Bogdanov Affair
Encyclopedia
The Bogdanov Affair is an academic dispute regarding the legitimacy of a series of theoretical physics
papers written by French
twins Igor and Grichka Bogdanov (alternately spelt Bogdanoff). These papers were published in reputable scientific journal
s, and were alleged by their authors to culminate in a proposed theory for describing what occurred at the Big Bang
. The controversy started in 2002 when rumors spread on Usenet
newsgroups that the work was a deliberate hoax
intended to target weaknesses in the peer review
system employed by the physics community to select papers for publication in academic journals. While the Bogdanov brothers continue to defend the veracity of their work, a Centre national de la recherche scientifique (CNRS) internal report concluded that "the value of this work is nil". Some physicists have also treated this as evidence of the fallibility inherent within the peer review system. The debate over whether the work represented a contribution to physics, or instead was meaningless, spread from Usenet to many other Internet forums, including the blog
s of notable physicists. The ensuing dispute received considerable coverage in the mainstream media.
The authors' credentials to write on physical cosmology
are based on Ph.D.
degrees they obtained from the University of Burgundy
; Grichka Bogdanov received his degree in mathematics, and Igor Bogdanov received his in theoretical physics (in 1999 and 2002 respectively). Both were given the low, unusual, but passing, grade of "honorable"; Igor initially failed and was required to publish three papers in peer-reviewed journals before being given a degree. When later challenges to the legitimacy of the papers submitted by the Bogdanov brothers arose, the debate spread to the question of whether the substitution of a "publication requirement" by university professors when they do not understand students' work is a valid means of determining the veracity of a paper. However, the intrinsic complexity of topics like quantum group
s and topological field theory—in addition to the extensive use of jargon
by those who study these areas—makes it difficult to avoid such delegation, since often specific expertise is necessary in order to fully understand and evaluate the claims made in papers on these topics.
Since 1979, Igor and Grichka Bogdanov have been widely known in France
as television-show hosts. Their shows like Temps X (and more recently Rayons X) deal with topics in popular science
and science fiction
, and have attracted a large number of viewers.
, in the Gascony
region of southwest France
. The brothers say that their parents came from aristocratic Russian
and Austrian
families, and that their maternal grandfather was noted African-American lyric tenor Roland Hayes
.
They each studied applied mathematics
in Paris, but then began careers in television, hosting several popular programs on science and science fiction. The first of these, Temps X (Time X), ran from 1979 to 1989.
In 1991 the Bogdanovs published a book, Dieu et la Science (God and Science), drawn from interviews with the philosopher Jean Guitton
. It became a French bestseller. This book provoked a dispute of its own when University of Virginia
astronomy professor Trinh Xuan Thuan
accused the Bogdanovs of plagiarizing
his 1988 book The Secret Melody: And Man Created the Universe. After a legal battle in France, Thuan and the Bogdanovs settled out of court, and the Bogdanovs later denied all wrongdoing. Thuan suggests that the plagiarism suit pressed the brothers to obtain doctorates as fast as possible, since (according to Thuan) the back cover of the book claimed that the Bogdanovs held doctorates when they did not.
In 1993, the brothers began work toward doctorates, first working under the mathematical physicist Moshé Flato of the University of Burgundy
. Flato died in 1998, and his colleague Daniel Sternheimer (of CNRS) took over the job of supervising the Bogdanovs. According to Sternheimer, the twins viewed themselves as "the Einstein brothers" and had a propensity to voice vague, "impressionistic" statements; he considered guiding their efforts "like teaching My Fair Lady
to speak with an Oxford accent." As he told The Chronicle of Higher Education
, Sternheimer did not consider himself an expert in all the topics Grichka Bogdanov included in his thesis, but judged that those portions within his specialty were Ph.D.-quality work.
Grichka Bogdanov was given a Ph.D. by the University of Burgundy (Dijon
) in 1999, though this doctorate is sometimes erroneously described as having been granted by the École Polytechnique
. He originally applied for a degree in physics, but was instead given one in mathematics, and was first required to significantly rewrite his thesis, de-emphasizing the physics content. Around the same time, Igor Bogdanov failed the defense of his thesis. His advisors subsequently agreed to allow him to obtain a doctorate if he could publish three peer-reviewed journal articles. In 2002, after publishing the requisite articles, Igor was given a Ph.D in theoretical physics from the University of Burgundy. Both of the brothers received the low passing grade of "honorable," which is seldom given, as Daniel Sternheimer told New York Times science reporter Dennis Overbye. In justifying the conferring of doctoral degrees to the Bogdanovs, Sternheimer told the Times, "These guys worked for 10 years without pay. They have the right to have their work recognized with a diploma, which is nothing much these days."
In 2001 and 2002 the brothers published five papers in peer-reviewed physics journals, including Annals of Physics and Classical and Quantum Gravity. The controversy over the Bogdanovs' work began on October 22, 2002, with an email sent by University of Tours physicist Max Niedermaier to University of Pittsburgh
physicist Ezra T. Newman
. Niedermayer suggested that the Bogdanovs' Ph.D theses and papers were "spoof[s]," created by throwing together string theory
and theoretical physics jargon: "The abstracts are delightfully meaningless combinations of buzzwords ... which apparently have been taken seriously." Copies of the email reached American mathematical physicist John Baez, and on October 23 he created a discussion thread about the Bogdanovs' work on the Usenet
newsgroup sci.physics.research, titled "Physics bitten by reverse Alan Sokal hoax?" Baez was comparing the Bogdanovs' publications to the 1996 Sokal affair
, in which physicist Alan Sokal
successfully submitted an intentionally nonsensical paper to a cultural studies journal in order to criticize the incoherence of postmodernism
. The Bogdanovs quickly became a popular discussion topic, with most respondents agreeing that the papers were flawed. The Bogdanovs' background in entertainment lent some plausibility to the idea that they were attempting a deliberate hoax, but Igor Bogdanov quickly denied the accusation. The online discussion was quickly followed by media attention; The Register
reported on the dispute on November 1, and stories in The Chronicle of Higher Education, Nature, The New York Times, and other publications appeared soon after.
, spoke to New York Times reporter Dennis Overbye. Overbye writes Jackiw was intrigued by the thesis, although it contained many points he did not understand. Jackiw defended the thesis:
In contrast, Igniatios Antoniadis (of the École Polytechnique
), who approved Grichka Bogdanov's thesis, later reversed his judgment of it. Antoniadis told Le Monde,
(CQG) reviewed an article authored by Igor and Grichka Bogdanov, entitled "Topological theory of the initial singularity of spacetime". One of the referees' reports
stated that the article was "Sound, original, and of interest. With revisions I expect the paper to be suitable for publication." The paper was accepted by the journal seven months later.
However, after the publication of the article and the publicity surrounding the controversy, mathematician Greg Kuperberg
posted to Usenet a statement written by Andrew Wray and Hermann Nicolai of the CQG editorial board. Originally sent via e-mail, the statement read, in part,
The paper in question has, however, not been withdrawn by the journal. Later, the editor-in-chief of the journal issued a slightly different statement on behalf of the Institute of Physics
, which owns the journal, in which he insisted on the fact that their usual peer-review procedures had been followed, but no longer commented on the value of the paper. In particular the sentences "...it does not meet the standards expected of articles in this journal" and "The paper was discussed extensively at the annual Editorial Board meeting ... and there was general agreement that it should not have been published" were removed. The former phrase was, however, quoted in the New York Times, the Chronicle of Higher Education and Nature
. Moreover, Die Zeit
quoted the journal's co-editor Hermann Nicolai as saying that had the paper reached his desk, he would have immediately rejected it.
In 2001, the Czechoslovak Journal of Physics accepted an article written by Igor Bogdanov, entitled "Topological Origin of Inertia". The referee's
report concluded: "In my opinion the results of the paper can be considered as original ones. I recommend the paper for publication but in a revised form." The following year, the Chinese Journal of Physics
published Igor Bogdanov's "The KMS state
of spacetime at the Planck scale". The report stated that "the viewpoint presented in this paper can be interesting as a possible approach of the Planck scale physics." Some corrections were requested.
Not all review evaluations were positive. Eli Hawkins, acting as a referee on behalf of the Journal of Physics A
, suggested rejecting one of the Bogdanovs' papers: "It would take up too much space to enumerate all the mistakes: indeed it is difficult to say where one error ends and the next begins. In conclusion, I would not recommend that this paper be published in this, or any, journal."
Several of the published papers are nearly identical, differing only in minor respects. The CQG paper summarizes most of Grichka's thesis, but the paragraph order is almost entirely reversed. The Chinese Journal of Physics, Nuovo Cimento and Annals of Physics papers are essentially identical except for their titles and abstracts; typographical errors are also repeated across these versions.
stated that the Bogdanov papers are "a mishmash of superficially plausible sentences containing the right buzzwords in approximately the right order. There is no logic or cohesion in what they write." Jacques Distler
voiced a similar opinion, proclaiming "The Bogdanov's [sic] papers consist of buzzwords from various fields of mathematical physics, string theory and quantum gravity, strung together into syntactically correct, but semantically meaningless prose."
Others compared the quality of the Bogdanov papers with that seen over a wider arena. "The Bogdanoffs' work is significantly more incoherent than just about anything else being published," wrote Peter Woit
. He continued, "But the increasingly low standard of coherence in the whole field is what allowed them to think they were doing something sensible and to get it published." Woit later devoted a chapter of his book Not Even Wrong (2006) to the Bogdanov Affair.
Eventually, the controversy attracted mainstream media attention, opening new avenues for physicists' comments to be disseminated. Le Monde
quoted Alain Connes
, recipient of the 1982 Fields medal
, as saying, "I didn't need long to convince myself that they're talking about things that they haven't mastered." Nobel laureate
Georges Charpak
stated on a French talk show that the Bogdanovs' presence in the scientific community was "nonexistent".
