Our last radio show of the school year is tomorrow!


The U-90 Alternative
I put 2 and 2 together and realized that tomorrow (Sunday, 8 May 2005, 2-4pm) is our last radio show of the 2004-2005 school year – yikes! No cool guests scheduled like last week, but it should still be fun in a more typical Unhindered By Talent sort of way (whatever the hell that means!). So tune in at 89.7FM if you can see UMM’s spiffy new wind turbine from your house, and the rest of you can listen on-line.

Sorry, by the way for the complete silence over the last week. The end of the semester is kicking me about the room, and I’m currently trying to get things ready for the Genetic Programming in Theory and Practice (GPTP) workshop in Ann Arbor next week. Going to a workshop during the second half of finals week just wasn’t the smartest plan. The interview with Dr. Reagon was a complete blast, and her concert with the UMM Choir on Tuesday was really something. I really need to say more soon before it completely leaves my head, but there are too many fires to put out first.

If you’re in desparate need of a fix, WeatherGirl‘s life settled down a tad and she had a fun flurry of posting last week in my absence. Her “Madness in the mid-west” post is particularly recommended both for her comments on the whole “Cootie shots” silliness and her archiving of the substantial number of excellent letters sent to the local paper on the issue. There’s some great stuff there, and gives one reasons for optimism in the fight against ill-informed bigotry. (I also recommend PZ’s comments here and there.)

Finally, I should also point out that it snowed here on both the 1st and 2nd of May. There are days when I truly wonder why human beings actual establishment settlements this far north.

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Fortnow’s thoughts on SCIgen

Lance Fortnow had a real go at the MIT students that got the bogus paper accepted at the SCI conference.

I would consider someone who intentionally submits a bogus paper to STOC guilty of academic fraud. Why are these MIT students any different?

I (and many of the people who’ve commented on his blog) think there’s a big difference. Fraud implies some serious intent to “get away with something”, to pass one thing off as another. Anyone who spent 2 minutes reading their paper would immediately realize that this isn’t a real paper. They might be confused regarding the intent, but they would know instantly and absolutely that the authors weren’t even trying to fool anyone into thinking that it was a real piece of science. The papers that SCIgen churns out are about as subtle as a Three Stooges film, and that’s not fraud, that’s parody. Parody is a crucial tool in the toolkit of those looking to expose shams and shallow thinking, and as such I think the students’ actions were completely reasonable.

P.S. One of the comments on Fortnow’s blog points to this fascinating piece on the The Bogdanoff Affair. One might perhaps argue that academics (including scientists) have some obligation to make some sense in our writing and speaking, and that we should demand no less when reviewing the work of others.

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