User talk:Anville/Temp Bogdanov

Copied here for scratch-work purposes. Anville 17:39, 23 August 2006 (UTC) (Strike-outs in the following indicate items which I believe I have addressed.)

Hi,

I read the article again. To make a long story short, it is a good article, but several things can be improved, in particular the first paragraph. Here are some suggestions :

• The Bogdanov Affair is a controversy regarding the merit of [...] As fas as I know there was never any controversy about the merit of these papers. The discussions were about its true nature: hoax or appalling bad work. Then they were about what had made this crazy situation possible. I do not know how the rephrase it. I remember someone had written that it was an academic scandal, which seems to me equally incorrect.
• describing what occurred before the Big Bang is also a bit misleading, although the brothers use that sort of phrasing in their popular science stuff. what occured at the Big Bang seems to me better.
• when accusations were made on Usenet newsgroups Maybe gossip or rumor would be better, since (IMHO) people were somewhat impressed that someone could have succeded in doing such a hoax. Of course the brothers pretend that the rumor was done on purpose, but if you read Baez's first post, he says, in a rather polite way, that it is a hoax. I thonk that if the brothers had been clever enough to say then that it was a hoax, many people would have applauded them. Unfortunately, it seems they were really convinced they had dome some good work (which one may understand considering they work arund 10 years each on this stuff and without pay; at some point you have to convince yourself that the result is worth the price).
• and have raised questions about the strength of the peer-review system that selected the research for publication. As far as I know everybody in the physicist community agrees to say the peer review system is not perfect. Maybe a more accurate way to say this would be have emphasized that the peer-review system can experience some failures (with a better rephrasing).
• Maybe you could add the PhD date (1999 for G and 2002 for I) in the second paragraph.
• Although there were issues related to the comprehensibility of their theses, they graduated conditionally upon publishing in journals that were respected in their fields. As far as I know it was only for I's thesis.
• I do not like the last sentence of the 2nd paragraph. It is in principle the advisor's responsability to ensure the quality of the student's work. Most people in academia would agree the all these advisors (which were all old men) failed on the crucial issue.

I took this from the Chronicle of Higher Education article. To me it sounds like an abdication of responsibility, but I wasn't there. Anville 18:07, 23 August 2006 (UTC)

• if Igor could publish three peer-reviewed journal articles I think it's two, plus two positive referee reports for the thesis itself. At least this is what his advisor told me. However at the time of the defense, I had 3 accepted papers.

The Chronicle says "three or four", while the NYT says "three". Anville 18:07, 23 August 2006 (UTC)

• Max Niedermaier formed the opinion that maybe reached the conclusion that is better.
• Niedermayer colleague's name is not known to me. As far as I know he never confirmed it was Ted Newman.

Barring confirmation of this, I have removed the specific mention of Newman's name. Anville 18:07, 23 August 2006 (UTC)

• This controversy immediately attracted worldwide attention Again, controversy is not satisfactory.
• which the Bogdanov brothers have continued to deny Maybe one should add that they posted in the very first thread (and probably already had some sock puppet supporters).
• Maybe you should add that Niedermayer "disclaimer" was the first and last public statement he issued about all that.

Done. Anville 18:07, 23 August 2006 (UTC)