The most positive comments about the papers themselves came from string theorist
Luboš Motl
. Writing in his blog
almost three years after the heyday of the controversy, Motl stated, "[T]he Bogdanoff brothers are proposing something that has, speculatively, the potential to be an alternative story about quantum gravity ... What they are proposing is a potential new calculational framework for gravity. I find it unlikely that these things will work but it is probably more likely than loop quantum gravity and other discrete approaches whose lethal problems have already been identified in detail".
recipient Georges Charpak
.
In October 2002, the Bogdanovs released an email containing apparently supportive statements by Laurent Freidel
, then a visiting professor at the Perimeter Institute. Soon after, Freidel denied writing any such remarks, telling the press that he had forwarded a message containing that text to a friend. The Bogdanovs then attributed the quoted passages to Freidel, who said, "I'm very upset about that because I have received e-mail from people in the community asking me why I've defended the Bogdanov brothers. When your name is used without your consent, it's a violation."
At the start of the controversy in the moderated group sci.physics.research, Igor Bogdanov denied that their published papers were a hoax, but when asked precise questions from physicists Steve Carlip
and John Baez regarding mathematical details in the papers, failed to convince any other participants that these papers had any real scientific value. New York Times reporter George Johnson
described reading through the debate as "like watching someone trying to nail Jell-O to a wall", for the Bogdanovs had "developed their own private language, one that impinges on the vocabulary of science only at the edges."
Participants in the discussions were particularly unconvinced by a statement in the "Topological origin of inertia" paper that "whatever the orientation, the plane of oscillation of Foucault's pendulum
is necessarily aligned with the initial singularity
marking the origin of physical space." In addition, the paper claimed, the Foucault pendulum experiment "cannot be explained satisfactorily in either classical or relativistic mechanics". The physicists commenting on Usenet found these claims and subsequent attempts at their explanation peculiar, since the trajectory of a Foucault pendulum—a standard museum piece—is accurately predicted by classical mechanics
. The Bogdanovs explained that these claims would only be clear in the context of topological field theory. Baez and Russell Blackadar attempted to determine the meaning of the "plane of oscillation" statement; after the Bogdanovs issued some elaborations, Baez concluded that it was a complicated way of rephrasing the following:
However, Baez pointed out, this statement does not in fact concern the Big Bang, and is entirely equivalent to the following:
Yet this rephrasing is itself equivalent to the statement
".
Urs Schreiber, a postdoctoral researcher
at the University of Hamburg
, noted that the mention of the Foucault pendulum was at odds with the papers' general tone, since they generally relied upon more "modern terminology". (According to George Johnson
, the Foucault pendulum is "an icon of French science that would belong in any good Gallic spoof.") Schreiber identified five central ideas in the Bogdanovs' work—"'result' A" through "'result' E"—which are expressed in the jargon of statistical mechanics
, topological field theory
and cosmology
. One bit of jargon, the Hagedorn temperature
, comes from string theory
, but as Schreiber notes, the paper does not use this concept in any detail; moreover, since the paper is manifestly not a string theory treatise, "considering the role the Hagedorn temperature plays in string cosmology, this is bordering on self-parody." Schreiber concludes that the fourth "result" (that the spacetime metric
"at the initial singularity" must be Riemannian
) contradicts the initial assumption of their argument (an FRW cosmology with pseudo-Riemannian metric
). The fifth and last "result", Schreiber notes, is an attempt to resolve this contradiction by "invok[ing] quantum mechanics". The Bogdanovs themselves described Schreiber's summary as "very accurate"; for more on this point, see below. Schreiber concluded,
Eli Hawkins of Pennsylvania State University
voiced a similar concern about "The KMS state
of spacetime at the Planck scale".
Damien Calaque of the Louis Pasteur University
, Strasbourg
, commented adversely about Grichka Bogdanov's unpublished preprint "Construction of cocycle bicrossproducts by twisting". In Calaque's estimation, the results presented in the preprint did not have sufficient novelty and interest to merit an independent journal article, and moreover the principal theorem was, in its current formulation, false: Grichka's construction yields a bialgebra
which is not necessarily a Hopf algebra
, the latter being a type of mathematical object which must satisfy additional conditions.
As mentioned above, among the most positive comments on the papers came from physicist Luboš Motl
:
Motl's measured support for Topological field theory of the initial singularity of spacetime, however, stands in contrast to Robert Oeckl's official MathSciNet review, which states that the paper is "rife with nonsensical or meaningless statements and suffers from a serious lack of coherence," follows up with several examples to illustrate his point, and concludes that the paper "falls short of scientific standards and appears to have no meaningful content."
of the "International Institute of Mathematical Physics" created by the Bogdanovs, th-phys.edu.hk, created erroneous suggestions amongst forum participants as to a possible link with The University of Hong Kong
or the Hong Kong University of Science and Technology
.
The participation of an unidentified "Professor Yang" provoked additional confusion. Using an e-mail address at the domain th-phys.edu.hk, an individual publishing under this name wrote to a number of individuals and on the Internet to defend the Bogdanov papers. This individual wrote to physicists John Baez, Jacques Distler and Peter Woit; to New York Times journalist Dennis Overbye; and on numerous physics blogs and forums, signing his name "Professor L. Yang—Theoretical Physics Laboratory, International Institute of Mathematical Physics—HKU/Clear Water Bay, Kowloon, Hong Kong." Note that it is HKUST which is located in Clear Water Bay
, not HKU, whose main campus is located in the Mid-levels
of Hong Kong Island
.
The Bogdanovs have alleged several times that the "domain name 'th-phys.edu.hk' was officially owned by Hong Kong University." This was not confirmed officially by HKU and no Prof. Yang existed on the roster of the HKU physics department. Confusingly, the DNS
record of th-phys.edu.hk listed the street address of HKUST (in Clear Water Bay), not HKU. Moreover, the domain had been registered by Igor Bogdanov, and e-mail messages from Professor L. Yang originated from a dial-up IP address
in Paris, France. The registration of th-phys.edu.hk has not been renewed.
Suspicions were consequently raised that Professor L. Yang was actually a pseudonym of the Bogdanovs. However, Igor Bogdanov has maintained that Professor Yang is a real mathematical physicist with expertise in KMS theory
, a friend of his, and that he was posting anonymously from Igor's apartment. As yet, no such individual has come forward publicly to unambiguously identify himself as this "Professor Yang" and to identify his credentials and institutional affiliation, and no published record of this "Professor Yang" has been offered for examination.
Following this pattern, another academic domain name was also registered in Latvia
(phys-maths.edu.lv), hosting the
"Mathematical Center of Riemannian Cosmology". Again, this apparent educational institution was registered by Igor Bogdanov. When asked why the Center's website had a Latvian top-level domain
, Igor claimed that it had been established and hosted by the University of Riga, after the brothers had attended a conference there in either 2001 or 2002. This claim was greeted with skepticism and was never confirmed by the University.
when Igor Bogdanov and his supporters began to edit that encyclopedia's article on the brothers, prompting the creation of a new article dedicated to the debate (Polémique autour des travaux des frères Bogdanov—"Debate surrounding the work of the Bogdanov brothers"). However, the dispute merely spread to the English-language Wikipedia
. In November 2005, this led the Arbitration Committee—the English Wikipedia's highest decision-making body short of project leader Jimmy Wales
—to ban anyone deemed to be a participant in the external dispute from editing the English Wikipedia's article on the Bogdanov Affair. A number of Wikipedia users, including Igor Bogdanov himself, were explicitly named in this ban. In 2006, Baez wrote on his website that for some time the Bogdanovs and "a large crowd of sock puppets" had been attempting to rewrite the English Wikipedia article on the controversy "to make it less embarrassing to them." "Nobody seems to be fooled," he added.
, the Economist
, and The Chronicle of Higher Education
, as well as Pravda
, Die Zeit
and Le Monde
.
In 2002, the Bogdanovs launched a new weekly TV show Rayons X (X Rays
) on French public channel France 2
. In August 2004, they presented a 90-minute special cosmology program in which they introduced their theory among other cosmological scenarios. They were also frequently invited to numerous TV talk shows to promote their book. The French mainstream media, in both the press and on the Internet, covered the renewed controversy to some extent; media outlets that have reported upon it include Europe 1
, Acrimed, and Ciel et Espace.
In 2004, the Bogdanovs published a commercially successful popular science book, Avant Le Big Bang (Before the Big Bang), based on a simplified version of their theses, where they also presented their point of view about the affair. Both the book and the Bogdanovs' television shows have been criticized for elementary scientific inaccuracies. Critics cite examples from Avant Le Big Bang including a statement that the "golden number
" φ
(Phi) is transcendental
, which the Bogdanovs allege to be an editorial misprint; an assumption that the limit
of a decreasing sequence
is always zero; and that the expansion of the Universe
implies that the planets of the Solar System
have grown farther apart.
In October 2004, a journalist from Ciel et Espace interviewed Shahn Majid
of the University of London
about his report on Grichka Bogdanov's thesis. Majid said that the French version of his report on Grichka's thesis was "an unauthorized translation partially invented by the Bogdanovs." In one sentence, the English word "interesting" was translated as the French "important." A "draft [mathematical] construction" became "la première construction [mathématique]" ("the first [mathematical] construction"). Elsewhere, an added word demonstrated, according to Majid, that "Bogdanov does not understand his own draft results." Majid also described more than ten other modifications of meaning, each one biased towards "surestimation outrancière"—"outrageous over-estimation." Majid said that his original report described a "very weak" student who nevertheless demonstrated "an impressive amount of determination to obtain a doctorate." Later, Majid claimed in a Usenet post that, in an addendum to Avant Le Big Bang, Grichka intentionally misquoted Majid's opinion on the way this interview had been transcribed.
