Slashdot Mirror

MIT Random Paper Generator for computer science papers
https://pdos.csail.mit.edu/arc...

Mathgen for Math Papers
http://thatsmathematics.com/ma...

Seriously, does anyone even read the paper anymore? I read the abstract and possibly the method.

At the end of the day, it is just an academic echo chamber where every paper references each other and none of it is very earth shattering. You should read the dissertations that don't make it into journals, those are really sad. For example, "Analysis of Socioeconomic Status and Student Achievement", or in other words, "Poor kids don't get good grades.", most papers could classified as Ric Romero papers where the outcome is obvious or in some cases statistically insignificant such that more papers need to be written with new experimental methods.

But for those of your writing papers, I leave you with my favorite research design song.
https://youtu.be/Hxbz656Euyw

...that a randomly generated nonsense question just slipped by Ask Slashdot's editorial board.

I've been studying this (publishing) for some time, in the context of learning, verifying assumptions, and the scientific method.

It turns out that there is really no bar in scientific publishing. It doesn't have to be understandable, nor innovative, nor even correct. You only need to be ethical (ie - don't lie about the data), cite anything that you got from other sources, and show that there is less than a 1-in-20 chance that you are wrong (p > 0.5).

What exactly do we want in a published paper, anyway?

Many cancer studies can't be reproduced. Many studies are statistically significant but valueless (the IQ of people in NYC is higher than Chicago by 1 point: this can be statistically certain but have no practical significance). There are lots and lots of ways to frame the conclusion the wrong way such as confusing correlation with causation, reversed conditionals (if the defendant is innocent, there is a 1 in 1 billion chance that this evidence is wrong), and other logical errors.

Then there's the enormous economic incentive of needing to publish to keep your job, that reviewers will oppose maverick thought and agree with community beliefs, and that no one examines their assumptions.

Would you like to publish a paper? MathGen will write one for you. Pass it around and chances are it will be accepted.

So when I talk to people about my research, the inevitable comment is "you should publish". And my inevitable answer is: why?

What do we want in scientific papers? What are they even for?

Perhaps you haven't heard of:

The Zambian Mathematical Society
The Sudanese Mathematical Journal
The Liberian Mathematical Journal
The Kenyan Mathematical Society

http://thatsmathematics.com/blog/archives/102#more-102

Absolutely- the proper typesetting gave airs of polish and correctness. The effect is long-gone now, but I do remember seeing mathematical preprints, typeset nicely in TeX, which had as the first line something to the effect of: "Warning: although this looks like a final result, do not be fooled by its appearance. It is really preliminary and should be gauged as if it were haphazard handwritten scribbles rather than polished typeset mathematics." These days people are used to seeing all kinds of mathematical tripe typeset nicely (perhaps generated automatically, in fact) so those kind of disclaimers are no longer needed!

I wonder how these would do:

the postmodernism generator http://www.elsewhere.org/pomo/
the math paper generator http://thatsmathematics.com/mathgen/