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Crackpot Scandal In Mathematics

Posted by kdawson on from the kooks-we-have-always-with-us dept.

ocean_soul writes "It is well known among scientists that the impact factor of a scientific journal is not always a good indicator of the quality of the papers in the journal. An extreme example of this was recently uncovered in mathematics. The scandal is about one El Naschie, editor in chief of the 'scientific' journal Chaos, Solitons and Fractals, published by Elsevier. This is one of the highest impact factor journals in mathematics, but the quality of the papers in it is extremely poor. The journal has also published 322 papers with El Naschie as (co-)author, five of them in the latest issue. Like many crackpots, El Nashie has a kind of cult around him, with another journal devoted to praising his greatness. There was also a discussion about the Wikipedia entry for El Naschie, which was supposedly written by one of his followers. When it was deleted by Wikipedia, they even threatened legal actions (which never materialized)."

5 of 219 comments (clear)

  1. I get all my science from timecube.com by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Funny

    Yeah, you really have to be careful out there... that's why I get all my astronomy and mathematical insight (as well as web design hints) from http://www.timecube.com/
    And if it ain't there, then I just look it up on wikipedia

  2. Err... by brian0918 · · Score: 4, Funny

    Where's the article?

    Ohhh! Right right! This is the article. Slashdot is now a primary source!

  3. *shakes head sadly* by Fractal+Dice · · Score: 4, Funny

    Alas, something I discovered to my sorrow over the years is that sufficiently specialized math is indistinguishable from gobbledygook (and vice versa).

  4. Re:I don't get it by canajin56 · · Score: 5, Funny

    Perhaps it's an experiment: He's a mathematician. Now he's just demonstrating how the Impact Factor is a poor metric, and will soon present a superior measure that correctly ranks the journal poorly. ;)

    --
    ASCII stupid question, get a stupid ANSI
  5. Re:Mathematicians should use more car analogies by mvdwege · · Score: 3, Funny

    How would you express the concept of isomorphic, infinite-dimensional, separable Hilbert spaces with a car analogy?

    First, assume a perfectly spherical car of uniform density...

    Mart

    --
    "I know I will be modded down for this": where's the option '-1, Asking for it'?