Randomly Generated Paper Accepted to Conference

mldqj writes "Some students at MIT wrote a program called SCIgen - An Automatic CS Paper Generator. From their website: SCIgen is a program that generates random Computer Science research papers, including graphs, figures, and citations. What's amazing is that one of their randomly generated paper was accepted to WMSCI 2005. Now they are accepting donation to fund their trip to the conference and give a randomly generated talk."

Comments

The blind publishing the blind.

[TripMaster Monkey]

Excerpt from the submitted paper:

We question the need for digital-to-analog converters. It should be noted that we allow DHCP to harness homogeneous epistemologies without the evaluation of evolutionary programming [2], [12], [14]. Contrarily,the lookaside buffer might not be the panacea that end-users expected. However, this method is never considered confusing. Our approach turns the knowledge-base communication sledgehammer into a scalpel.

I've received auto-generated spam emails that read a lot like this. Nice to know the WMSCI is on their toes...but judging from the content on their home page, I'm not surprised that they consider this paper conference material.

From the WMSCI's website:

Through WMSCI conferences, we are trying to relate the analytic thinking required in focused conference sessions, to the synthetic thinking, required for analogies generation, which calls for multi-focus domain and divergent thinking. We are trying to promote a synergic relation between analytically and synthetically oriented minds, as it is found between left and right brain hemispheres, by means of the corpus callosum. Then, WMSCI 2005 might be perceived as a research corpus callosum, trying to bridge analytically with synthetically oriented efforts, convergent with divergent thinkers and focused specialists with non-focused or multi-focused generalists.

What's scary is that the second paragraph was written by humans.

(FYI, the full text of the paper in question can be found here, and the WMSCI website can be found here.

Re:The blind publishing the blind.

[tehcrazybob]

People who act surprised by things like this don't read Dilbert nearly often enough.

It seems as though corporate America consists of people trying to write as much as possible without actually saying anything. If you don't believe me, go look at the mission statement of any big company. It doesn't read like English. If it did, they might be expected to actually make something concrete.

Re:The blind publishing the blind.

[Salis]

More likely, the reviewer didn't want to say "It reads like gibberish and, consequently, I think you're an idiot" to the author.

Instead, the reviewer cites some statistics and basically writes, "Because I said so".

Re:In other news...

[peculiarmethod]

In other news a randomly generated story submission was accepted by /. moderators.

no joke. this is not new news.. legislators have been accepting papers without review for years.

Re:I'd hate to be a paper referee after this.

[Guppy06]

Generally speaking, if you ever find yourself asking "Is this bullshit?" you already know the answer.

I doubt they'll attend the conference now...

[bergeron76]

After this news item, I highly doubt they'll still be able to go to the conference.

Re:I'd hate to be a paper referee after this.

[bcattwoo]

Now you have to approach each one with, "is this the real deal, or some bs-generated thing?"

If you were refereeing a paper and not at least asking that question you would have no business being a referee to begin with.

The paper in question was accepted as "non-reviewed" so obviously the reviewers did not look at it very closely. I would encourage the students to go through with their plan of giving a random talk though. I bet any future employers, postdoc supervisors, etc., who might be there will be thoroughly amused when these students make complete asses out of themselves.

Re:I'd hate to be a paper referee after this.

[R.Caley]

This paper would fail the first rule, if you don't understand it, reject it. Either it is drivel, or it is submitted to the wrong conference/journal/whatever or you should not be a referee for this. Since the last is someone else's decision, you can happily behave as if they know what theya re doing.

Of course, this kind of scam works on the reluctance of accademics to just say they don't understand something.

Re:I'd hate to be a paper referee after this.

[hunterx11]

When you're in a discovery-oriented field, a lot of things are going to sound like bullshit but will be totally legitimate.

This is true, but even more things are going to sound like bullshit because they are exactly that. Like Carl Sagan said, "They laughed at Columbus, they laughed at Fulton, they laughed at the Wright brothers. But they also laughed at Bozo the Clown." Besides, many groundbreaking papers (special relativity comes to mind) are not peer reviewed anyway because there really is no one qualified to review them.

Re:I'd hate to be a paper referee after this.

[Daniel Dvorkin]

When you're in a discovery-oriented field, a lot of things are going to sound like bullshit but will be totally legitimate.

I strongly disagree. Good writing is good writing, no matter what the subject matter; the most revolutionary discoveries can (and should) be presented in a style that is accessible to readers knowledgeable in the field. On the other hand, buzzword-laden crap is pretty much a sure sign that the author has no meaningful contribution to make; and when buzzword-laden crap is what you get in the majority of papers published, which is pretty much where CS is right now, something is seriously wrong. The fact that randomly generated papers look so much like "real" ones is a sign of a field in serious trouble.

Re:Overkill. Keep it simple.

[The Good Reverend]

Billions? Why bother? Based on my listening experience, Clearchannel and the record execs seem to have built empires on no more than three variations.

Blah, blah, blah. I wish there was an Onion article like the "Area Man Constantly Mentioning He Doesn't Own A Television" one for people like you.

Guess what? Lots of music produced today is made for mass consumption. And guess what else? Even more isn't. While it might not be as popular, it's certainly available, especially online in the last ten years. Just because you're too lazy to go look for it doesn't mean it doesn't exist. Hell, some people like pop music.

Past that, remember also that this is by no means a recent trend - it's existed for the entire history of pop music. As long as music's been sold for a profit, there's been someone deciding what sound to sell, and how to create the "next best thing". Your generalizations are old and tired.

Re:It wasn't reviewed

[Idarubicin]

I know someone who considered citing the paper in a dissertation. Fortunately she noticed the retraction before doing so, but it would have been an embarrassment to say the least. Of course we can say that anyone who cites the paper deserves ridicule, but this sort of thing can cause real harm to people's livelihood.

Well, yes?

What was she doing citing a paper that she didn't understand?

Yes, Sokal was being dishonest, submitting a paper that he could not in good faith claim was legitimate. On the other hand, the intellectual dishonesty also extends to Social Text, for failing in their peer review process to admit that they didn't understand the paper, and to anybody who might cite it, because they either misunderstood or misrepresented its contents--if they read it at all.

If you're not honest enough to admit that you don't understand something in academia, and you're bold enough to cite it anyway, then maybe you deserve real harm to your livelihood.