Crackpot Scandal In Mathematics

Posted by kdawson on Tuesday December 23, 2008 @09:26AM 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)."

3 of 219 comments (clear)

Min score:

Reason:

Sort:

Re:I don't get it by tsstahl · 2008-12-23 09:51 · Score: 1, Offtopic

Thank you. That really does help and without a car analogy, to boot.

Acadamia never ceases to amaze me. Note, spelled wrong on purpose BECAUSE OF ALL THE NUTS!
Re:I don't get it by Gena5m · 2008-12-23 10:14 · Score: 0, Offtopic

IOW it works like a Middle East Peace Process or Global Warming religion, the difference being in a number of crackpots pushing it. Here it is 1+. Stopping this early minimizes crowd effect with all its collateral damage.
Re:I don't get it by sdpuppy · 2008-12-23 11:05 · Score: 0, Offtopic

OK, so perhaps you need a Slashdot analogy, and I'll keep it short and sweet.
On Slashdot, if you feed the trolls, it only encourages them and it encourages them to reproduce (you get copycats).
Wow, my first analogy on Slashdot without a car involved...