> > > Hello. I'm wondering if you have any comments on the Bogdanov affair.
> >> I love it that no one can tell if it's a hoax or not - so much for
> >> the more rigorous truth claims of hard science.
> >
> >Yes: Usually in science, theorizing is strongly constrained by
> >experiment, and wrong theories get weeded out rather fast.
> >And in pure mathematics, papers are constrained by rigorous standards
> >of logic and proof. But this particular corner of theoretical physics
> >has run into a serious problem (as Frank Wilczek pointed out in the
> >NY Times article): it is neither traditional science nor traditional
> >mathematics; direct experimental test is not in the cards (we can't make
> >a new Big Bang in the lab, at least not yet), and it's not yet clear
> >what indirect experimental tests will be possible, or how strongly
> >they will constrain the theories; but the papers don't live up to
> >the rigorous standards of pure mathematics, either.
> >
> >In any case, this brouhaha has focussed renewed attention on the
> >quality of refereeing (and of university PhD committees),
> >and that is surely a good thing. Furthermore, if someone wanted
> >to test a physics journal with an intentional hoax, I'd say,
> >"more power to them" -- let's see whether or not it works.
> >Occasional tests of this kind are useful in any field as a sort of
> >quality control (a bit like inspectors trying to smuggle guns onto
> >airplanes, as a way of testing the security system).
> >What's sauce for the goose is sauce for the gander.
>
After the last exchange on LBO-talk about the Bogdanovs I went and actually read some of the exchanges from John Baez's website. At the time I was entertaining a couple hypotheses:
--The whole affair is a pissing contest for highly-educated guys. I have seen nothing to completely disprove this hypothesis, but aside an inflammatory digression, it's not really my main point.
--The Bogdanovs are misunderstood or mistranslated. Assuming they write in any other language besides English, the number of translators in the world able to make sense of their writings would be extremely small. Even if they write in English they could easily be misunderstood if their text is full of foreigner-isms or literally translated idioms.
I did not read exhaustively but I certainly got the issues about mathematical rigor. Also, even though the math is beyond me, in the text I read I picked up a few points that a discerning editor might fix. So I decided to consult a friend who has a PhD in chemical physics and works as a scientific translator from about 5 languages including Russian, French, Spanish, and maybe German into English. We quickly decided not to mess with the language question before dispensing with other points.
1. My friend says a whole lot of theoretical physics can sound just absurd. She told of going to a lecture by a speaker with a sense of humor on April Fools day about phonons. My friend said she thought the whole thing was a joke until a colleague dragged her off to some reference books to read further.
2. My friend also said that in fact quite a lot of wrong results get published all the time and then corrected in subsequent articles or as new research comes along.
One of the curious points about the Bogdanovs is that they seem to be impervious to collegial correction, but consider the case of Fermat's (?) last theorem scrawled in the margin of some book that, excuse the lack of superscripts,
x to the nth + y to the nth = z to the nth
cannot be true for any value of N higher than 3 Can you think of anything less rigorous than a bare theorem scrawled in a margin. Maybe in a hundred years (????) someone will prove all their unproved assertions.
It's not clear to me that the Bogdanovs are intentional hoaxers as opposed to deluded or imcompetent. How much of all this stuff does one have to fully understand in order to perpretrate a hoax as opposed to just waxing poetic in some loopy way? And should the Bogdanov's just be referred to whoever on lbo-talk was holind forth about some other kind of sigularities last week.
Meanwhile, I agree with Sokal, it's not practical to simulate the big bang for testing purposes and maybe as with the Social Text article, the real joke is the amount of ink and verbiage it is possible to expend....
Dorene C
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