Making Sense Of The Bogdanov Physics Scandal
	found on The Register written by Blue Dot, edited by Tim (Plastic) [ read unedited ] posted Wed 13 Nov 8:22am
		"For the past couple weeks, news of a possible hoax has circulated through the theoretical and mathematical physics community. The story surfaced in a post by respected physicist John Baez to the newsgroup sci.physics.research, one of the most valuable resources for the exchange and collection of information in the world for mathematical physicists." Blue Dot writes, "At the center of the controversy are the brothers Bogdanov, five papers on mathematical physics, and a skeptical scientific community. Many now claim that the work the Bogdanov's did to earn PhD's was a scam and that their articles are incoherent. Baez maintains the definitive compendium of developments in the affair, including commentary on their work, information about the brother's educational endeavors and links to dialog between the Bogdanovs and some of the physicists on the newsgroup."

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1.  Sokal hoax comparisons   by profwhat       at Wed 13 Nov 8:44am score of 3.5 informative     It's rare for refereeing to break down on scientific journals, but it's certainly happened before, and will probably happen again. I'm not sure how respectable the journals the Bogdanovs published in, so I'm not sure how to quantify the amount of egg of physics' face. A helpful article about this is here (quicklinked by GlassFan; thanks). It seems to me that this otherwise pedestrian story is getting legs in the press because some are comparing it to the Sokal hoax. That was a hoax perpetuated by NYU physicist Alan Sokal. He wanted to prove a point about post-modernistic academics: namely, that their writing and reasoning had become so opaque that no one could tell what the hell anyone was saying anymore. To prove his point, he wrote an article filled with pomobabble. A postmodern journal, Social Text, published it. Months later, Sokal revealed his hoax in another publication, and used the opportunity to challenge academic standards of publications like Social Text. So, now some in the social sciences see the Bogdanov affair as a sort of "revenge," or at least proof that both physics and social science can be opaque. I think this is a dumb argument. First, the Bogdanovs never claimed to be perpetuating a hoax; in fact, they are still maintaining their work has merit. Second, if their work was meritless (and from what I can tell, their case is very weak), it's important to note that here, other academics were able to spot the hoax. By comparison, no one spotted Sokal's hoax until he pointed it out. That suggests that physics, unlike pomobabble social science, still has firm objective criteria for academic merit.   [ ...reply just to this | comment on the story... | next new ]