• It is not true that the brothers have had 15 thesis reports (this is was they say, of course). They lie in claiming this. G got three positive report for his thesis (from Majid, Gourevitch and Kounnas). I. got two positive reports for his first failed thesis (from Anselmi and Antoniadis), and two others for the successful (...) one (from Morava and Jackiw). They have also presented a number of other documents claiming that they were reports, but it is wrong. They are at best extract from email exchange between I's jury members and D. Sternheimer, insuring that some subsequent improvements of the manuscript had been done (which is true, despite the poor quality of the final version), according to the jury decision after the defense. Among these 7 true reports, two were obviously explicitely dismissed by their authors (I's first thesis referees, Antoniadis and Anselmi, who did not allow him to pass), one more was publicly dismissed (Majid, plus Antoniadis who told this in an interview [1] while Majid posted it in a newsgroup [2]). Three other referees have been quiet about it (at least in public) : Morava, Gourevitch, Kounnas. The only that remain is Jackiw. There is an interesting story about him. In the Ciel & Espace article, Jackiw criticized the French translation of his report (published in the brothers' book) as traduction extrêmement optimiste. However in some interview he said the thesis was ok (something like they were some ideas and some jargon - that's all what I ask). Now, if you look at the translation, there is nothing bad with it, except that one seemingly unimportant sentence is missing. It says I note that in the bibliography, page numbers are missing in many of the referenced articles, or they are inaccurate (e.g. Ref. 9). Also names are mis-spelled (e.g. Ref. 22). This should be fixed. I must say I do not know whether he was happy to say it was not his report, or if this sentence is crucial (i.e. when he says that the bibliography is incorrect he means that the whole thesis is bad). In any case, he was not very enthusiastic in talking about all that when I contacted him. So... first one should say that it is not 15 but 7, and second that no one (at one possible exception, Jackiw) supported them afterward. Only their advisor did, but again, he had to justify his decision to agree to let them pass (a hardly understable decision, imho). There would be much more to say about Morava's report, but I am not supposed to make this public.

I have changed the number from 15 to 7. Further modifications will probably follow later. Anville 18:07, 23 August 2006 (UTC)

• In the Criticism of the papers section, maybe you could add that the CQG paper sums up most of G's thesis, but the paragraph are almost all in reverse orders (which casts some doubts about the coherence length of the paper...). You could add that one inequality are written of both orders ($\Gamma \ll H$ and $\Gamma \gg H$) depending on which paper you look at, and that three papers are essentially identical (including the typos), except for their title and abstract. These are the Chinese journal of physics, Nuovo Cimento and Annals of physics papers. (Be prepared, however to a sock puppet invasion if you say that ! Sock puppet invasion remain a good test to check for the veracity and the relevance of any statement about the affair, however.)

I'll try to work up a good statement on this. And yes, the sock puppet theater appears to be a pretty good bogometer for this affair! Anville 18:07, 23 August 2006 (UTC)

OK, I expanded the bit about the papers being largely identical, and if I can think of a good way to phrase it, I'll incorporate the gaffe with the inequalities. Anville 02:45, 24 August 2006 (UTC)

• In this section you may also add that some timid support were gooten by the Bogadanovs, but by people who seem to have some very bad opinion about Peter Woit and John Baez, who initiated the public part of the affair. So, according to the well known My enemies' enemies are my friend, I would not assert that Motl, Jadczyk and Poratti have really good opinion about the brothers. Again, one has to be careful saying that.

Hmmm. I had noticed this and speculated about it myself, but in default of any remotely reliable sources talking about it, I didn't say anything. It may be best just to leave Robert Oeckl's comment where it is — right after Motl's — to make the contrast clear. Also, Motl says, "Jackiw, Kounnas, and Majid were not the only ones with this kind of a conclusion" — the three people quoted up above (because Igor relied upon those quotations and used them often). The article already documents Kounnas's reversal because I found it in Le Monde, though they don't quote him explicitly (maybe Antoniadis's line was more memorable?). Majid's "support" is, as you indicated earlier, not worth very much either. Anville 18:07, 23 August 2006 (UTC)

Oops, I think I mis-read what Le Monde said about Kounnas, but the article now reflects the source accurately. In any case, the main point still stands: none of the examiners give the B. theses real support. Anville 16:48, 28 August 2006 (UTC)

• both under their real names, and under several pseudonyms; they later acknowledged doing so I would strongly support adding a partially after later (see the wp page, for example).
• Maybe you should add that G's unpublished preprint was put on the web very soon after the beginning of the affair, and that it is the result they claim to be the central one of their thesis. However, if you look at G's thesis, no use of this (rather unimportant) result is done throughout the rest of the thesis. This paper was unpublished despite the brothers' claims that it was accepted for publication.

