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Randomly Generated Math Article Accepted By 'Open-Access' Journal
call -151 writes "Many years ago, a human-generated intentionally nonsense paper was accepted by the (prominent) literary culture journal Social Text. In August, a randomly-generated nonsense mathematics paper was accepted by one of the many low-tier 'open-access' research mathematics journals. The software Mathgen, which generated the accepted submission, takes as inputs author names (or those can be randomly selected also) and generates nicely TeX'd and impressive-sounding sentences which are grammatically correct but mathematically disconnected nonsense. This was reviewed by a human, (quickly, for math, in 12 days) and the reviewers' comments mention superficial problems with the submission (PDF). The references are also randomly-generated and rather hilarious. For those with concerns about submitting to lower-tier journals in an effort to promote open access, this is not a good sign!"
have facts for those who think and arguments for those who reason. For the sake of review, if five years ago I had described a person like Mr. Slasdhot Person to you and told you that in five years he'd fill the air with recrimination and rancor, you'd have thought me contumelious. You'd have laughed at me and told me it couldn't happen. So it is useful now to note that, first, it has happened and, second, to try to understand how it happened and how he has written more than his fair share of lengthy, over-worded, pseudo-intellectual tripe. In all such instances Slasdhot conveniently overlooks the fact that his greed will be his undoing. In the presence of high heaven and before the civilized world I therefore assert that he has repeatedly threatened to elevate his campaigns to prominence as epistemological principles. Maybe that's just for maximum scaremongering effect. Or maybe it's because Slasdhot should start developing the parts of his brain that have been impaired by Leninism. At least then he'll stop trying to put narrow-minded thoughts in our children's minds.
On the surface, it would seem merely that Slasdhot's blithe disregard for the victims of his myopic effusions is what first made me realize that Slasdhot is offended by the truth. But the truth is that if anything, Slasdhot has planted his habitués everywhere. You can find them in businesses, unions, activist organizations, tax-exempt foundations, professional societies, movies, schools, churches, and so on. Not only does this subversive approach enhance Slasdhot's ability to fortify a social correctness that restricts experience and defines success with narrow boundaries, but it also provides irrefutable evidence that he motivates people to join his terrorist organization by using words like "humanity", "compassion", and "unity". This is a great deception. What Slasdhot really wants to do is promote racial superiority doctrines, ethnic persecution, imperialist expansion, and genocide. That's why Slasdhot's argument that mediocrity is a worthwhile goal is hopelessly flawed and absolutely circuitous.
A "respected" member of Slasdhot's brownshirt brigade recently said (to closely paraphrase), "Slasdhot is above everyone else". To top that off, if you're like most people you just shrug your shoulders whenever you hear about Slasdhot's latest ugly sottises. When your shoulders get tired of shrugging I hope you'll realize that I obviously hope that the truth will prevail and that justice will be served before Slasdhot does any real damage. Or is it already too late? The complete answer to that question is a long, sad story. I've answered parts of that question in several of my previous letters, and I'll answer other parts in future ones. For now, I'll just say that Slasdhot accuses me of being impolite in my responses to his incoherent, intransigent methods of interpretation. Let's see
See my journal for slashdot ID's by year. Mine created in 2005. http://slashdot.org/journal/289875/slashdot-ids-by-year
It could have been worse. They could have accepted a legitimate paper on mathematics written by a person with a Computer Science degree.
I only look human.
My mother is a halfling and my dad is an ogre, so that makes me an Ogreling
A lot of these "controversies" come from submitting to journals or conferences that will literally accept anything. That story from 2005 about the random paper was submitted to the _non-reviewed section_ of the conference. I like how this article does not even say what conference it was submitted to, and whether or not review was even required for acceptance.
This has nothing to do with open access, and more to do with lack of proper review. Besides, as noted in the post, this particular journal charges a fee for publishing. Being a "low-tier" journal, they don't really have a reputation, and are probably more concerned with making money.
Hell, I could start up my own journal, give it a title, Generalities and accept anything at all to be published. It doesn't mean what is published is meaningful or useful. (Just because something is in a book doesn't make it true either. This journal sounds like it is about equivalent to "self published" books, where you pay the publisher to print your book. But they don't actually do any editing or similar. Not to say that reputable journals are the same as the non-self publishing world.)
