Friar Bellows

Rumours began circulating a few weeks ago about a pair of French brothers (surname Bogdanov) and TV stars who managed to get several of their hoax papers published in physics journals; not only that, they were also awarded PhD's on the basis of the work described by these nonsense papers! Had theoretical physics tasted the same medicine it had dished out to the cultural studies crowd during the <a href="http://www.physics.nyu.edu/faculty/sokal" target="_blank">Social Text affair</a>? Well, it's more complicated. For one thing, the Bogdanovs don't appear to be hoaxers. To read more about this interesting story see here:

<a href="http://chronicle.com/free/2002/11/2002110501n.htm" target="_blank">French TV Stars Rock the World of Theoretical Physics</a>

And more stuff here:

<a href="http://www.math.ucr.edu/home/baez/bogdanov.html" target="_blank">The Bogdanov Affair</a>

Some of the more general issues raised by this affair are discussed in this interesting paper I recently came across on arxiv.org:

<a href="http://www.arxiv.org/abs/physics/0208046" target="_blank">Censorship and the Peer Review System</a>

G V

Bump
Where are our physics folks?
This looks interesting.

Steven S

I've followed the Bogdanov affair since Baez first brought it to the attention of the sci.physics.research community. It doesn't have much in common with Sokal Hoax except that some nonsensical papers were published. All this fiasco really shows is that we have a great failure of the peer review process in some journals and a failure in the French educational system.

I had not seen this before but it should be a good read.

Steven S

Ernest Sparks

Just exactly what is a Ph.D. degree supposed to signify?

I read somewhere that American universities cooked up this degree over a century ago to try and equalize the competence of their graduate students to the level of European Masters and the like. Advanced course work was prescribed to make up deficits in the earlier American undergraduate programs, so I read. European (particularly British) graduates spent most of their time hustling professors to get them into research work. Later, European Universities, so the story goes, initiated Ph. D.s to help
with American exchange students entering graduate studies there.

But, is a Ph. D. essentially different from a D. Phil. degree or D. Sc. degree? Doesn't a Ph. D. candidate in Europe take course work for credit, take qualifying exams and write a dissertation UNDER an advisor competent in the field?

<img src="confused.gif" border="0">

alek0

Rather interesting. I don't know anyone who is fully satisfied with peer review process. A lot of it is a matter of personal integrity and responsibility of the reviewer. I would have lots of stories to tell about crazy reports I have received. But I always tried my best to be objective and thorough when doing a review. Nowadays with so many online databases it would be hard to miss if there is anything similar published before.

However, I don't see a better replacement for peer review. Lottery? Certainly not. Payment to the referees would be a good incentive for some to do a better job. It is done for free, and all of use have other things to do (our own research, teaching, administrative duties etc.). Making authors anonymous would help eliminate personal issues influencing decision.

That article however raises one very interesting issue, i.e. income generated by scientific publications. Did you know that in many journals authors actually have to pay usually in excess of 100$ per page in order to publish? Some journals make it voluntary contribution, others (example Journal of Vacuum Science and Technology) won't even send it to referee unless you give a statement you will pay. This I find quite ridicilous - if you write a fiction story for newspapers they will pay you, if you spend lots of time and effort on research you have to pay them to publish it and they will make money out of it. The only instance when I was payed was invited review article, 685$ for 56 pages with over 300 refs. It would be better to write silly romances it seems...

Now I'd better get back to a paper I need to review by te end of next week, argh.

Edited to add: In Europe, if you get your PhD after MSc you don't do coursework. If you do your PhD right away you do coursework. Of course, you have to do research and write a thesis for both degrees, only difference is the quality of work (requirements on how many publications and where etc.). European MSc is actually equivalent of MPhil degree. Back home we sure didn't have masters with only coursework, like they have here in Hong Kong.
France and Germany also have one step after PhD, so called habilitation which you need to do in order to be able to become professor later.

[ November 09, 2002: Message edited by: alek0 ]</p>

Splat

I take peer review very seriously, and try to give it my best. But still, I've reviewed papers when I was too swamped and stressed to give them my full attention. As with grading student papers, etc., this usually amounts to moving the benefit-of-doubt lever a couple of notches down the scale, rather than raising the bar. That's what allows garbage to get through the peer review filter. It happens.

But publication isn't the end of the process, it's the beginning. Garbage gets through the PR filter, but that doesn't mean that it thrives. If it's truly garbage, it will suffer one of two fates: disproof or oblivion. You might be able to bullshit a few reviewers and editors a few times, but if your stuff is meaningless, it will either be tested and found wanting, or just be ignored.

I suspect that Sokal's hoax paper would have either been torn apart or ignored if he hadn't announced it as a hoax.

Whatever else we might think of it, even postmodern/poststructural/whatever scholarship has its own internal consistency and tropes (and possibly even validity, if you could penetrate the jargon?), which Sokal was able to imitate (crudely) but not master.

The editors gave him benefit of the doubt because he was an outsider and published his essay. It was a stupid error by people involved in a stupid "war." They got what they deserved. So did the publishers who let the Bogdanov's work through the gate.

Ernest Sparks

Thanks, Alek0.

Another problem in mathematical sciences is that the submissions are so damnedly tough to read. Even following basic lines of inference, without knowing all the presumed background, gets impossible. Therefore, the suspicion arises that a typical fast review consists mostly of a quick lookover for a few recognizable landmark words and equations, and a glance at the references and citations.

But, even with my poor background, I would hope to be able to spot pure horse**** when I see it.

ADDITIONAL: Also, thanks to Splat.

Ernie

[ November 11, 2002: Message edited by: Ernest Sparks ]</p>

Shadowy Man

Getting a paper published is a lot easier than getting it cited.

Clutch

One of the easiest remedies for sometimes-shoddy reviewing would be for universities to take refereeing into account as a performance indicator. Since conscientious referees in any discipline are quickly identified and then repeatedly solicited, they end up doing a lot of work on it -- or saying no. But few departments take this work into account, since it does not fit tidily into the Teaching / Research / Administration trichotomy of performance evaluation criteria.

Shadowy Man

Teaching is part of the evaluation criteria???? <img src="confused.gif" border="0">