Randomly Generated Paper Accepted to Conference 658
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."
The blind publishing the blind. (Score:5, Insightful)
Excerpt from the submitted paper:
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:
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 [mit.edu], and the WMSCI website can be found here [iiisci.org].
Re:In other news... (Score:5, Insightful)
no joke. this is not new news.. legislators have been accepting papers without review for years.
Re:The blind publishing the blind. (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
Correction (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:I'd hate to be a paper referee after this. (Score:5, Insightful)
I doubt they'll attend the conference now... (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:I'd hate to be a paper referee after this. (Score:5, Insightful)
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. (Score:5, Insightful)
Of course, this kind of scam works on the reluctance of accademics to just say they don't understand something.
Based on their CV? (Score:3, Insightful)
" Acceptance decisions related to the submitted papers will be based on their respective content review and/or on the respective author's CV.
"
Re:I'd hate to be a paper referee after this. (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:The blind publishing the blind. (Score:5, Insightful)
Instead, the reviewer cites some statistics and basically writes, "Because I said so".
Re:I'd hate to be a paper referee after this. (Score:5, Insightful)
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:No big surprise (Score:3, Insightful)
Ditto. Sometimes I'm asked to be a session organizer. Complaints to their upstream have no affect.
Re:I'd hate to be a paper referee after this. (Score:5, Insightful)
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. (Score:4, Insightful)
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:I'd hate to be a paper referee after this. (Score:2, Insightful)
The randomly generated paper would never have been accepted to any serious journal of computer science. A mediocre grad student would realize the paper was meaningless upon reading the first four sentences.
The program for generating random papers may be funny, but it doesn't produce plausible CS papers. I read the two papers linked from the site and you can tell they're obviously fake from reading the abstracts only.
Re:I'd hate to be a paper referee after this. (Score:2, Insightful)
So really this is not a case of academians not understanding something but rather it is a case of pseudo-academians not caring.
Comment removed (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Not surprising at all (Score:3, Insightful)
ACM SIGMOD '05 [sigmod.org]
VLDB '04 [vldb04.org]
Re:It wasn't reviewed (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
Re:The blind publishing the blind. (Score:4, Insightful)
The response cited several papers showing that giving reasons for rejection is (a) less common than was implied, (b) frequently non-informative. So it was a justification for giving no justification.
I agree it was a little turgid, but unlike the paper itself, it did make sense.
Re:The blind publishing the blind. (Score:4, Insightful)
1. Ideas that can't be stated with mathematical precision are crap.
2. This statement is not specific enough to make a good programming specification.
3. Therefore, this statement is worthless.
Re:It wasn't reviewed (Score:4, Insightful)
Our disciplines are so ambiguous that it's practitioners can't distinguish between fraudulent and real material. This is understood and you're wrong to test it in public.
Astonishing.
Maybe this wake up call was necessary
This "wake up call" was inevitable.
but prior to Sokol's publication there was a healthy inter disciplinary effort between the humanities and sciences.
"healthy inter disciplinary effort"... Straight out of a paper generating algorithm. Whatever respect exists between hard science and the "humanities" hasn't been fundamentally shaken, which should provide some incite into how great that level of respect was to begin with.
It isn't hard to see how this publication put a wedge between the camps.
The wedge was already there. Sokol contributed to helping us to stop pretending.
For that reason I consider it intellectually dishonest, but there is no consensus.
We should not, however, consider the "intellectual" honesty of an academic publication with standards this low? Did Social Text not purport to have academic credibility? But this is an equivalence argument.
Sokol made himself some enemies with his prank. During the time between the moments of panic you've felt when thinking about being similarly exposed, has the thought ever occurred that Sokol deserves some credit for his courage?
I didn't think so.
Re:It wasn't reviewed (Score:1, Insightful)
I'm sorry, but I just can't accept this argument. What Sokal was trying to show was that there were quasi-respectable journals that universities paid thousands of dollars to subscribe to and a lot more for the faculty to fill their pages with gibberish. Postmodernist humanities is mostly about making provocative, obfuscated claims without backing them up. Whenever someone complains that they are just full of nonsense, they say, "don't criticize our work because you don't understand it. We don't understand yours, but you don't hear us complaining." You just can't debate with people who say things like this. This was the only way he could prove them to be a bunch of frauds.
As to them not being qualified to refute his work, so they just published it, this just isn't true. Read some of the quotes in the Wikipedia article. It doesn't take a theoretical physicist to smell so much bullshit. As a scientist, you should be deeply offended by the things that postmodernists say. The fact that this paper got published just goes to show that it really is nonsense, and not just "over your head" as they claim.
Re:_Sokal_ didn't understand his paper (Score:3, Insightful)
If you don't find the statment:"But all this is only a first step: the fundamental goal of any emancipatory movement must be to demystify and democratize the production of scientific knowledge, to break down the artificial barriers that separate ``scientists'' from ``the public''. Realistically, this task must start with the younger generation, through a profound reform of the educational system. The teaching of science and mathematics must be purged of its authoritarian and elitist characteristics95, and the content of these subjects enriched by incorporating the insights of the feminist, queer, multiculturalist and ecological critiques."
UNBELIEVEABLY, hilariously absurd and nonsensical then you sir, are either an idiot or a hugely pretentious buffon. Sokal roudly humiliated the "postmodernists" and it was well deserved. It should be no surprise I guess, that some who had thier fragile egos badly brused in this incident pathetically continue to claim that "No! Sokal was really right! He just didn't seeee it!!!". unbelieveable.
Re:Overkill. Keep it simple. (Score:4, Insightful)
By any objective judgement, the top-40 (on average) is poorly performed and mass-market-sanitized versions of better (more skilled artists, better song-writing, etc). That's a fact - record executives are open about it. They "create" groups so that they don't have to deal with older and wider musicians. They have complete editorial control over sound, lyrics, and presentation. They will all, naturally, produce pap that gravitates to the exact midline of every consumer preference they can measure.
In almost every industry you see the true ground-breaking work from the independents - software, music, art. The pros have too much invested to be able to take a year off and explore some neat idea. They're going to have less of the really good products that come from a gifted person exploring their craft.
It's all fact. Does that mean you should rub people's noses in it? No, but explaining it to someone when they, just as tiresomely I assure you, drool over some pop star helps them get a little perspective. If they manage to see past the glitz of the MTV videos it could help them find music they'd really enjoy. To replace britney, buy music from a good musician and porn from a pretty girl. Once you realize that this cool sound you really like in Star X's latest song is like the sound of this genre, which you hadn't heard of, you get exposed to a new world of music.
The problem is with people who don't realize this applies to them as well, and to people who are rude about it. Just like those guys who tell everyone they don't have a TV - I don't, but I don't bring it up in conversation, nor, unless asked once it does come up, my reasons.