Journals have reputations for a reason. One reason is because the good ones tend to do a bit more checking of the papers submitted. I doubt it this paper would have been accepted by a journal that actually reviewed papers properly, regardless of whether it was open access or not.
HELP MY ACCOUNT HAS BEEN HACKED BY AN ILLIBERAL ART STUDENT SET TO DESTROY THE INTERWEBZ!
This is awesome:
O. Jackson, J. Li, and N. D. Nehru. A First Course in Advanced p-Adic Calculus. Zambian Mathematical Society, 1935.
Small-time journals like this are the closest thing academia has to "self-publishing" in the literary world.
In the literary world, you could take a picture of every bowel movement you've had for the last year, pay somebody $1,000, and have the resulting picture book officially published by some official-sounding company, but that doesn't mean your GI accomplishments are noteworthy or impressive.
The editors for this particular journal probably thought they were witnessing some profound new discovery since they couldn't understand what the hell the paper was even proving. My suspicion is that they were quick to approve it in a vain attempt to make their journal even slightly relevant.
It seems like a lot of these academic authors try to "out dense" one another and deliberately make their papers as unclear as possible, so I think it's not just "journal will accept anything" and a little "thickly worded paper no one wants to admit they don;t understand and it sounds like every other paper."
I've had papers about communications concepts where I have written VHDL cores and embedded software that work perfectly, yet I can't make heads or tails of papers on the topic because they are written in such an obtuse manner with bizarre symbol choices and shoehorning every blessed value into a matrix, no matter how inappropriate, because Matlab is the only tool they know how to use.
It's only a matter of time before a patent bot creates IP based on this scientific development, a patent troll sues based on the patent and a litigation averse defendant settles the suit out of court.
If you can't dazzle them with brilliance, baffle them with bullshit.
---Technology will liberate us if it doesn't enslave us first.
Small-time journal suffers same problem as prominent journal, therefore, small-time journals are terrible!
WTF?
This was reviewed by a human, (quickly, for math, in 12 days) and the reviewers' comments mention superficial problems with the submission
As every published Slashdot reader knows, the feedback you get from peer-review varies greatly in quality -- and, yes, you do tend to get lots of superficial junk. Unfortunately, you get more junk than quality feedback that actually improves the paper.
Required reading for internet skeptics
publication is the beginning of peer review.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
The spelling and grammar would be correct.
Yes we can all laugh, and that particular journal is obviously mostly about making money from authors.
However, the paper did not actually get published. The required revisions amount to a fairly complete rewrite. I.e. the reviewer actually notices that the paper does not prove what it says it proves, and asks for that to be fixed. Obviously any respectable journal would reject rather than ask for a revision when such basic things are wrong.
Basically the journal lied to the author: the paper did not get accepted at all, they just wanted $500.
Finally! A year of moderation! Ready for 2019?
For all those upholding the /. tradition of not reading the article, here are the concerns voiced by the reviewer in the acceptance letter and the 'authors' responses to them :
Dear Author,
Thank you for your contribution to the Advances in Pure Mathematics (APM). We are pleased to inform you that your manuscript:
ID : 5300285
TITLE : Independent, negative, canonically Turing arrows of equations and problems in applied formal PDE
AUTHORS :Marcie Rathke
has been accepted. Congratulations!
Anyway, the manuscript has some flaws are required to be revised :
(1) For the abstract, I consider that the author can’t introduce the main idea and work of this topic specifically. We can’t catch the main thought from this abstract. So I suggest that the author can reorganize the descriptions and give the keywords of this paper.
2) In this paper, we may find that there are so many mathematical expressions and notations. But the author doesn’t give any introduction for them. I consider that for these new expressions and notations, the author can indicate the factual meanings of them.
(3) In part 2, the author gives the main results. On theorem 2.4, I consider that the author should give the corresponding proof.
(4) Also, for proposition 3.3 and 3.4, the author has better to show the specific proving processes.
(5) The format of this paper is not very standard. Please follow the format requirements of this journal strictly.
Please revised your paper and send it to us as soon as possible.
The author has asked me to include her responses to the referee’s comments:
1. The referee’s objection is well taken; indeed, the abstract has not the slightest thing to do with the content of the paper.
