So when are we going to see a Dubyaism Generator?

The modern conference resembles the pilgrimage of medieval Christendom in that it allows the participants to indulge themselves in all the pleasures and diversion of travel while appearing to be austerely bent on self-improvement. To be sure, there are certain penitential exercises to be performed -the presentation of a paper, perhaps, and certainly listening to the papers of others. But with this excuse you journey to new and interesting places, meet new and interesting people, and form
new and interesting relationship with them; exchange gossip and confidences for your well-worn stories are fresh to them, and vice versa); eat, drink and make merry in their company every evening; and yet, at the end of it all, return home with an enhanced reputation for seriousness of mind. Today’s conference have an additional advantage over the pilgrims of old in that their expenses are usualy paid, or at least subsidised, by the institution to which they belong, be it a government department, a commercial firm, or, most commonly perhaps, a university.

Also, the role of conferences in CS is different from other fields – conferences usually have printed proceedings, and quality of conference publications is the first criterion for hiring and tenure at many schools. Journals, on the other hand, usually reprint longer versions of papers that were accepted to the more prestigious conferences.

“Here is a revealing comparison. For the annual meeting of the American Philosophical Association the Program Committee sifts submissions carefully and rejects 80 percent. The Australasian Association of Philosophy does not sift submissions. Yet every year the AAP program is better overall than the APA program.” (Bill Lycan, Philosophy UNC) (ref)

Now if someone could only write a similar algorithm for patent applications they might have something going…

Re: Sokal – My understanding of the Sokal hoax was that it wasn’t just that the editors of Social Text got out of their depth and accepted for publication an article that they really ought to have sent for expert refereeing but that, more generally, Sokal was drawing attention to the routine use and abuse of scientific vocabulary by those who didn’t really understand such vocabulary and the problem wasn’t just that he personally, in his article, was misusing key scientific concepts but also that the journal wasn’t particulalry concerned with whether such concepts were being used correctly at all. It wasn’t just a special case of one paper slipping through the cracks. As such he was drawing attention to what he saw as a systemic problem.

Of course, we can debate whether it really is (or was) a systemic problem and whether Sokal’s hoax was any way to test it.

Oh, I agree. I was just trying to stir up trouble.

Also, the MIT grad students deserve credit for a very effective critique of WMSCI. It’s ironic that their bogus CS paper generator is itself a pretty decent work of CS. Maybe they should submit a paper about it to a real CS conference.

The Reverse Turing Test concept is great. Scammers like PA and WMSCI will always be susceptible to !T tests, not because they’re stupid, but because their business model requires them to accept almost everything they receive. If they actually did legitimate reviewing or editing, they would be in a different niche, where they would be much less likely to succeed.

OTOH, refereeing papers is the exception rather than the norm for most of the genuine academic conferences I attend in Australia. Broadly speaking, you have to have a paper if you want funding to attend, and the conferences are small enough that everyone gets a turn.