2002-11-08 16:28:56+00 by Dan Lyke 3 comments
I remember chortling over the hoax that Alan Sokal perpetrated on postmodern criticism, by getting a nonsense paper published in the journal Social Text. Now it appears that modern physics may have payback. I missed this when The Register reported on it, but today's Arts & Letters Daily refers to two reports: John Baez has a well linked rundown and The Chronicle of Higher Education has an article.
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comments in ascending chronological order (reverse):
#Comment made: 2002-11-08 17:34:31+00 by: td
The url in the link to John Baez's page is missing. I think this is it.
#Comment made: 2002-11-08 17:43:16+00 by: Dan Lyke
Whoops, my bad. Yep, you found it.
#Comment made: 2002-11-08 20:44:14+00 by: petronius
I notice in the writeup in Higher education there is a lot of "And the brothers say that their parents were aristocrats...." etc. Does anybody know if any of that is true? Or are they realy from New Jersey?
This reminds me of a case a few years ago (sorry, can't remember names) of an alleged Israeli MD who got his degree from an Italian university at the amazing age of 19. This is against all Italian practice, and the more you looked into the story it appeared that he charmed a professor into submitting the paperwork through back channels, and it kind of got rubber stamped by the secretary. he claimed he was doing important work, but it looks more like he was scamming investors on some miracle cancer cure. The story had the same confused "he said, no you said" quality.