Additionally, in the same addendum, a critical analysis of their work made by post-doc
Urs Schreiber, and affirmed by the Bogdanovs as "very accurate", was included with the exception of the concluding remark "Just to make sure: I do not think that any of the above is valid reasoning", thus inverting the meaning from criticism into ostensible support. Moreover, a comment by physicist Peter Woit written as, "It's certainly possible that you have some new worthwhile results on quantum groups", was translated as "Il est tout à fait certain que vous avez obtenu des résultats nouveaux et utiles dans les groupes quantiques" ("It is completely certain that you have obtained new worthwhile results on quantum groups") and published by the Bogdanovs in the addendum of their book.
In December 2004, the Bogdanovs sued Ciel et Espace for defamation over the publication of a critical article entitled "The Mystification of the Bogdanovs". In September 2006, the case was dismissed after the Bogdanovs missed court deadlines; they were ordered to pay 2500 euro
s to the magazine's publisher to cover its legal costs. There was never a substantive ruling on whether or not the Bogdanovs had been defamed.
. Posters on blogs and Usenet used the affair to criticize the present status of string theory
; for this reason, Woit devoted a chapter of Not Even Wrong, a book strongly critical of string theory, to the Affair. On the other hand, George Johnson's report in the New York Times concludes that physicists have generally decided the papers are "probably just the result of fuzzy thinking, bad writing and journal referees more comfortable with correcting typos than challenging thoughts." Furthermore, as physicist Aaron Bergman pointed out while reviewing Not Even Wrong, Woit's conclusion
Jacques Distler
mused that the tone of the media coverage had more to do with journalistic practices
than with physics.
Many comments have been made on the possible shortcomings of the referral system for published articles, and also on the criteria for acceptance of a thesis and subsequent delivery of a Doctorate of Philosophy. Frank Wilczek
, who edits Annals of Physics (and is now a Nobel laureate
), told the press that the scandal motivated him to correct the journal's slipping standards, partly by assigning more reviewing duties to the editorial board.
Prior to the controversy, the reports on the Bogdanov theses and most of the journal referees' reports spoke favorably of their work, describing it as original and containing interesting ideas. This has been the basis of concerns raised about the efficacy of the peer-review
system that the scientific community and academia use to determine the merit of submitted manuscripts for publication; one concern is that over-worked and unpaid referees may not be able to thoroughly judge the value of a paper in the little time they can afford to spend on it. Regarding the Bogdanov publications, physicist Steve Carlip remarked:
Similarly, Richard Monastersky, writing in The Chronicle of Higher Education, observed, "There is one way...for physicists to measure the importance of the Bogdanovs' work. If researchers find merit in the twins' ideas, those thoughts will echo in the references of scientific papers for years to come." As of July 2009, the Bogdanovs' six published papers had been cited four times in SPIRES
, a database of particle physics articles. For comparison, a somewhat controversial cosmological model known as the "ekpyrotic universe
" was published in 2001 and had been cited 569 times by July 2009. Before the controversy over their work arose, the scientific community had shown practically no interest in the Bogdanovs' papers; indeed, according to Stony Brook
physics professor Jacobus Verbaarschot, who served on Igor Bogdanov's dissertation committee, without the hoax rumors "probably no one would have ever known about their articles." As of 2009, the Bogdanovs have not published any scientific papers since 2003.
, where the physicist Alan Sokal
published a deliberately fraudulent and indeed nonsensical article in the humanities journal Social Text
. Sokal's original aim had been to test the effects of the intellectual trend he called, "for want of a better term, postmodernism
". Worried by this "more-or-less explicit rejection of the rationalist tradition of the Enlightenment
," Sokal decided to perform an experiment which he later cheerfully admitted was both unorthodox and uncontrolled, provoking a maelstrom of reactions which, to his surprise, received coverage in Le Monde
and even the front page of the New York Times. One of the earliest to draw a comparison between the two events was physicist John Baez, in his October 2002 post to the sci.physics.research newsgroup
.
Both Igor and Grichka Bogdanov have vigorously insisted upon the validity of their work, and possess academic qualifications in the fields in which they are publishing, although the bona fides of their credentials are a bone of contention. In comparison, Alan Sokal was an outsider to the field in which he was publishing—a physicist, publishing in a humanities journal—and promptly issued a statement himself that his paper was a deliberate hoax; indeed, Sokal published the article to expose the weakness of the journal's editorial process. Replying on sci.physics.research, Sokal referred readers to his follow-up essay, in which he notes "the mere fact of publication of my parody" only proved that one particular journal's editors were "derelict in their intellectual duty". (According to the New York Times, Sokal was "almost disappointed" that the Bogdanovs had not attempted a hoax after his own style. "What's sauce for the goose is sauce for the gander," he said.) Baez, one of the first to make the comparison, later retracted, saying that the brothers "have lost too much face for [withdrawing the work as a hoax] to be a plausible course of action."
In a letter to the New York Times, Cornell
physics professor Paul Ginsparg
writes that the contrast between the cases is plainly evident: "here, the authors were evidently aiming to be credentialed by the intellectual prestige of the discipline rather than trying to puncture any intellectual pretension." He adds that the fact some journals and scientific institutions have low or variable standards is "hardly a revelation." Both matters have, however, provoked discussion of peer-review reliability, value of academic papers published under credentials alone, and adequate evaluation of scholarly work by academia at large.
Initial discussion
Theses and papers:
Critical websites
Theoretical physics
Theoretical physics is a branch of physics which employs mathematical models and abstractions of physics to rationalize, explain and predict natural phenomena...
papers written by French
French people
The French are a nation that share a common French culture and speak the French language as a mother tongue. Historically, the French population are descended from peoples of Celtic, Latin and Germanic origin, and are today a mixture of several ethnic groups...
twins Igor and Grichka Bogdanov (alternately spelt Bogdanoff). These papers were published in reputable scientific journal
Scientific journal
In academic publishing, a scientific journal is a periodical publication intended to further the progress of science, usually by reporting new research. There are thousands of scientific journals in publication, and many more have been published at various points in the past...
s, and were alleged by their authors to culminate in a proposed theory for describing what occurred at the Big Bang
Big Bang
The Big Bang theory is the prevailing cosmological model that explains the early development of the Universe. According to the Big Bang theory, the Universe was once in an extremely hot and dense state which expanded rapidly. This rapid expansion caused the young Universe to cool and resulted in...
. The controversy started in 2002 when rumors spread on Usenet
Usenet
Usenet is a worldwide distributed Internet discussion system. It developed from the general purpose UUCP architecture of the same name.Duke University graduate students Tom Truscott and Jim Ellis conceived the idea in 1979 and it was established in 1980...
newsgroups that the work was a deliberate hoax
Hoax
A hoax is a deliberately fabricated falsehood made to masquerade as truth. It is distinguishable from errors in observation or judgment, or rumors, urban legends, pseudosciences or April Fools' Day events that are passed along in good faith by believers or as jokes.-Definition:The British...
intended to target weaknesses in the peer review
Peer review
Peer review is a process of self-regulation by a profession or a process of evaluation involving qualified individuals within the relevant field. Peer review methods are employed to maintain standards, improve performance and provide credibility...
system employed by the physics community to select papers for publication in academic journals. While the Bogdanov brothers continue to defend the veracity of their work, a Centre national de la recherche scientifique (CNRS) internal report concluded that "the value of this work is nil". Some physicists have also treated this as evidence of the fallibility inherent within the peer review system. The debate over whether the work represented a contribution to physics, or instead was meaningless, spread from Usenet to many other Internet forums, including the blog
Blog
A blog is a type of website or part of a website supposed to be updated with new content from time to time. Blogs are usually maintained by an individual with regular entries of commentary, descriptions of events, or other material such as graphics or video. Entries are commonly displayed in...
s of notable physicists. The ensuing dispute received considerable coverage in the mainstream media.
The authors' credentials to write on physical cosmology
Physical cosmology
Physical cosmology, as a branch of astronomy, is the study of the largest-scale structures and dynamics of the universe and is concerned with fundamental questions about its formation and evolution. For most of human history, it was a branch of metaphysics and religion...
are based on Ph.D.
Ph.D.
A Ph.D. is a Doctor of Philosophy, an academic degree.Ph.D. may also refer to:* Ph.D. , a 1980s British group*Piled Higher and Deeper, a web comic strip*PhD: Phantasy Degree, a Korean comic series* PhD Docbook renderer, an XML renderer...
degrees they obtained from the University of Burgundy
University of Burgundy
The University of Burgundy is a university located in Dijon, France.The University of Burgundy is situated on a large campus called Campus Montmuzard, 15 minutes by bus from the City Centre...
; Grichka Bogdanov received his degree in mathematics, and Igor Bogdanov received his in theoretical physics (in 1999 and 2002 respectively). Both were given the low, unusual, but passing, grade of "honorable"; Igor initially failed and was required to publish three papers in peer-reviewed journals before being given a degree. When later challenges to the legitimacy of the papers submitted by the Bogdanov brothers arose, the debate spread to the question of whether the substitution of a "publication requirement" by university professors when they do not understand students' work is a valid means of determining the veracity of a paper. However, the intrinsic complexity of topics like quantum group
Quantum group
In mathematics and theoretical physics, the term quantum group denotes various kinds of noncommutative algebra with additional structure. In general, a quantum group is some kind of Hopf algebra...
s and topological field theory—in addition to the extensive use of jargon
Jargon
Jargon is terminology which is especially defined in relationship to a specific activity, profession, group, or event. The philosophe Condillac observed in 1782 that "Every science requires a special language because every science has its own ideas." As a rationalist member of the Enlightenment he...
by those who study these areas—makes it difficult to avoid such delegation, since often specific expertise is necessary in order to fully understand and evaluate the claims made in papers on these topics.
