reverse Sokal hoax?

[eub]

Igor and Grichka Bogdanov (not their birth-names; they are French) are writers (Dieu et la science) and television hosts ("X-rays", looks to be a popular-science show). Igor (at least; dunno about Grichka) has a degree in semiology.

Both also now have Ph.D. degrees in physics from Bourgogne University, and several published papers extracted from their dissertations. The trouble is that there seems to be nobody who says their published work is not nonsense.

If it is nonsense, one question is whether this is a deliberate hoax. The Bogdanovs deny it. It seems a lot of effort for a hoax, but then it would be a pretty smashing hoax -- nobody ever gave Sokal a Ph.D. Time will presumably tell.

Another is what the heck is going on in physics peer review. The situation seems to be that people in high-energy physics live off the preprint server and use the journals only for tenure scoring. This may aggravate the problem every field has: nobody gets grants and tenure for great work reviewing papers, and nobody gets dinged for sloppy reviewing. (Though Classical and Quantum Gravity will reportedly not use these reviewers again.)

The failure of the Ph.D. committee members to catch this is maybe more surprising, since their names are publically tied to the work. But maybe I'm naive about what committee members are expected to do in physics.

Read the sci.physics.research thread started by the invaluable John Baez.

Comments

[combinator.livejournal.com]

See also Baez's analysis (http://math.ucr.edu/home/baez/bogdanov.html). I think some important developments may be happening over the next couple of days.