4.  Re: Sokal hoax comparisons   by ideonode       at Wed 13 Nov 10:28am score of 2 interesting   in reply to comment 1     He wanted to prove a point about post-modernistic academics: namely, that their writing and reasoning had become so opaque that no one could tell what the hell anyone was saying anymore Well, that was partly his intent. But he had more to say than just that. What he was really railing against was the use of abuse of scientific terminology in post-modernist and post-structural texts to lend some sort of facile credibility and legitimacy to the argument. Many liberal arts theorists would use willy-nilly terms from science without understanding them. Lacan, Baudrillard and Lyotard were particularly vilified. An example would be the use of terms appropriate to relativity in an argument on moral relativism. Or ridiculously extending the Uncertainty Principle to make sweeping statements about the epistemological boundaries of knowledge. The point of the hoax wasn't so much the obfuscation of the argument through terminology, but rather that the editors published his text(which was nonsense - talking about quantum theories of gravity as if they were established fact) because it seemed to use science to back their poststructuralist views. Good book by Sokal on the abuse of science, although it out-steps its brief through an over-zealous defence of the western rational tradition. But good ego-bursting stuff. I agree with profwhat that this story is trying to gain notoriety through a tenuous association with Sokal's intellectual bomb. Yet what both cases do highlight is the sheer difficulty in adequate peer reviewing. We are all uber-specialists now. When hyper-inter-disciplinary articles do appear, who is qualified to judge them?   [ ...reply just to this | comment on the story... | next new ]   7.  Re: Sokal hoax comparisons   by David Flores       at Wed 13 Nov 12:26pm score of 1.5 scholarly   in reply to comment 1     I think this is a dumb argument. First, the Bogdanovs never claimed to be perpetuating a hoax; in fact, they are still maintaining their work has merit. I'm not sure I buy this part of your defense. It would suggest that if Sokal had submitted the very same article that he did to Social Text but actually believed it to be a work of merit then it would not have been an indictment against that journal. I'm reminded of Jorge Luis Borges' story "Pierre Menard Author of Don Quixote" in which a french Symbolist decides to write "Don Quixote" all over again. The words and layout are exactly the same as Cervantes', but --Borges informs us-- the tone and character of Menard's book are very, very different from those of Cervantes' work. But of course, in science such subjective criteria as "tone" and "character" should really have no meaning, as far as a scientific publication is concerned. Michel Foucault, in his brilliant essay "Q'uest que c'est un auteur?" (What is an author?) argues, very suggestively, that the paths of Science and Literature have crossed over the ages. In the past, a literary work was judged to be of great merit if it was anonymous product of the literary "tradition," a work of "the poets" as Socrates is always saying. A scientific work, OTOH, was valued more highly if it expressed the theories of Aristotle, or Galene, or some other sage. With time, according to Foucault, the literary author became more and more important as a sign of literary worth, whereas scientific works were deemed important if they described results that could be independently reproduced and verified by anyone not just by the original theorist. So in short, it should matter little whether or not the Bogdanov's had faith in the validity of their publications. If the publications are bunk, the peer review committee should have spotted it, or refused to publish the paper based upon a lack of expertise in the area. One could very well argue that this is an indictment against the publications that published the Bogdanov's work, in much the same way that Sokal's stunt was an indictment against Social Text. GAFB and GAFB2   [ ...reply just to this | comment on the story... | next new ]   13.  Re: Sokal hoax comparisons   by Blue Dot       at Wed 13 Nov 9:45pm score of 1   in reply to comment 7     One could very well argue that this is an indictment against the publications that published the Bogdanov's work, in much the same way that Sokal's stunt was an indictment against Social Text. I am playing devil's advocate, here, as a student of physics and someone who has read sci.physics.research for a long time pre-Bogdanov. In this spirit, I take your comments a step further: What does this say about the quality of theoretical physics? String theory papers are all "cutting edge" and full of things only experts understand, and maybe a completely original paper is understood by only a pair or handful of researchers. But what that means is that people are constructing theories as branches off of a theory that is currently on pretty loose footing. String theory makes no testable hypothese, and only in the realm of string theory does it make sense. While the second half of that comment seems substantial--that it makes sense in terms of itself--all that is saying is that it is self-consistent. If you give me an arithmetic where 1 = 0, I can prove anything too! That will surely make all of my stupid but self-consistent Theory of Everything worthless and mathematically rigorous at the same time. It takes someone really on his A game like John Baez to recognize this, and only then does the rest of the world perk up. What good is a theory like this anyway?   [ ...reply just to this | comment on the story... | next new ]   16.  Re: Sokal hoax comparisons   by Lulu Lotus-Eater       at Sat 16 Nov 1:20am score of 1   in reply to comment 1     Since the Sokal comparisons are inevitable, let me remark roughly what I did when the story was on /. Back when Sokal published his paper, the whole right-wing "Cultural Literacy" schtick was a current "debate." For the most part, the "debate" consisted of a bunch of right-wingers like E.D.Hirsch and the truly deplorable William Bennet bemoaning the teaching of non-white authors in college and/or teachers who are leftists (they never admitted that's quite what they are about, but it is). Sokal is not nearly such a bad guy as those right-wingers. He's actually a decent liberal, but one raised in a particular scientistic, positivist intellectual tradition. Alan Sokal is a physicist, after all (although that is not sufficient, many in the occupation understand humanities better). But caught in that anti-Postmodernism ferver of the early 1990s, Sokal decided to make fun of the journal _Social Text_ (and the general field, by implication) _Social Text_ is not really the most prestigious journal in that general area, but it's not bad. It is refereed, but that doesn't mean as much in any journal as what outside people tend to think. You don't have to be RIGHT, or even original, to right for "good" academic journals... just write well enough, and pick a topic the editor are interested in. For a lot of them, you also have to wait years for publication to roll around... they are behind schedule by huge amounts. But even for what moderation means at _Social Text_, Sokal did not go through it. He knew some editors, and approached them saying "I'm a well known physicist, and I'd like you to fast track something I want to write." The _Social Text_ editors liked the idea of reaching out to that other academic community, so they agreed. But the refereeing in this case consisted of making sure the sentences were grammatical, the words spelled right, and the subject matter generally what Sokal had suggested informally. The same paper WOULD NOT have been published if submitted for blind review. So the hoax basically amounts to this: people tend to grant some leeway to their friends. True enough, but hardly an indictment of cultural studies, the humanities, postmodernism, multiculturalism, or whatever it is that is supposed to have been shown to be foolish.   [ ...reply just to this | comment on the story... | next new ]   17.  Re: Sokal hoax comparisons   by profwhat       at Sat 16 Nov 6:47am score of 1   in reply to comment 16     But even for what moderation means at _Social Text_, Sokal did not go through it. He knew some editors, and approached them ... The same paper WOULD NOT have been published if submitted for blind review. So the hoax basically amounts to this: people tend to grant some leeway to their friends. That is not what one editor said in his defense. He said that Sokal's article had a good argument, and continued to insist that long after Sokal revealed the hoax. He wrote, apparently speaking for his fellow editors: But we thought Sokal had a real argument, and we still do. Allow me to quote Paul [sic] Horgan, senior writer at Scientific American, summarizing in the July 16 New York Times: Sokal, Horgan says, "proposed that superstring theory might help liberate science from `dependence on the concept of objective truth.' Professor Sokal later announced that the article had been a hoax, intended to expose the hollowness of postmodernism. In fact, however, superstring theory is exactly the kind of science that subverts conventional notions of truth." They aren't even contrite. They still think it was a good article. It's ridiculous.   [ ...reply just to this | comment on the story... | next new ]