Since 1979, Igor and Grichka Bogdanov have been widely known in France
France
The French Republic , The French Republic , The French Republic , (commonly known as France , is a unitary semi-presidential republic in Western Europe with several overseas territories and islands located on other continents and in the Indian, Pacific, and Atlantic oceans. Metropolitan France...
as television-show hosts. Their shows like Temps X (and more recently Rayons X) deal with topics in popular science
Popular science
Popular science, sometimes called literature of science, is interpretation of science intended for a general audience. While science journalism focuses on recent scientific developments, popular science is broad-ranging, often written by scientists as well as journalists, and is presented in many...
and science fiction
Science fiction
Science fiction is a genre of fiction dealing with imaginary but more or less plausible content such as future settings, futuristic science and technology, space travel, aliens, and paranormal abilities...
, and have attracted a large number of viewers.
Biography
The Bogdanov brothers were born in 1949 in the Commune of Saint-LarySaint-Lary, Gers
Saint-Lary or Saint-Lary dans le Gers is a commune in the Gers department in southwestern France.-Population:-References:*...
, in the Gascony
Gascony
Gascony is an area of southwest France that was part of the "Province of Guyenne and Gascony" prior to the French Revolution. The region is vaguely defined and the distinction between Guyenne and Gascony is unclear; sometimes they are considered to overlap, and sometimes Gascony is considered a...
region of southwest France
France
The French Republic , The French Republic , The French Republic , (commonly known as France , is a unitary semi-presidential republic in Western Europe with several overseas territories and islands located on other continents and in the Indian, Pacific, and Atlantic oceans. Metropolitan France...
. The brothers say that their parents came from aristocratic Russian
Russians
The Russian people are an East Slavic ethnic group native to Russia, speaking the Russian language and primarily living in Russia and neighboring countries....
and Austrian
Austrians
Austrians are a nation and ethnic group, consisting of the population of the Republic of Austria and its historical predecessor states who share a common Austrian culture and Austrian descent....
families, and that their maternal grandfather was noted African-American lyric tenor Roland Hayes
Roland Hayes
Roland Hayes was a lyric tenor and is considered the first African American male concert artist to receive wide international acclaim as well as at home...
.
Origin of the affair
Applied mathematics
Applied mathematics is a branch of mathematics that concerns itself with mathematical methods that are typically used in science, engineering, business, and industry. Thus, "applied mathematics" is a mathematical science with specialized knowledge...
in Paris, but then began careers in television, hosting several popular programs on science and science fiction. The first of these, Temps X (Time X), ran from 1979 to 1989.
In 1991 the Bogdanovs published a book, Dieu et la Science (God and Science), drawn from interviews with the philosopher Jean Guitton
Jean Guitton
Jean Guitton was a French Catholic philosopher and theologian.-Biography:Born in Saint-Étienne, Loire, he studied at the Lycée du Parc in Lyon and was accepted at the École normale supérieure in Paris. His principal religious and intellectual influence was from a blind priest, Francois Pouget...
. It became a French bestseller. This book provoked a dispute of its own when University of Virginia
University of Virginia
The University of Virginia is a public research university located in Charlottesville, Virginia, United States, founded by Thomas Jefferson...
astronomy professor Trinh Xuan Thuan
Trinh Xuan Thuan
Trịnh Xuân Thuận is a Vietnamese-American astrophysicist.Thuận was born in Hanoi, Vietnam. He completed his B.S. at the California Institute of Technology, and his Ph.D. at Princeton University. He has taught astronomy at the University of Virginia since 1976, and is a Research Associate at the...
accused the Bogdanovs of plagiarizing
Plagiarism
Plagiarism is defined in dictionaries as the "wrongful appropriation," "close imitation," or "purloining and publication" of another author's "language, thoughts, ideas, or expressions," and the representation of them as one's own original work, but the notion remains problematic with nebulous...
his 1988 book The Secret Melody: And Man Created the Universe. After a legal battle in France, Thuan and the Bogdanovs settled out of court, and the Bogdanovs later denied all wrongdoing. Thuan suggests that the plagiarism suit pressed the brothers to obtain doctorates as fast as possible, since (according to Thuan) the back cover of the book claimed that the Bogdanovs held doctorates when they did not.
In 1993, the brothers began work toward doctorates, first working under the mathematical physicist Moshé Flato of the University of Burgundy
University of Burgundy
The University of Burgundy is a university located in Dijon, France.The University of Burgundy is situated on a large campus called Campus Montmuzard, 15 minutes by bus from the City Centre...
. Flato died in 1998, and his colleague Daniel Sternheimer (of CNRS) took over the job of supervising the Bogdanovs. According to Sternheimer, the twins viewed themselves as "the Einstein brothers" and had a propensity to voice vague, "impressionistic" statements; he considered guiding their efforts "like teaching My Fair Lady
My Fair Lady
My Fair Lady is a musical based upon George Bernard Shaw's Pygmalion and with book and lyrics by Alan Jay Lerner and music by Frederick Loewe...
to speak with an Oxford accent." As he told The Chronicle of Higher Education
The Chronicle of Higher Education
The Chronicle of Higher Education is a newspaper and website that presents news, information, and jobs for college and university faculty, staff members and administrators....
, Sternheimer did not consider himself an expert in all the topics Grichka Bogdanov included in his thesis, but judged that those portions within his specialty were Ph.D.-quality work.
Grichka Bogdanov was given a Ph.D. by the University of Burgundy (Dijon
Dijon
Dijon is a city in eastern France, the capital of the Côte-d'Or département and of the Burgundy region.Dijon is the historical capital of the region of Burgundy. Population : 151,576 within the city limits; 250,516 for the greater Dijon area....
) in 1999, though this doctorate is sometimes erroneously described as having been granted by the École Polytechnique
École Polytechnique
The École Polytechnique is a state-run institution of higher education and research in Palaiseau, Essonne, France, near Paris. Polytechnique is renowned for its four year undergraduate/graduate Master's program...
. He originally applied for a degree in physics, but was instead given one in mathematics, and was first required to significantly rewrite his thesis, de-emphasizing the physics content. Around the same time, Igor Bogdanov failed the defense of his thesis. His advisors subsequently agreed to allow him to obtain a doctorate if he could publish three peer-reviewed journal articles. In 2002, after publishing the requisite articles, Igor was given a Ph.D in theoretical physics from the University of Burgundy. Both of the brothers received the low passing grade of "honorable," which is seldom given, as Daniel Sternheimer told New York Times science reporter Dennis Overbye. In justifying the conferring of doctoral degrees to the Bogdanovs, Sternheimer told the Times, "These guys worked for 10 years without pay. They have the right to have their work recognized with a diploma, which is nothing much these days."
In 2001 and 2002 the brothers published five papers in peer-reviewed physics journals, including Annals of Physics and Classical and Quantum Gravity. The controversy over the Bogdanovs' work began on October 22, 2002, with an email sent by University of Tours physicist Max Niedermaier to University of Pittsburgh
University of Pittsburgh
The University of Pittsburgh, commonly referred to as Pitt, is a state-related research university located in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, United States. Founded as Pittsburgh Academy in 1787 on what was then the American frontier, Pitt is one of the oldest continuously chartered institutions of...
physicist Ezra T. Newman
Ezra T. Newman
Ezra Ted Newman is an American physicist, known for his many contributions to general relativity theory. He is Professor Emeritus at the University of Pittsburgh...
. Niedermayer suggested that the Bogdanovs' Ph.D theses and papers were "spoof[s]," created by throwing together string theory
String theory
String theory is an active research framework in particle physics that attempts to reconcile quantum mechanics and general relativity. It is a contender for a theory of everything , a manner of describing the known fundamental forces and matter in a mathematically complete system...
and theoretical physics jargon: "The abstracts are delightfully meaningless combinations of buzzwords ... which apparently have been taken seriously." Copies of the email reached American mathematical physicist John Baez, and on October 23 he created a discussion thread about the Bogdanovs' work on the Usenet
Usenet
Usenet is a worldwide distributed Internet discussion system. It developed from the general purpose UUCP architecture of the same name.Duke University graduate students Tom Truscott and Jim Ellis conceived the idea in 1979 and it was established in 1980...
newsgroup sci.physics.research, titled "Physics bitten by reverse Alan Sokal hoax?" Baez was comparing the Bogdanovs' publications to the 1996 Sokal affair
Sokal Affair
The Sokal affair, also known as the Sokal hoax, was a publishing hoax perpetrated by Alan Sokal, a physics professor at New York University. In 1996, Sokal submitted an article to Social Text, an academic journal of postmodern cultural studies...
, in which physicist Alan Sokal
Alan Sokal
Alan David Sokal is a professor of mathematics at University College London and professor of physics at New York University. He works in statistical mechanics and combinatorics. To the general public he is best known for his criticism of postmodernism, resulting in the Sokal affair in...
successfully submitted an intentionally nonsensical paper to a cultural studies journal in order to criticize the incoherence of postmodernism
Postmodernism
Postmodernism is a philosophical movement evolved in reaction to modernism, the tendency in contemporary culture to accept only objective truth and to be inherently suspicious towards a global cultural narrative or meta-narrative. Postmodernist thought is an intentional departure from the...
. The Bogdanovs quickly became a popular discussion topic, with most respondents agreeing that the papers were flawed. The Bogdanovs' background in entertainment lent some plausibility to the idea that they were attempting a deliberate hoax, but Igor Bogdanov quickly denied the accusation. The online discussion was quickly followed by media attention; The Register
The Register
The Register is a British technology news and opinion website. It was founded by John Lettice, Mike Magee and Ross Alderson in 1994 as a newsletter called "Chip Connection", initially as an email service...
reported on the dispute on November 1, and stories in The Chronicle of Higher Education, Nature, The New York Times, and other publications appeared soon after.
