From today’s WaPo: MIT Prank Paper Accepted for Publication
Three MIT graduate students set out to show what kind of gobbledygook can pass muster at an academic conference these days, writing a computer program that generates fake, nonsensical papers. And sure enough, a Florida conference took the bait.
The program, developed by students Jeremy Stribling, Max Krohn and Dan Aguayo, generated a paper with the dumbfounding title: “Rooter: A Methodology for the Typical Unification of Access Points and Redundancy.” Its introduction begins: “Many scholars would agree that, had it not been for active networks, the simulation of Lamport clocks might never have occurred.”
The proposal even included some randomly generated charts and graphs!
Interestingly, their second bogus submission, “The Influence of Probabilistic Methodologies on Networking,” was turned down. The three students have raised $2000 in contributions toward travel expenses, but alas, the offer to present their paper was rescinded. “We wanted to go down there and give a randomly generated talk,” Stribling said.
I’ve been to conferences where I thought the content of some presentations seemed a little random, but this is the first time I’ve ever seen someone explicitly create their presentation that way. Heh.
Ed Bott 