2.  A Physics Scandal? Not!   by chlim01       at Wed 13 Nov 8:47am score of 2.5 interesting     Given the fact that the physics community had caught on so swiftly to the twins' bad science, the scandalised party isn't physics itself but rather the University of Bourgogne and the journals which had accepted their papers for publication.   [ ...reply just to this | comment on the story... | next new ]

8.  Re: A Physics Scandal? Not!   by Blue Dot       at Wed 13 Nov 12:44pm score of 1.5 interesting   in reply to comment 2     There are several ways this is a scandal for the physics community. First of all, the journals that accepted these are supposed to be refereed by respected physicists. Their five articles prove that a lot of bunk can get by those supposedly in the know. Secondly, not only the University of Bourgogne but all of the people who have advised, reviewed, or examined the Bogdanovs are responsible for the work in one way or another. This extends far past that university and across an ocean: MIT and SUNY Stony Brook are also involved. Everyone caught on, but these men earned PhDs and published without making sense. That's egg alright. Since the mega-mind John Baez broke the story, though, mathematical physics gets most of its points back.   [ ...reply just to this | comment on the story... | next new ]   9.  Re: A Physics Scandal? Not!   by ignoblus       at Wed 13 Nov 2:49pm score of 1   in reply to comment 8     Anyone happen to know the relative circulations of each of these journals? It never was that simple, and it still isn't.   [ ...reply just to this | comment on the story... | next new ]   12.  Re: A Physics Scandal? Not!   by profwhat       at Wed 13 Nov 9:43pm score of 1   in reply to comment 9     Anyone happen to know the relative circulations of each of these journals? From the letter to the editor that chengjih links to below: "the papers by Drs. Igor and Grichka Bogdanov might as well have not existed, since they were published in print journals that few if any practitioners of the field even read."   [ ...reply just to this | comment on the story... | next new ]   10.  Caught Swiftly?Not!   by burntfriedman       at Wed 13 Nov 5:29pm score of 1   in reply to comment 2     Dude, they got frickin' Ph. D's...in physics. it's the papers afterwards that they are being burned for. i might add that with the circulation of the story over the last three weeks, various harvard/m.i.t. professors were musing over the article when it was entitled "hoax" but then reversed their opinions when the bogdanovs denied the paper as a hoax or a scam. perhaps someone will write a paper explaining why their papers don't work using various versions of string theory...   [ ...reply just to this | comment on the story... | next new ]   11.  Re: Caught Swiftly?Not!   by Blue Dot       at Wed 13 Nov 9:32pm score of 1   in reply to comment 10     Well, when you're making your own version of the universe it doesn't matter whether it fits with the others... its the fact that it doesn't fit that makes it worthwhile. But only if it doesn't fit and leads to something useful is it truly a good theory.   [ ...reply just to this | comment on the story... | next new ]

3.  Depends on what's under the opacity   by Dvandom       at Wed 13 Nov 9:44am score of 1     Sure, your average highly technical math or science journal is as opaque as the average LitCrit PoMo EtAl. The difference is whether there's anything under the layers of jargon. In the case of the Sokal hoax, his point was that there wasn't. The fact that there usually IS something under the cruft in math and science journals is demonstrated by the fact, as pointed out above, people eventually figured out it was probably clothes with no emperor in the case of the Burgy Bros. ---Dave   [ ...reply just to this | comment on the story... | next new ]