Thesis readers
One of the scientists who approved Igor Bogdanov's thesis, MIT's Roman JackiwRoman Jackiw
Roman W. Jackiw is a theoretical physicist and Dirac Medallist. Born in Poland, Jackiw received his PhD from Cornell University in 1966 under Hans Bethe and Kenneth Wilson...
, spoke to New York Times reporter Dennis Overbye. Overbye writes Jackiw was intrigued by the thesis, although it contained many points he did not understand. Jackiw defended the thesis:
All these were ideas that could possibly make sense. It showed some originality and some familiarity with the jargon. That's all I ask.
In contrast, Igniatios Antoniadis (of the École Polytechnique
École Polytechnique
The École Polytechnique is a state-run institution of higher education and research in Palaiseau, Essonne, France, near Paris. Polytechnique is renowned for its four year undergraduate/graduate Master's program...
), who approved Grichka Bogdanov's thesis, later reversed his judgment of it. Antoniadis told Le Monde,
I had given a favorable opinion for Grichka's defense, based on a rapid and indulgent reading of the thesis text. Alas, I was completely mistaken. The scientific language was just an appearance behind which hid incompetence and ignorance of even basic physics.
Published papers
In May 2001, the journal Classical and Quantum GravityClassical and Quantum Gravity
Classical and Quantum Gravity is a peer-reviewed journal that covers all aspects of gravitational physics and the theory of spacetime.Its scope includes*Classical general relativity*Applications of relativity*Experimental gravitation...
(CQG) reviewed an article authored by Igor and Grichka Bogdanov, entitled "Topological theory of the initial singularity of spacetime". One of the referees' reports
stated that the article was "Sound, original, and of interest. With revisions I expect the paper to be suitable for publication." The paper was accepted by the journal seven months later.
However, after the publication of the article and the publicity surrounding the controversy, mathematician Greg Kuperberg
Greg Kuperberg
Greg Kuperberg is an American mathematician of Polish birth known for his contributions to geometric topology, quantum algebra, and combinatorics. Kuperberg is a professor of mathematics at the University of California, Davis....
posted to Usenet a statement written by Andrew Wray and Hermann Nicolai of the CQG editorial board. Originally sent via e-mail, the statement read, in part,
Regrettably, despite the best efforts, the refereeing process cannot be 100% effective. Thus the paper ... made it through the review process even though, in retrospect, it does not meet the standards expected of articles in this journal... The paper was discussed extensively at the annual Editorial Board meeting ... and there was general agreement that it should not have been published. Since then several steps have been taken to further improve the peer review process in order to improve the quality assessment on articles submitted to the journal and reduce the likelihood that this could happen again.
The paper in question has, however, not been withdrawn by the journal. Later, the editor-in-chief of the journal issued a slightly different statement on behalf of the Institute of Physics
Institute of Physics
The Institute of Physics is a scientific charity devoted to increasing the practice, understanding and application of physics. It has a worldwide membership of around 40,000....
, which owns the journal, in which he insisted on the fact that their usual peer-review procedures had been followed, but no longer commented on the value of the paper. In particular the sentences "...it does not meet the standards expected of articles in this journal" and "The paper was discussed extensively at the annual Editorial Board meeting ... and there was general agreement that it should not have been published" were removed. The former phrase was, however, quoted in the New York Times, the Chronicle of Higher Education and Nature
Nature (journal)
Nature, first published on 4 November 1869, is ranked the world's most cited interdisciplinary scientific journal by the Science Edition of the 2010 Journal Citation Reports...
. Moreover, Die Zeit
Die Zeit
Die Zeit is a German nationwide weekly newspaper that is highly respected for its quality journalism.With a circulation of 488,036 and an estimated readership of slightly above 2 million, it is the most widely read German weekly newspaper...
quoted the journal's co-editor Hermann Nicolai as saying that had the paper reached his desk, he would have immediately rejected it.
In 2001, the Czechoslovak Journal of Physics accepted an article written by Igor Bogdanov, entitled "Topological Origin of Inertia". The referee's
report concluded: "In my opinion the results of the paper can be considered as original ones. I recommend the paper for publication but in a revised form." The following year, the Chinese Journal of Physics
Chinese Journal of Physics
The Chinese Journal of Physics is a peer reviewed journal of physics. It is published by The Physical Society of Republic of China in Taiwan. The journal publishes reviews, articles, and refereed conference papers in all the major areas of physics....
published Igor Bogdanov's "The KMS state
KMS state
In the statistical mechanics of quantum mechanical systems and quantum field theory, the properties of a system in thermal equilibrium can be described by a mathematical object called a Kubo-Martin-Schwinger state or, more commonly, a KMS state.-Preliminaries:...
of spacetime at the Planck scale". The report stated that "the viewpoint presented in this paper can be interesting as a possible approach of the Planck scale physics." Some corrections were requested.
Not all review evaluations were positive. Eli Hawkins, acting as a referee on behalf of the Journal of Physics A
Journal of Physics A
The Journal of Physics A: Mathematical and Theoretical is a peer-reviewed scientific journal published by IOP Publishing. It is part of the Journal of Physics series and covers theoretical physics focusing on sophisticated mathematical and computational techniques.The journal is divided into six...
, suggested rejecting one of the Bogdanovs' papers: "It would take up too much space to enumerate all the mistakes: indeed it is difficult to say where one error ends and the next begins. In conclusion, I would not recommend that this paper be published in this, or any, journal."
Several of the published papers are nearly identical, differing only in minor respects. The CQG paper summarizes most of Grichka's thesis, but the paragraph order is almost entirely reversed. The Chinese Journal of Physics, Nuovo Cimento and Annals of Physics papers are essentially identical except for their titles and abstracts; typographical errors are also repeated across these versions.
Criticism of the papers
After the start of the Usenet discussion, most comments were critical of the Bogdanovs' work. For example, John C. BaezJohn C. Baez
John Carlos Baez is an American mathematical physicist and a professor of mathematics at the University of California, Riverside in Riverside, California. He is known for his work on spin foams in loop quantum gravity. More recently, his research has focused on applications of higher categories...
stated that the Bogdanov papers are "a mishmash of superficially plausible sentences containing the right buzzwords in approximately the right order. There is no logic or cohesion in what they write." Jacques Distler
Jacques Distler
Jacques Distler is a physicist currently working in string theory. He has been a professor of physics at the University of Texas at Austin since 1994.-Early life and education:...
voiced a similar opinion, proclaiming "The Bogdanov's [sic] papers consist of buzzwords from various fields of mathematical physics, string theory and quantum gravity, strung together into syntactically correct, but semantically meaningless prose."
Others compared the quality of the Bogdanov papers with that seen over a wider arena. "The Bogdanoffs' work is significantly more incoherent than just about anything else being published," wrote Peter Woit
Peter Woit
Peter Woit is a Departmental Computer Administrator and Senior Lecturer in Discipline at Columbia University, known for his criticisms of string theory in his book Not Even Wrong, and his blog of the same name.-Career:...
. He continued, "But the increasingly low standard of coherence in the whole field is what allowed them to think they were doing something sensible and to get it published." Woit later devoted a chapter of his book Not Even Wrong (2006) to the Bogdanov Affair.
Eventually, the controversy attracted mainstream media attention, opening new avenues for physicists' comments to be disseminated. Le Monde
Le Monde
Le Monde is a French daily evening newspaper owned by La Vie-Le Monde Group and edited in Paris. It is one of two French newspapers of record, and has generally been well respected since its first edition under founder Hubert Beuve-Méry on 19 December 1944...
quoted Alain Connes
Alain Connes
Alain Connes is a French mathematician, currently Professor at the Collège de France, IHÉS, The Ohio State University and Vanderbilt University.-Work:...
, recipient of the 1982 Fields medal
Fields Medal
The Fields Medal, officially known as International Medal for Outstanding Discoveries in Mathematics, is a prize awarded to two, three, or four mathematicians not over 40 years of age at each International Congress of the International Mathematical Union , a meeting that takes place every four...
, as saying, "I didn't need long to convince myself that they're talking about things that they haven't mastered." Nobel laureate
Nobel Prize in Physics
The Nobel Prize in Physics is awarded once a year by the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences. It is one of the five Nobel Prizes established by the will of Alfred Nobel in 1895 and awarded since 1901; the others are the Nobel Prize in Chemistry, Nobel Prize in Literature, Nobel Peace Prize, and...
Georges Charpak
Georges Charpak
Georges Charpak was a French physicist who was awarded the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1992.-Life:Georges Charpak was born to Jewish family in the village of Dąbrowica in Poland . Charpak's family moved from Poland to Paris when he was seven years old...
stated on a French talk show that the Bogdanovs' presence in the scientific community was "nonexistent".
The most positive comments about the papers themselves came from string theorist
String theory
String theory is an active research framework in particle physics that attempts to reconcile quantum mechanics and general relativity. It is a contender for a theory of everything , a manner of describing the known fundamental forces and matter in a mathematically complete system...
Luboš Motl
Luboš Motl
Luboš Motl is a Czech theoretical physicist who keeps a blog commenting on physics, global warming and politics. His scientific research concentrated on string theory, of which he has been a passionate defender. He proposed Matrix string theory in 1997.Motl was born in Plzeň, Czech Republic...
. Writing in his blog
Blog
A blog is a type of website or part of a website supposed to be updated with new content from time to time. Blogs are usually maintained by an individual with regular entries of commentary, descriptions of events, or other material such as graphics or video. Entries are commonly displayed in...
almost three years after the heyday of the controversy, Motl stated, "[T]he Bogdanoff brothers are proposing something that has, speculatively, the potential to be an alternative story about quantum gravity ... What they are proposing is a potential new calculational framework for gravity. I find it unlikely that these things will work but it is probably more likely than loop quantum gravity and other discrete approaches whose lethal problems have already been identified in detail".
