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How I published a fake paper, and why it is the fault of our education system

smritiweb.com

21–30 of 93 posts

Re: How I published a fake paper, and why it is the fault of our education system

#21
post #3

Neither the first time nor the last. In fact, this should be a semi-official running gag (a-la Chaos Monkey) with all journals to keep them honest. Btw I had this wild English prof that claimed to have written crazy shit in undergrad papers that was never caught to prove that graded papers were just skimmed.

That's not going to keep them honest...

Re: How I published a fake paper, and why it is the fault of our education system

#22
While writing supplements for the Common App, I can't help but consider automated essay writing in the context of college applications. The questions are, for the most part, generic and repetitive - one decent A.I. could probably disrupt the entire process.

Re: How I published a fake paper, and why it is the fault of our education system

#23
post #5

>Seems like an impressive conference, and getting a paper published in this conference should be a big achievement on any student’s resume, right? No, absolutely not. Looking at the web site immediately raises two red flags: 1) It's a multi-topic conference. Usually these fall into two categories: Undergrad conferences and money-making scams. Participating in neither of them is "a big achievement" 2) The submission d…

True. Sadly many students don't know better. And the worst part being many employers also might not know the difference either.

At some level this is also an issue with raising awareness/understanding among students of how academia and research works.

Re: How I published a fake paper, and why it is the fault of our education system

#24

Reminds me of when Alan Sokal wrote a paper full of buzzwords and co-opted scientific language and name-dropping then submitted it to a prestigious cultural studies journal [1]. Thesis: quantum gravity is merely a social and linguistic construct. Accepted. The humanities are still trying to recover from that one. [1] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sokal_affair

The second paper references the Sokal Affair, as a matter of fact - the authors of the paper are from the (obviously fake) "Sokal Institute of Technology, Pune". :)

In fact, it references verbatim dialogues from "My Cousin Vinny", "Sholay" (a superhit Bollywood film), the Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, the author's wife and her movie-review website and whole lot of other nonsense. :(

Re: How I published a fake paper, and why it is the fault of our education system

#26
The second paper in the post should never have made it past any peer-reviewer had they bothered to read the first two paragraphs.

It all stems from the (supposedly optional) requirement that a Masters' level student get a paper published. Sure, it is somewhat justified - seeing as how they are partially research students themselves - but the absence of a honest and thorough peer-review kinda puts paid to the justification. As a result, most students end up opting for these pay-to-publish scams (sometimes even knowingly) and they continue to thrive.

The aim of the whole exercise was to expose these conferences for what they really are - money-making scams that prey upon the students' desperation. What hurts is the fact that the students (probably) knew about it but they were so desperate to get a publication, they couldn't care less. Such is the state of the education system in India. :(

Re: How I published a fake paper, and why it is the fault of our education system

#27
post #5

>Seems like an impressive conference, and getting a paper published in this conference should be a big achievement on any student’s resume, right? No, absolutely not. Looking at the web site immediately raises two red flags: 1) It's a multi-topic conference. Usually these fall into two categories: Undergrad conferences and money-making scams. Participating in neither of them is "a big achievement" 2) The submission d…

Perhaps the biggest red flag: papers are to be sent to icriest@gmail.com

Re: How I published a fake paper, and why it is the fault of our education system

#28
post #5

>Seems like an impressive conference, and getting a paper published in this conference should be a big achievement on any student’s resume, right? No, absolutely not. Looking at the web site immediately raises two red flags: 1) It's a multi-topic conference. Usually these fall into two categories: Undergrad conferences and money-making scams. Participating in neither of them is "a big achievement" 2) The submission d…

Original author here. The two things you pointed out were exactly the two things that first caused me to get suspicious of this conference.

However, as notthetup points out, there are lots of people in the Indian education system who don't know this. And the statement I made: Seems like an impressive conference, and getting a paper published in this conference should be a big achievement on any student’s resume, right? is actually something many students and faculty in our engineering colleges actually think.

(Edit: formatting)

Re: How I published a fake paper, and why it is the fault of our education system

#29

The second paper in the post should never have made it past any peer-reviewer had they bothered to read the first two paragraphs. It all stems from the (supposedly optional) requirement that a Masters' level student get a paper published. Sure, it is somewhat justified - seeing as how they are partially research students themselves - but the absence of a honest and thorough peer-review kinda puts paid to the justific…

What depressed me the most was seeing the poor, sincere students who had come to the conference to present. Some of them were tweaking their PPTs. Others were going over notes for their talk. They were clearly (I think) under the impression that presenting at this conference was a major achievement. Of the 22 papers accepted by the conference (i.e. 22 people paid to get their papers published), only about 10 came to present, which leads me to suspect that the remaining 12 knew the true nature of this conference.
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