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This is not a hoax: 120 computer-generated nonsense papers are being removed from science papers database

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Here in Nature News from yesterday:

Over the past two years, computer scientist Cyril Labbé of Joseph Fourier University in Grenoble, France, has catalogued computer-generated papers that made it into more than 30 published conference proceedings between 2008 and 2013. Sixteen appeared in publications by Springer, which is headquartered in Heidelberg, Germany, and more than 100 were published by the Institute of Electrical and Electronic Engineers (IEEE), based in New York. Both publishers, which were privately informed by Labbé, say that they are now removing the papers.

In 2005, MIT researchers invented SCIgen, software that “randomly combines strings of words to produce fake computer-science papers,” to demonstrate that “conferences would accept meaningless papers.”

Generate junk here. Apparently, few notice. More Gobbledygook News

Worth remembering when we are informed that mountains and mountains of data support Darwin’s mechanism for evolution, or some other contested theory.

Yeh, we see mountains all right.

The sad thing, of course, is the self-righteous folk rushing to defend science as it is, in articles, columns, and letters, at the very time when others are trying to clean it up. They often sound like they have been using SCIgen hoaxer themselves – but believe it anyway.

See also: Journalist wonders, why Creation Museum inspires rage, whole foods scams don’t (sky fell last night too, by the way)

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Comments
Wow! did they have to use computers for that? Don't humans produce nonsense papers? Are computer-generated nonsense papers harder or easier to detect than human-produced gibberish?Dionisio
February 26, 2014
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The link is broken, JGuy. Maybe someone's hoping that these computer-generated papers come up with something that's really profound. It's a far superior approach to depending on monkeys with typewriters. Besides, if something interesting comes of one of these papers, it will be interpreted as conclusive proof of evolution. ;-) -QQuerius
February 25, 2014
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I thinks its funny and welcome to find this success of computers making gibberish passable before these peers of science. AHA. Thats why the gibberish of evolution plus its desirability to refute Genesis and make a new world order, back then they hoped so, is still around. I guess it takes smart people to figure out why dumb ideas are wrong despite seeming to be right. AHA.Robert Byers
February 25, 2014
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Strange isn't it? As a result of the Fall, recourse to logic is viewed by most atheists - however subliminally and brutishly - as optional, no matter how erudite the individual. The exceptions, the atheists/agnostics of integrity approach theism quite closely, but acknowledge that they can't quite make the final step. Such people seem to be brilliant, despite their ultimate baulking at the final leap, if Messrs Berlinski, Plantinga (somebody else, too, I think... but can't remember the name) are any guide.Axel
February 25, 2014
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http://apps.pdos.lcs.mit.edu/scicache/971/scimakelatex.88346.All+The+Commentators+of+Uncommon+Descent.htmlJGuy
February 25, 2014
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