Internet discussions
In addition to a few articles in print media, the Bogdanov Affair has been discussed extensively in various newsgroups, webpages and blogs; the Bogdanov brothers have often participated in the discussions, sometimes using pseudonyms or represented by friends acting as proxies. They have used these methods to defend their work and sometimes to insult their critics, among them the Nobel prizeNobel Prize
The Nobel Prizes are annual international awards bestowed by Scandinavian committees in recognition of cultural and scientific advances. The will of the Swedish chemist Alfred Nobel, the inventor of dynamite, established the prizes in 1895...
recipient Georges Charpak
Georges Charpak
Georges Charpak was a French physicist who was awarded the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1992.-Life:Georges Charpak was born to Jewish family in the village of Dąbrowica in Poland . Charpak's family moved from Poland to Paris when he was seven years old...
.
In October 2002, the Bogdanovs released an email containing apparently supportive statements by Laurent Freidel
Laurent Freidel
Laurent Freidel is a physicist, working at the Perimeter Institute for Theoretical Physics in Waterloo, Ontario, Canada. He is working in loop quantum gravity and spin foam models of quantum gravity...
, then a visiting professor at the Perimeter Institute. Soon after, Freidel denied writing any such remarks, telling the press that he had forwarded a message containing that text to a friend. The Bogdanovs then attributed the quoted passages to Freidel, who said, "I'm very upset about that because I have received e-mail from people in the community asking me why I've defended the Bogdanov brothers. When your name is used without your consent, it's a violation."
At the start of the controversy in the moderated group sci.physics.research, Igor Bogdanov denied that their published papers were a hoax, but when asked precise questions from physicists Steve Carlip
Steve Carlip
Steve Carlip is an American professor of physics at the University of California, Davis. He is known for his work on -dimensional quantum gravity, the quantum gravitational basis of black hole thermodynamics, and causal dynamical triangulations. Carlip graduated from Harvard University with a...
and John Baez regarding mathematical details in the papers, failed to convince any other participants that these papers had any real scientific value. New York Times reporter George Johnson
George Johnson (writer)
George Johnson is an American journalist and science writer. He is the author of a number of books, including The Ten Most Beautiful Experiments and Strange Beauty: Murray Gell-Mann and the Revolution in 20th-Century Physics , and writes for a number of publications, including The New York...
described reading through the debate as "like watching someone trying to nail Jell-O to a wall", for the Bogdanovs had "developed their own private language, one that impinges on the vocabulary of science only at the edges."
Scientific content
Foucault pendulum
The Foucault pendulum , or Foucault's pendulum, named after the French physicist Léon Foucault, is a simple device conceived as an experiment to demonstrate the rotation of the Earth. While it had long been known that the Earth rotated, the introduction of the Foucault pendulum in 1851 was the...
is necessarily aligned with the initial singularity
Gravitational singularity
A gravitational singularity or spacetime singularity is a location where the quantities that are used to measure the gravitational field become infinite in a way that does not depend on the coordinate system...
marking the origin of physical space." In addition, the paper claimed, the Foucault pendulum experiment "cannot be explained satisfactorily in either classical or relativistic mechanics". The physicists commenting on Usenet found these claims and subsequent attempts at their explanation peculiar, since the trajectory of a Foucault pendulum—a standard museum piece—is accurately predicted by classical mechanics
Classical mechanics
In physics, classical mechanics is one of the two major sub-fields of mechanics, which is concerned with the set of physical laws describing the motion of bodies under the action of a system of forces...
. The Bogdanovs explained that these claims would only be clear in the context of topological field theory. Baez and Russell Blackadar attempted to determine the meaning of the "plane of oscillation" statement; after the Bogdanovs issued some elaborations, Baez concluded that it was a complicated way of rephrasing the following:
Since the big bangBig BangThe Big Bang theory is the prevailing cosmological model that explains the early development of the Universe. According to the Big Bang theory, the Universe was once in an extremely hot and dense state which expanded rapidly. This rapid expansion caused the young Universe to cool and resulted in...
happened everywhereMetric expansion of spaceThe metric expansion of space is the increase of distance between distant parts of the universe with time. It is an intrinsic expansion—that is, it is defined by the relative separation of parts of the universe and not by motion "outward" into preexisting space...
, no matter which way a pendulum swings, the plane in which it swings can be said to "intersect the big bang".
However, Baez pointed out, this statement does not in fact concern the Big Bang, and is entirely equivalent to the following:
No matter which way a pendulum swings, there is some point on the plane in which it swings.
Yet this rephrasing is itself equivalent to the statement
Any plane contains a point.If this was the essence of the statement, Baez noted, it cannot be very useful in "explaining the origin of inertia
Inertia
Inertia is the resistance of any physical object to a change in its state of motion or rest, or the tendency of an object to resist any change in its motion. It is proportional to an object's mass. The principle of inertia is one of the fundamental principles of classical physics which are used to...
".
Urs Schreiber, a postdoctoral researcher
Postdoctoral researcher
Postdoctoral research is scholarly research conducted by a person who has recently completed doctoral studies, normally within the previous five years. It is intended to further deepen expertise in a specialist subject, including acquiring novel skills and methods...
at the University of Hamburg
University of Hamburg
The University of Hamburg is a university in Hamburg, Germany. It was founded on 28 March 1919 by Wilhelm Stern and others. It grew out of the previous Allgemeines Vorlesungswesen and the Kolonialinstitut as well as the Akademisches Gymnasium. There are around 38,000 students as of the start of...
, noted that the mention of the Foucault pendulum was at odds with the papers' general tone, since they generally relied upon more "modern terminology". (According to George Johnson
George Johnson (writer)
George Johnson is an American journalist and science writer. He is the author of a number of books, including The Ten Most Beautiful Experiments and Strange Beauty: Murray Gell-Mann and the Revolution in 20th-Century Physics , and writes for a number of publications, including The New York...
, the Foucault pendulum is "an icon of French science that would belong in any good Gallic spoof.") Schreiber identified five central ideas in the Bogdanovs' work—"'result' A" through "'result' E"—which are expressed in the jargon of statistical mechanics
Statistical mechanics
Statistical mechanics or statistical thermodynamicsThe terms statistical mechanics and statistical thermodynamics are used interchangeably...
, topological field theory
Topological quantum field theory
A topological quantum field theory is a quantum field theory which computes topological invariants....
and cosmology
Physical cosmology
Physical cosmology, as a branch of astronomy, is the study of the largest-scale structures and dynamics of the universe and is concerned with fundamental questions about its formation and evolution. For most of human history, it was a branch of metaphysics and religion...
. One bit of jargon, the Hagedorn temperature
Hagedorn temperature
The Hagedorn temperature in theoretical physics is the temperature above which the partition sum diverges in a system with exponential growth in the density of states. It is named after German physicist Rolf Hagedorn.Phase transitions The Hagedorn temperature in theoretical physics is the...
, comes from string theory
String theory
String theory is an active research framework in particle physics that attempts to reconcile quantum mechanics and general relativity. It is a contender for a theory of everything , a manner of describing the known fundamental forces and matter in a mathematically complete system...
, but as Schreiber notes, the paper does not use this concept in any detail; moreover, since the paper is manifestly not a string theory treatise, "considering the role the Hagedorn temperature plays in string cosmology, this is bordering on self-parody." Schreiber concludes that the fourth "result" (that the spacetime metric
Metric tensor
In the mathematical field of differential geometry, a metric tensor is a type of function defined on a manifold which takes as input a pair of tangent vectors v and w and produces a real number g in a way that generalizes many of the familiar properties of the dot product of vectors in Euclidean...
"at the initial singularity" must be Riemannian
Riemannian manifold
In Riemannian geometry and the differential geometry of surfaces, a Riemannian manifold or Riemannian space is a real differentiable manifold M in which each tangent space is equipped with an inner product g, a Riemannian metric, which varies smoothly from point to point...
) contradicts the initial assumption of their argument (an FRW cosmology with pseudo-Riemannian metric
Pseudo-Riemannian manifold
In differential geometry, a pseudo-Riemannian manifold is a generalization of a Riemannian manifold. It is one of many mathematical objects named after Bernhard Riemann. The key difference between a Riemannian manifold and a pseudo-Riemannian manifold is that on a pseudo-Riemannian manifold the...
). The fifth and last "result", Schreiber notes, is an attempt to resolve this contradiction by "invok[ing] quantum mechanics". The Bogdanovs themselves described Schreiber's summary as "very accurate"; for more on this point, see below. Schreiber concluded,
Just to make sure: I do not think that any of the above is valid reasoning. I am writing this just to point out what I think are the central 'ideas' the authors had when writing their articles and how this led them to their conclusions.
Eli Hawkins of Pennsylvania State University
Pennsylvania State University
The Pennsylvania State University, commonly referred to as Penn State or PSU, is a public research university with campuses and facilities throughout the state of Pennsylvania, United States. Founded in 1855, the university has a threefold mission of teaching, research, and public service...
voiced a similar concern about "The KMS state
KMS state
In the statistical mechanics of quantum mechanical systems and quantum field theory, the properties of a system in thermal equilibrium can be described by a mathematical object called a Kubo-Martin-Schwinger state or, more commonly, a KMS state.-Preliminaries:...
of spacetime at the Planck scale".
