Funniest thing I have seen in a month

[Kupek]

Third paper from the top:

http://www.scs.cs.nyu.edu/~dm/home/papers.html

It might only be funny if you have to read academic papers for a living, but my god, I couldn't control my laughter.

[Nev]

I could swear it's because I'm stoned, but I got a good chuckle out of that.

Seriously, though, is that for real?

[Kupek]

Yes and no. They really submitted that paper, but it's a sham conference. It's the same conference mentioned in <a href=http://science.slashdot.org/article.pl? ... m=rss>this slashdot story</a>. The basic idea is that they set up a conference, send out a Call For Papers to everyone and their mother, accept every paper and get registration feeds.

[Nev]

That sounds incredibly dodgy, if not outright illegal.

[Nev]

Dear Lord, did you try the automatic paper generator mentioned in the article? Maybe it's just because I'm a programmer, but I thought the one it came up with for me was even funnier than the one you posted...LOL!

[Kupek]

It's not illegal, but it is certainly dodgy. Publishing in a conference like that does nothing for your academic credentials. (As for legality, under what grounds would it be illegal? There are no laws that say a conference has to be academically sound and attendees are voluntarily parting with their money.)

[Nev]

I'm not sure. The Federal Bullshit Protection Law, I guess. I just always thought publishing was a sign of respect in the professorial/research community. Besides, it seems almost like an extremely advanced form of plagiarism or just sheer academic dishonesty to me.

[Kupek]

I just always thought publishing was a sign of respect in the professorial/research community.

<i>Where</i> you publish is extremely important. Some journals and conferences have stricter reviewers than others.

Besides, it seems almost like an extremely advanced form of plagiarism or just sheer academic dishonesty to me.

It's not plagiarism (no work is stolen), but it is certainly dishonest. However, there are no laws about academic honesty.

[Nev]

I suppose that would be kind of hard to legislate.

[Ishamael]

Reminds of that math professor who put out the sham paper into some journal back in the mid '90s. He was the grandaddy of all of these. The sad thing about that one though is that people actively reveiwed his, so he's still the gold standard.

[SineSwiper]

I didn't really read the full post, and just started reading papers at first, until I hit the third one. I think the flowchart is the best part of that. There should have been some sort of math function that said something like:

<tt>. . . . (Me + Off)(Your - Fucking)
Get = ---------------------------------
. . . . . . . . . . . List
. . . . . . . .Mailing </tt>

Ish: They link to that guy, Alan Sokal, on the SCIgen page.

[Kupek]

I didn't really read the full post, and just started reading papers at first, until I hit the third one. I think the flowchart is the best part of that. There should have been some sort of math function that said something like:

Figure 1 almost destroyed me.

[Kupek]

Reminds of that math professor who put out the sham paper into some journal back in the mid '90s. He was the grandaddy of all of these. The sad thing about that one though is that people actively reveiwed his, so he's still the gold standard.

I think that was a physics professor who sent a paper to a sociology journal, and he just made up gibberish relating quantum mechanics to social problems (or something like that). That situation was a little different. It was a real journal he submitted to. His point was to see if he could get garbage past the reviewers, and he did. I think these guys wanted to do two things: make fun of a sham conference, and get off their fucking mailing list.