TechNewsWorld Talkback

Re: Latest from MIT: Artificial Stupidity
Posted by: Jay Fitzgerald 2005-04-21 08:11:12

See Full Story

Welcome to wack-ademia. Fed up with invitations to submit papers for science conferences, three MIT students devised a software program that deliberately churned out nonsensical scientific gibberish. Now one of their computer-generated "papers" has been accepted by a Florida conference. Their fake report -- "Rooter: A Methodology for the Typical Unification of Access Points and Redundancy" -- is intended to show that many so-called academic conferences have few or no minimum standards. The gatherings' purpose: simply to make money.

Re: Latest from MIT: Artificial Stupidity
Posted by: mortadelo_de 2005-04-21 08:40:44 In reply to: Jay Fitzgerald

No wonder that the review process doesn't work.
I was one of the (non-) reviewers of this year's WMSCI conference.
Last year I was asked whether I would like to review submissions for WMSCI 2004, and I agreed. The review process took place kind of regularly, and I think I did a reasonable job.
This year, however, they sent me papers for review without any prior notice or consent of mine. The papers they sent me were barely related to my field of expertise. I explicitely refused to review the papers three times, requesting to take me off their reviewers' list. To no avail... After that, they sent me two more papers for review, which I completely ignored.
I'm sure I'm not the only reviewer who acted like this...