The main result of this paper is that this thermodynamic equilibriumThermodynamic equilibriumIn thermodynamics, a thermodynamic system is said to be in thermodynamic equilibrium when it is in thermal equilibrium, mechanical equilibrium, radiative equilibrium, and chemical equilibrium. The word equilibrium means a state of balance...
should be a KMS state. This almost goes without saying; for a quantum system, the KMS condition is just the concrete definition of thermodynamic equilibrium. The hard part is identifying the quantum system to which the condition should be applied, which is not done in this paper.
Damien Calaque of the Louis Pasteur University
Louis Pasteur University
Louis Pasteur University , also known as Strasbourg I or ULP was a large university in Strasbourg, Alsace, France. As of January 15, 2007, there were 18,847 students enrolled at the university, including around 3,000 foreign students. Research and teaching at ULP concentrates on the natural...
, Strasbourg
Strasbourg
Strasbourg is the capital and principal city of the Alsace region in eastern France and is the official seat of the European Parliament. Located close to the border with Germany, it is the capital of the Bas-Rhin département. The city and the region of Alsace are historically German-speaking,...
, commented adversely about Grichka Bogdanov's unpublished preprint "Construction of cocycle bicrossproducts by twisting". In Calaque's estimation, the results presented in the preprint did not have sufficient novelty and interest to merit an independent journal article, and moreover the principal theorem was, in its current formulation, false: Grichka's construction yields a bialgebra
Bialgebra
In mathematics, a bialgebra over a field K is a vector space over K which is both a unital associative algebra and a coalgebra, such that these structures are compatible....
which is not necessarily a Hopf algebra
Hopf algebra
In mathematics, a Hopf algebra, named after Heinz Hopf, is a structure that is simultaneously an algebra and a coalgebra, with these structures' compatibility making it a bialgebra, and that moreover is equipped with an antiautomorphism satisfying a certain property.Hopf algebras occur naturally...
, the latter being a type of mathematical object which must satisfy additional conditions.
As mentioned above, among the most positive comments on the papers came from physicist Luboš Motl
Luboš Motl
Luboš Motl is a Czech theoretical physicist who keeps a blog commenting on physics, global warming and politics. His scientific research concentrated on string theory, of which he has been a passionate defender. He proposed Matrix string theory in 1997.Motl was born in Plzeň, Czech Republic...
:
...Some of the papers of the Bogdanoff brothers are really painful and clearly silly ... But the most famous paper about the solution of the initial singularity is a bit different; it is more sophisticated.
...it does not surprise me much that Roman Jackiw said that the paper satisfied everything he expects from an acceptable paper—the knowledge of the jargon and some degree of original ideas. (And be sure that Jackiw, Kounnas, and Majid were not the only ones with this kind of a conclusion.)
...Technically, their paper connects too many things. It would be too good if all these ideas and (correct) formulae were necessary for a justification of a working solution to the initial singularity problem. But if one accepts that the papers about these difficult questions don't have to be just a well-defined science but maybe also a bit of inspiring art, the brothers have done a pretty good job, I think. And I want to know the answers to many questions that are opened in their paper.
Motl's measured support for Topological field theory of the initial singularity of spacetime, however, stands in contrast to Robert Oeckl's official MathSciNet review, which states that the paper is "rife with nonsensical or meaningless statements and suffers from a serious lack of coherence," follows up with several examples to illustrate his point, and concludes that the paper "falls short of scientific standards and appears to have no meaningful content."
Claims of pseudonymous activity
For months, the domain nameDomain name
A domain name is an identification string that defines a realm of administrative autonomy, authority, or control in the Internet. Domain names are formed by the rules and procedures of the Domain Name System ....
of the "International Institute of Mathematical Physics" created by the Bogdanovs, th-phys.edu.hk, created erroneous suggestions amongst forum participants as to a possible link with The University of Hong Kong
The University of Hong Kong
The University of Hong Kong is the oldest tertiary institution in Hong Kong. Its motto is "Sapientia et Virtus" in Latin, meaning "wisdom and virtue", and "" in Chinese...
or the Hong Kong University of Science and Technology
Hong Kong University of Science and Technology
The Hong Kong University of Science and Technology is a public university located in Hong Kong. Established in 1991 under Hong Kong Law Chapter 1141 , it is one of the nine universities in Hong Kong.Professor Tony F. Chan is the president of HKUST...
.
The participation of an unidentified "Professor Yang" provoked additional confusion. Using an e-mail address at the domain th-phys.edu.hk, an individual publishing under this name wrote to a number of individuals and on the Internet to defend the Bogdanov papers. This individual wrote to physicists John Baez, Jacques Distler and Peter Woit; to New York Times journalist Dennis Overbye; and on numerous physics blogs and forums, signing his name "Professor L. Yang—Theoretical Physics Laboratory, International Institute of Mathematical Physics—HKU/Clear Water Bay, Kowloon, Hong Kong." Note that it is HKUST which is located in Clear Water Bay
Clear Water Bay
Clear Water Bay is a bay on the east shore of Clear Water Bay Peninsula of Hong Kong located within Clear Water Bay Country Park. There are two beaches at Clear Water Bay, namely Clear Water Bay 1st beach and Clear Water Bay 2nd beach...
, not HKU, whose main campus is located in the Mid-levels
Mid-levels
Mid-levels is an expensive residential area on Hong Kong Island in Hong Kong. It is located halfway up Victoria Peak, directly above Central...
of Hong Kong Island
Hong Kong Island
Hong Kong Island is an island in the southern part of the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region. It has a population of 1,289,500 and its population density is 16,390/km², as of 2008...
.
The Bogdanovs have alleged several times that the "domain name 'th-phys.edu.hk' was officially owned by Hong Kong University." This was not confirmed officially by HKU and no Prof. Yang existed on the roster of the HKU physics department. Confusingly, the DNS
Domain name system
The Domain Name System is a hierarchical distributed naming system for computers, services, or any resource connected to the Internet or a private network. It associates various information with domain names assigned to each of the participating entities...
record of th-phys.edu.hk listed the street address of HKUST (in Clear Water Bay), not HKU. Moreover, the domain had been registered by Igor Bogdanov, and e-mail messages from Professor L. Yang originated from a dial-up IP address
IP address
An Internet Protocol address is a numerical label assigned to each device participating in a computer network that uses the Internet Protocol for communication. An IP address serves two principal functions: host or network interface identification and location addressing...
in Paris, France. The registration of th-phys.edu.hk has not been renewed.
Suspicions were consequently raised that Professor L. Yang was actually a pseudonym of the Bogdanovs. However, Igor Bogdanov has maintained that Professor Yang is a real mathematical physicist with expertise in KMS theory
KMS state
In the statistical mechanics of quantum mechanical systems and quantum field theory, the properties of a system in thermal equilibrium can be described by a mathematical object called a Kubo-Martin-Schwinger state or, more commonly, a KMS state.-Preliminaries:...
, a friend of his, and that he was posting anonymously from Igor's apartment. As yet, no such individual has come forward publicly to unambiguously identify himself as this "Professor Yang" and to identify his credentials and institutional affiliation, and no published record of this "Professor Yang" has been offered for examination.
Following this pattern, another academic domain name was also registered in Latvia
Latvia
Latvia , officially the Republic of Latvia , is a country in the Baltic region of Northern Europe. It is bordered to the north by Estonia , to the south by Lithuania , to the east by the Russian Federation , to the southeast by Belarus and shares maritime borders to the west with Sweden...
(phys-maths.edu.lv), hosting the
"Mathematical Center of Riemannian Cosmology". Again, this apparent educational institution was registered by Igor Bogdanov. When asked why the Center's website had a Latvian top-level domain
Top-level domain
A top-level domain is one of the domains at the highest level in the hierarchical Domain Name System of the Internet. The top-level domain names are installed in the root zone of the name space. For all domains in lower levels, it is the last part of the domain name, that is, the last label of a...
, Igor claimed that it had been established and hosted by the University of Riga, after the brothers had attended a conference there in either 2001 or 2002. This claim was greeted with skepticism and was never confirmed by the University.
Spread of the dispute
At the beginning of 2004, Igor Bogdanov began to post on French Usenet physics groups and Internet forums, continuing the pattern of behavior seen on sci.physics.research. A controversy began on the French WikipediaFrench Wikipedia
The French Wikipedia is the French language edition of Wikipedia, spelt Wikipédia. This edition was started in March 2001, and has about articles as of , making it the third-largest Wikipedia overall, after the English-language and German-language editions...
when Igor Bogdanov and his supporters began to edit that encyclopedia's article on the brothers, prompting the creation of a new article dedicated to the debate (Polémique autour des travaux des frères Bogdanov—"Debate surrounding the work of the Bogdanov brothers"). However, the dispute merely spread to the English-language Wikipedia
Wikipedia
Wikipedia is a free, web-based, collaborative, multilingual encyclopedia project supported by the non-profit Wikimedia Foundation. Its 20 million articles have been written collaboratively by volunteers around the world. Almost all of its articles can be edited by anyone with access to the site,...
. In November 2005, this led the Arbitration Committee—the English Wikipedia's highest decision-making body short of project leader Jimmy Wales
Jimmy Wales
Jimmy Donal "Jimbo" Wales is an American Internet entrepreneur best known as a co-founder and promoter of the online non-profit encyclopedia Wikipedia and the Wikia company....
—to ban anyone deemed to be a participant in the external dispute from editing the English Wikipedia's article on the Bogdanov Affair. A number of Wikipedia users, including Igor Bogdanov himself, were explicitly named in this ban. In 2006, Baez wrote on his website that for some time the Bogdanovs and "a large crowd of sock puppets" had been attempting to rewrite the English Wikipedia article on the controversy "to make it less embarrassing to them." "Nobody seems to be fooled," he added.
Media involvement
At the start of the controversy in 2002, numerous articles on the subject were published in worldwide media, such as the New York Times, the Washington Post, the International Herald TribuneInternational Herald Tribune
The International Herald Tribune is a widely read English language international newspaper. It combines the resources of its own correspondents with those of The New York Times and is printed at 38 sites throughout the world, for sale in more than 160 countries and territories...