I'll work on this in a bit. Anville 18:07, 23 August 2006 (UTC)

• You can add Le Monde among the newspapers that mentioned the affair (it is said soon after).
• Maybe Implications for the peer-review system is misleading since the affair revealed many aspects of the peer review system that were already known to scientists. Maybe another word instead of implication would be better, but I do not see which.
• Questions were also raised in the sci.physics.research newsgroup about the fact that some aspects of theoretical physics have become so abstract, extensively relying on unproven conjectures, that verifying many statements written in published papers has become somewhat impossible. It is true, but rather unrelated to the affair, since the brothers lack the basics of any fields in physics. Only their mastering of the jargon is at first a bit impressive, but the rest is rather empty. So, it is true that many unproven conjectures exist here and there, and that there are papers that rely on papers which rely on unporen conjecture, but it is not the problem here. The problem (imho) is that referees and advisors did not do their job. What is not known is how many potential advisors the brathers met before finding one (the answer is: many; I know several of them, actually), and how many papers were sent to journal before some were accepted. The fact that three almost identical papers were published leads me to think that they sent the same paper to many, many journals.

OK, so I fear I will be accused of NPOV violation. Maybe one could consider adding some claims more or less defending the Bogdanovs (it is hard to find honest such claims, indeed).

• Some people pointed out that the affair started just after the brother came back on TV with their Rayons X show, so that someone may have wanted to avenge from them.
• Luc Ferry a French philosopher and very close frind of the brothers (it is said it is thanks to them that he met his wife) was Minister of Education in France during the affair. He wrote an article in French newspaper Le Figaro saying in substance I did not understand anything, but I enjoyed reading their fascinating book. (Mean people might notice that such behaviour was criticized by Alan Sokal...)

This is worth mentioning, I believe, but I'm not sure it redounds to the B. brothers' credit. The phrase "damning with faint praise" springs to mind. Anville 18:07, 23 August 2006 (UTC)

• Some physicists, while criticizing the brothers, emphasized that they could help promoting reserch with their shows. Actually, one thesis referee told me that he accepted to be one of the brothers' referee after one of his Swiss post-doc told him he had come into physics thanks the the brothers' show Temps X he was fond of them when he was a teenager.
• Daniel Sternheimer told more or less the same thing about the brothers, saying something like they are, or better, they were very good "sergents recruteurs" for science. ("Sergent recruteur" is the name of the people who did lots of efforts to convince young people to join the army.)

Then they should have been given honorary doctorates in "Science Communications", or some such distinction! I mean, we're supposed to recognize people for the accomplishments they've actually done, right? Anville 18:07, 23 August 2006 (UTC)

• Université de Bourgogne nor French Reasearch agency did not do any public comment about this.

That's all for today. There would be much more to say (especially about the last point), but these are things involved people prefer to keep out of sight.

Regards, and good luck, Alain Riazuelo 00:48, 23 August 2006 (UTC)

Just who is the liar here?

This is weird. I've been trying to track down the pedigree of the following sentence, currently found under Internet discussions:

A few participants in these discussions responded in a similar manner, specifically accusing the Bogdanovs of evading scientific criticism, or lying about what they actually wrote or said.

Who is doing what in this sentence — are the Bogdanovs "lying about what they actually wrote" or are their critics doing so? (Neither case would be particularly newsworthy; the detailed dynamics of Usenet newsgroups have to be among the least edifying studies of human interaction I've yet encountered.) Figuring that the bias of the original author would be a guide to their intended meaning, I decided to find where this sentence first appeared. I've been able to trace it back to this revision by YBM (talk · contribs), which says the following:

People involved in the discussions on various Usenet groups and Web fora have sometimes been quite ironic or harsh regarding the Bogdanovs interventions, especially when they have evaded systematically scientific questions, lied about what they actually wrote or said, and used sock puppet to push fallacious authority arguments.

It's hard to tell for sure, but I'd almost say that somewhere along the line, the intended meaning got reversed. Anyway, now my eyeballs hurt from reading all those diffs, so I'm going to stop. Anville 17:44, 28 August 2006 (UTC)