Fake paper accepted at major conference - The Chronicle: "Fill a paper with gobbledygook, add some fake charts, slap on a title dense with highfalutin scientific jargon, and -- voila --- a highfalutin conference may actually accept it. That's what happened when three students at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology submitted a nonsensical research paper to the ninth World Multi-Conference on Systemics, Cybernetics, and Informatics, scheduled to be held in Orlando, Fla., in July."
UPDATE: The paper (PDF) in full.
UPDATE: The paper (PDF) in full.
posted by John B. Chilton at 4/16/2005 06:41:00 PM
2 Comments:
Many of my colleagues from twenty years ago used to say the same thing about my work.
This is a cute news item, but unfortunately may say little except that some conferences are essentially scams. There are a number of conferences in the academic business that are located in nice places, and that have little or no content. The organizer charges a registration fee, and puts together sessions of 4-6 unrelated papers, with no discussants or discussion. Being on the program, though, enables the paper presenter to get funding from their institution to attend. (That's why these conferences are in Orlando, or Cancun, or Maui, etc., and not Akron.) I have seen conference announcements where the organizers have stated that they expect attendees to at least attend their own sessions. I do not know if this conference is one of these scam events, but if it is, that would explain why apparently no one reviewed the paper before accepting it.
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