5.  Some physicists chime in   by chengjih       at Wed 13 Nov 10:41am score of 3 helpful     A couple of physicists chimed in on a recent NY Times article on the whole thing. They appeared in Letters">a www.nytimes.com link to the Editor earlier this week. Comparisons to the Sokal hoax are both implicit and explicit. To summarize what they said: 1. Theoretical physics must ultimately be judged by empirical results. 2. The journals they published in aren't really read by anyone in the field, so for all intents and purposes the Bogdanov publications "might as well have not existed." 3. The Bogdanovs were "aiming to be credentialed by the intellectual prestige of the discipline rather than trying to puncture any intellectual pretension." The first point is just a reiteration of what constitutes a science. The Bogdanov papers aren't much more than musings unless they offer falsifiable predictions which can be judged against experimental results. The second is perhaps in contrast to Social Text, which may be more prestigious than the physics journals in question. If I recall, Sokal's article appeared in a prominent special issue of Social Text, which was on PoMo and science. The third point arguably implies that there will be bad researchers out there, who will try hard to publish bad papers, and some of them will succeed. We've seen all sorts of scandals in the past few years where prestigious researchers have perpetrated fraud. In all of these cases, it's other researchers who caught them, because the published results were not reproduceable. The system is self-correcting, though some bogus results may take longer to find than others.   [ ...reply just to this | comment on the story... | next new ]

6.  More on this, and other, scientific hoaxes   by Moorlock       at Wed 13 Nov 11:00am score of 1.5 helpful     Information on this hoax/fraud, Sokal's famous Social Text hoax, and other examples of pathological science can be found at sniggle.net's Pseudoscience page. For one low, low price of absolutely nothing, you get cold fusion, goat glands, element 118, dihydrogen monoxide, polywater, and even the invincible peppered moth of natural selection fame. --12 Galaxies Guiltied to a Zegnatronic Rocket Society   [ ...reply just to this | comment on the story... | next new ]

14.  Peer review   by Violator       at Thu 14 Nov 12:57am score of 1     Peer review is a better system than letting people publish whatever the fuck they want - but the peer reviewer isn't able to do much more than review the scientific document, maybe give some opinions and some advice, and criticise. Its the editors of the journals who get the final say on what gets published. Maybe the reviewers tell the editors "this is crud, don't run it" but in the end it's the editor who should roast equally with the Bogy Bros. for letting their crap (if indeed it is) get in the journal. But it should also be noted that peer review is not and should not be there to stifle unpopular opinions and crap science mated to good observation or data. Writing a scientific thesis right now, I am using a lot of people's theses, journal articles and papers, or more precisely their data and interpretations. Its upto me to decide whether the data is good, bad, ugly or accurate. It is up to me to look at the previous opinions and interpretations and to decide if I agree, and how much to weight them in my own interpretation. I can honestly say, a lot of science is crap. Poorly focused, poorly interpreted, or poorly analysed. But even if all I have done is dragged 250 data points out of one thesis, 200 out of a different one, and used a good interpretation from another, that is better than having had no data, no interpretations because an editor or reviewer didn't agree entirely and said "Don't publish this." Peer review helps keep people honest, and introduces a basic baseline or benchmark to the whole scientific institution - it doesn't guarantee correctness, completeness or wondrous world-shattering science. Consistently modded down for being an asshole since 2003   [ ...reply just to this | comment on the story... | next new ]

15.  Peer review   by Violator       at Thu 14 Nov 12:57am score of 1     Peer review is a better system than letting people publish whatever the fuck they want - but the peer reviewer isn't able to do much more than review the scientific document, maybe give some opinions and some advice, and criticise. Its the editors of the journals who get the final say on what gets published. Maybe the reviewers tell the editors "this is crud, don't run it" but in the end it's the editor who should roast equally with the Bogy Bros. for letting their crap (if indeed it is) get in the journal. But it should also be noted that peer review is not and should not be there to stifle unpopular opinions and crap science mated to good observation or data. Writing a scientific thesis right now, I am using a lot of people's theses, journal articles and papers, or more precisely their data and interpretations. Its upto me to decide whether the data is good, bad, ugly or accurate. It is up to me to look at the previous opinions and interpretations and to decide if I agree, and how much to weight them in my own interpretation. I can honestly say, a lot of science is crap. Poorly focused, poorly interpreted, or poorly analysed. But even if all I have done is dragged 250 data points out of one thesis, 200 out of a different one, and used a good interpretation from another, that is better than having had no data, no interpretations because an editor or reviewer didn't agree entirely and said "Don't publish this." Peer review helps keep people honest, and introduces a basic baseline or benchmark to the whole scientific institution - it doesn't guarantee correctness, completeness or wondrous world-shattering science. Consistently modded down for being an asshole since 2003   [ ...reply just to this | comment on the story... | next new ]