2. The paper certainly does contain a plethora of mathematical notation, but it is to be hoped that readers with the appropriate background can infer its meaning (or lack thereof) from context.
3. It is indeed customary for a mathematical paper to contain a proof of its main result. This omission admittedly represents a slight flaw in the manuscript. The author believes the proofs given for the referenced propositions are entirely sufficient [they read, respectively, "This is obvious" and "This is clear"]. However, she respects the referee’s opinion and would consider adding a few additional details.
4. On this point the author must strenuously object. The LATEX formatting of the manuscript is perfectly standard and in accordance with generally accepted practice. The same cannot be said of APM’s required template, which uses Microsoft Word [!].
5. Professor Rathke is pleased that the referee nevertheless recommends the paper be accepted, since clearly these minor differences of opinion in no way affect the paper’s overall validity and significance.
Bummer.
Comedy gold
Also it seems that author declined to pay the $500 it would cost to publish the paper, hmmm...
In a cybernetic fit of rage she pissed off to another age...
This is massively a failure of the editor and the referee. I suspect the editor didn't look at it all and the referee did a quick superficial job. One big question is who the referee was. One typical method of finding an appropriate referee is to look in the references. However, in this case, since the references are hilariously bogus:
"[7] "Q. Hausdorff and C. W. Turing. Advanced Combinatorics. Guyanese Mathematical Society, 2001"
I don't think you are going to find a Turing or Hausdorff alive and replying to email requests to referee these days! I can't believe a mathematically literate editor would look at the references (to find a referee) and not immediately realize that this is nonsense. So I suspect the editor asked someone else who had recently submitted something to the journal to write a quick report, perhaps in the spirit of mutual back-scratching. Perhaps that referee also did not notice that this was nonsense and did not look at the references either. Or perhaps the editor did a quick review instead of sending it out- the chance that two reasonable math people, no matter how overworked with their own tasks, would not notice that this was totally bogus I would hope is small.
It's psychosomatic. You need a lobotomy. I'll get a saw.
knowledge.
You cite meaningfulness and utility as two things that a randomly generated paper lacks.
Yet that is precisely what is at issue here, and what was at issue in Social Text—someone found these randomly assembled texts to be nominally meaningful, and the value of "meaningfulness" (bringing meaning to life, understanding the meaning of the universe, making the 9/11 deaths meaningful, etc.) is not zero, hence we can assume that meaningfulness is a dimension of some understandings of "utility."
Despite the intent of these kinds of papers, they appear instead to confirm at least some of the postmodernist argument: that in practice for humans, meaning and utility do not necessarily not vary either directly or inversely with enlightenment-style formal logic and or empiricist epistemology (whatever our ideals or desires), but instead that there appears to be a strong dimension of social construction involved in discerning meaning and utility, and conversely, that in many cases the things that we construct become by definition meaningful and useful in some sense as a matter of someone having constructed them, the awareness of this, and the reliance of these constructions on existing worlds of taken-for-granted meaning (language, culture, etc.)
This is not to say that "all things are equally true" or "all things can be equally true" but rather that "practical truths in social existence are never merely empirical substances" and we would do well to understand this if we want to understand/influence/improve society.
STOP . AMERICA . NOW
by how easy it is to use .tex for one's manuscript.
There are no reputable math journals which require Microsoft Word.
Sphinx of black quartz, judge my vow.
The quotes in the headline should be around 'Journal' rather than open access. The point is not that they claim to be open access but are not; they claim to be a peer reviewed journal and are not (while it may have been reviewed, any reviewer who did not see through the nonsense could not credibly be called a 'peer' of a working mathematician).
Well, I feel like I'm responding seriously to a post that was intended as satire, but in any case...
Yeah, it's often seemed to me that "Social Text" was beaten up on for the wrong reasons... falling for Sokal's prank wasn't in itself that serious a problem, they could've just said "Hey, this just goes to show that author intent really is irrelevant".
Instead they waffled: they could tell the paper had problems, but they ran it anyway, because they thought they'd found a "new ally in the sciences".
Admitting that you'd published garbage because of who wrote it, that's what indicates a real problem there.
THE_SO_CALLED_HOAX