Publish or Perish: MIT Prank Paper Shows All You Need is Dense Jargon - Comments Page 2

Author: DrPatPublished: Apr 20, 2005 at 7:36 pm 30 comments

Is that incomprehensible scientific treatise beyond your level of education? Or is it, perhaps, just random gibberish?

Three MIT graduate students, Jeremy Stribling, Max Krohn, and Dan Aguayo, have cracked the "publish or perish" code.
Sometimes jargon really is gibberish.…
Read comments below, or read this article from the beginning.

Article comments

  • 26 - Uriel

    Apr 23, 2005 at 1:48 am

    I've responded to the very un-excellent blog post at Ernie's 3D Pancakes:

    http://3dpancakes.typepad.com/ernie/2005/04/sci_followup.html

  • 27 - Uriel

    Apr 23, 2005 at 11:34 am

    I might add that the whole prank seems marginally less clever than the "hoax" pulled by the finger-in-the-chili woman at Wendy's (see Finger in Chili Is Called Hoax; Las Vegas Woman Is Charged).

    Alan Sokal's famous hoax made fools of self-important bullshit artists who vetted his deliberate nonsense. This prank's achievement appears to have been merely to abuse a system based more or less on trust. That seems kinda juvenile.

  • 28 - DrPat

    Apr 23, 2005 at 12:27 pm

    So, Uriel, you're okay with WMSCI's hosting a publication conference designed to allow any bullpuckey to be published, provided it "appears" scientific?

    This is the same kind of deal as a diploma mill. Is the doctorate one buys from them any different than the bibliography entry one buys from WMSCI? At least with a diploma mill, you know the sheepskin you bought is worth less than the paper it's printed on.

    Here's a wooden nickel, friend. See what it buys you.

  • 29 - JR

    May 09, 2005 at 12:32 pm

    I don't know if this has been mentioned yet, but here's a PDF of another paper submitted to WMSCI. Not as clever, but...

  • 30 - brunilda

    Jan 09, 2006 at 12:56 am

    Must say I got to this a little late but I would like to know why the original posting mentioned Buenos Aires, Argentina, seeming to imply a place where bogus papers would be accepted? Or was there a real conference there?

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