Thu, Apr 14, 2005
Ghosts of Sokal
#
Three MIT graduate students -- JeremyStribling, DanielAguayo, and
MaxwellKrohn -- wrote a computer
program to autogenerate a "research paper" entitled,
"Rooter: A Methodology
for the Typical Unification of Access Points and Redundancy." They
submitted it to the World Multi-Conference on Systemics, Cybernetics and Informatics
(WMSCI). It was accepted. (IML)
The
CNN article about their accomplishment noted that it was
reminiscent of the infamous AlanSokal hoax. Sokal submitted a fake
paper to a postmodern scholastic journal,
Social Text (not to be
confused with RossMayfield's company),
and the paper was accepted. Sokal wanted to show that postmodernism
was a farce, but what he ended up demonstrating was that peer review
was incredibly flawed. (IMM)
The "Rooter" paper isn't the first fake paper to be accepted at a
scientific journal or conference, but it's the first to my knowledge
that was computer-generated. It's not that hard to point out the
problems with peer review. What's more interesting to me are
effective alternatives that challenge our assumptions.
Wikipedia is an obvious example, but
arXiv.org is a much more compelling one. (IMN)
In any case, many thanks to Jeremy, Daniel, and Maxwell for giving me
a good chuckle. Please donate to their cause so that they can deliver a randomly-generated
talk at the conference. (IMO)
/collaboration |
Posted at 7:51pm
EEK Speaks
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