a collection of material from the back of cereal boxes could get on the agenda at this particular “scientific” conference. Because it might be “unfair” to refuse it. When did “science” get to be about whether it is or isn’t “fair” to reject a submission made too late for even a cursory review? Isn’t science supposed to be all about review and careful investigation? Is this a case of the “self-esteem” approach to education making its way into the scientific community?
And what about accountability and responsibility? Oh, wait, they've got that covered: So what if we schedule the presentation of randomly-generated nonsense as "scientific" research at our "scientific" conference? "The author of a non-reviewed paper has complete responsibility of the content of their paper." Hey, we're not responsible for what gets presented at our conference.
“We accepted this paper without ever reading it because it might be “unfair” to reject it for the reason that it was too late to be properly reviewed.”
Would you conduct your business this way? “I signed the mortgage contract because it wasn’t ready in time for me to actually read the terms.” “I bought the car because it might be unfair to make the salesman actually explain the features he was talking about.”
How many more “scientists” are out there doing business this way?
Incidentally, this isn’t the first time something like this has happened:
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.
Sometimes “science” just isn’t very scientific. And sometimes, “science” just isn’t very smart.
"Rooter" describes in detail the researchers’ methodology: "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."
WOW! That is so technical I have no idea what they’re talking about! I’ll bet you don’t understand it, either. But don’t feel bad. Nobody on earth can understand it. It is computer-generated nonsense, as reported here:
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.
Jeremy Stribling said on Thursday 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.
So how in the world does a “scientific” conference schedule for presentation a paper which amounts to random gobbledygook? Well, for one thing, apparently nobody connected with the conference ever even read it:
Nagib Callaos, a conference organizer, 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," Callaos wrote in an e-mail. "The author of a non-reviewed paper has complete responsibility of the content of their paper."
In other words, as long as it was submitted close enough to the deadline, and looked like a “scientific” research paper, a collection of material from the back of cereal boxes could get on the agenda at this particular “scientific” conference. Because it might be “unfair” to refuse it. When did “science” get to be about whether it is or isn’t “fair” to reject a submission made too late for even a cursory review? Isn’t science supposed to be all about review and careful investigation? Is this a case of the “self-esteem” approach to education making its way into the scientific community?
And what about accountability and responsibility? Oh, wait, they've got that covered: So what if we schedule the presentation of randomly-generated nonsense as "scientific" research at our "scientific" conference? "The author of a non-reviewed paper has complete responsibility of the content of their paper." Hey, we're not responsible for what gets presented at our conference.
“We accepted this paper without ever reading it because it might be “unfair” to reject it for the reason that it was too late to be properly reviewed.”
Would you conduct your business this way? “I signed the mortgage contract because it wasn’t ready in time for me to actually read the terms.” “I bought the car because it might be unfair to make the salesman actually explain the features he was talking about.”
How many more “scientists” are out there doing business this way?
Incidentally, this isn’t the first time something like this has happened:
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.
Sometimes “science” just isn’t very scientific. And sometimes, “science” just isn’t very smart.
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