, the Economist
The Economist
The Economist is an English-language weekly news and international affairs publication owned by The Economist Newspaper Ltd. and edited in offices in the City of Westminster, London, England. Continuous publication began under founder James Wilson in September 1843...
, and The Chronicle of Higher Education
The Chronicle of Higher Education
The Chronicle of Higher Education is a newspaper and website that presents news, information, and jobs for college and university faculty, staff members and administrators....
, as well as Pravda
Pravda
Pravda was a leading newspaper of the Soviet Union and an official organ of the Central Committee of the Communist Party between 1912 and 1991....
, Die Zeit
Die Zeit
Die Zeit is a German nationwide weekly newspaper that is highly respected for its quality journalism.With a circulation of 488,036 and an estimated readership of slightly above 2 million, it is the most widely read German weekly newspaper...
and Le Monde
Le Monde
Le Monde is a French daily evening newspaper owned by La Vie-Le Monde Group and edited in Paris. It is one of two French newspapers of record, and has generally been well respected since its first edition under founder Hubert Beuve-Méry on 19 December 1944...
.
In 2002, the Bogdanovs launched a new weekly TV show Rayons X (X Rays
X-ray
X-radiation is a form of electromagnetic radiation. X-rays have a wavelength in the range of 0.01 to 10 nanometers, corresponding to frequencies in the range 30 petahertz to 30 exahertz and energies in the range 120 eV to 120 keV. They are shorter in wavelength than UV rays and longer than gamma...
) on French public channel France 2
France 2
France 2 is a French public national television channel. It is part of the state-owned France Télévisions group, along with France 3, France 4, France 5 and France Ô...
. In August 2004, they presented a 90-minute special cosmology program in which they introduced their theory among other cosmological scenarios. They were also frequently invited to numerous TV talk shows to promote their book. The French mainstream media, in both the press and on the Internet, covered the renewed controversy to some extent; media outlets that have reported upon it include Europe 1
Europe 1
Europe 1, formerly known as Europe n° 1, is a privately owned radio network created in 1955. It is one of the leading French radio broadcasters and heard throughout France...
, Acrimed, and Ciel et Espace.
In 2004, the Bogdanovs published a commercially successful popular science book, Avant Le Big Bang (Before the Big Bang), based on a simplified version of their theses, where they also presented their point of view about the affair. Both the book and the Bogdanovs' television shows have been criticized for elementary scientific inaccuracies. Critics cite examples from Avant Le Big Bang including a statement that the "golden number
Golden ratio
In mathematics and the arts, two quantities are in the golden ratio if the ratio of the sum of the quantities to the larger quantity is equal to the ratio of the larger quantity to the smaller one. The golden ratio is an irrational mathematical constant, approximately 1.61803398874989...
" φ
Phi
Phi may refer to:In language:*Phi, the Greek letter Φ,φ, the symbol for voiceless bilabial fricativeIn mathematics:*The Golden ratio*Euler's totient function*A statistical measure of association reported with the chi-squared test...
(Phi) is transcendental
Transcendental number
In mathematics, a transcendental number is a number that is not algebraic—that is, it is not a root of a non-constant polynomial equation with rational coefficients. The most prominent examples of transcendental numbers are π and e...
, which the Bogdanovs allege to be an editorial misprint; an assumption that the limit
Limit of a sequence
The limit of a sequence is, intuitively, the unique number or point L such that the terms of the sequence become arbitrarily close to L for "large" values of n...
of a decreasing sequence
Sequence
In mathematics, a sequence is an ordered list of objects . Like a set, it contains members , and the number of terms is called the length of the sequence. Unlike a set, order matters, and exactly the same elements can appear multiple times at different positions in the sequence...
is always zero; and that the expansion of the Universe
Metric expansion of space
The metric expansion of space is the increase of distance between distant parts of the universe with time. It is an intrinsic expansion—that is, it is defined by the relative separation of parts of the universe and not by motion "outward" into preexisting space...
implies that the planets of the Solar System
Solar System
The Solar System consists of the Sun and the astronomical objects gravitationally bound in orbit around it, all of which formed from the collapse of a giant molecular cloud approximately 4.6 billion years ago. The vast majority of the system's mass is in the Sun...
have grown farther apart.
In October 2004, a journalist from Ciel et Espace interviewed Shahn Majid
Shahn Majid
Born in 1960 in Patna, Bihar, India Shahn Majid is an English pure mathematician and theoretical physicist, trained at Cambridge University and Harvard and since 2001 a Professor of Mathematics at the School of Mathematical Sciences, Queen Mary, University of London.Majid is best known for his...
of the University of London
University of London
-20th century:Shortly after 6 Burlington Gardens was vacated, the University went through a period of rapid expansion. Bedford College, Royal Holloway and the London School of Economics all joined in 1900, Regent's Park College, which had affiliated in 1841 became an official divinity school of the...
about his report on Grichka Bogdanov's thesis. Majid said that the French version of his report on Grichka's thesis was "an unauthorized translation partially invented by the Bogdanovs." In one sentence, the English word "interesting" was translated as the French "important." A "draft [mathematical] construction" became "la première construction [mathématique]" ("the first [mathematical] construction"). Elsewhere, an added word demonstrated, according to Majid, that "Bogdanov does not understand his own draft results." Majid also described more than ten other modifications of meaning, each one biased towards "surestimation outrancière"—"outrageous over-estimation." Majid said that his original report described a "very weak" student who nevertheless demonstrated "an impressive amount of determination to obtain a doctorate." Later, Majid claimed in a Usenet post that, in an addendum to Avant Le Big Bang, Grichka intentionally misquoted Majid's opinion on the way this interview had been transcribed.
Additionally, in the same addendum, a critical analysis of their work made by post-doc
Postdoctoral researcher
Postdoctoral research is scholarly research conducted by a person who has recently completed doctoral studies, normally within the previous five years. It is intended to further deepen expertise in a specialist subject, including acquiring novel skills and methods...
Urs Schreiber, and affirmed by the Bogdanovs as "very accurate", was included with the exception of the concluding remark "Just to make sure: I do not think that any of the above is valid reasoning", thus inverting the meaning from criticism into ostensible support. Moreover, a comment by physicist Peter Woit written as, "It's certainly possible that you have some new worthwhile results on quantum groups", was translated as "Il est tout à fait certain que vous avez obtenu des résultats nouveaux et utiles dans les groupes quantiques" ("It is completely certain that you have obtained new worthwhile results on quantum groups") and published by the Bogdanovs in the addendum of their book.
In December 2004, the Bogdanovs sued Ciel et Espace for defamation over the publication of a critical article entitled "The Mystification of the Bogdanovs". In September 2006, the case was dismissed after the Bogdanovs missed court deadlines; they were ordered to pay 2500 euro
Euro
The euro is the official currency of the eurozone: 17 of the 27 member states of the European Union. It is also the currency used by the Institutions of the European Union. The eurozone consists of Austria, Belgium, Cyprus, Estonia, Finland, France, Germany, Greece, Ireland, Italy, Luxembourg,...
s to the magazine's publisher to cover its legal costs. There was never a substantive ruling on whether or not the Bogdanovs had been defamed.
Reflections upon the peer-review system
During the heyday of this Affair, some media coverage cast a negative light on theoretical physics, stating or at least strongly implying that it has become impossible to distinguish a valid paper from a hoax. Overbye's article in the New York Times voiced this opinion, for example, as did Declan Butler's piece in NatureNature (journal)
Nature, first published on 4 November 1869, is ranked the world's most cited interdisciplinary scientific journal by the Science Edition of the 2010 Journal Citation Reports...
. Posters on blogs and Usenet used the affair to criticize the present status of string theory
String theory
String theory is an active research framework in particle physics that attempts to reconcile quantum mechanics and general relativity. It is a contender for a theory of everything , a manner of describing the known fundamental forces and matter in a mathematically complete system...
; for this reason, Woit devoted a chapter of Not Even Wrong, a book strongly critical of string theory, to the Affair. On the other hand, George Johnson's report in the New York Times concludes that physicists have generally decided the papers are "probably just the result of fuzzy thinking, bad writing and journal referees more comfortable with correcting typos than challenging thoughts." Furthermore, as physicist Aaron Bergman pointed out while reviewing Not Even Wrong, Woit's conclusion
is undermined by a number of important elisions in the telling of the story, the most important of which is that the writings of the Bogdanovs, to the extent that one can make sense of them, have almost nothing to do with string theory. ... I first learned of the relevant papers in a posting on the internet by Dr. John Baez. Having found a copy of one of the relevant papers available online, I posted that "the referee clearly didn't even glance at it." While the papers were full of rather abstruse prose about a wide variety of technical areas, it was easy to identify outright nonsense in the areas about which I had some expertise. ... A pair of non-string theorists were able to get nonsensical papers generally not about string theory published in journals not generally used by string theorists. This is surely an indictment of something, but its relevance to string theory is marginal at best.
Jacques Distler
Jacques Distler
Jacques Distler is a physicist currently working in string theory. He has been a professor of physics at the University of Texas at Austin since 1994.-Early life and education:...
mused that the tone of the media coverage had more to do with journalistic practices
Journalism ethics and standards
Journalism ethics and standards comprise principles of ethics and of good practice as applicable to the specific challenges faced by journalists. Historically and currently, this subset of media ethics is widely known to journalists as their professional "code of ethics" or the "canons of journalism"...
than with physics.
The much-anticipated New York Times article on the Bogdanov scandal has appeared. Alas, it suffers from the usual journalistic conceit that a proper newspaper article must cover a "controversy". There must be two sides to the controversy, and the reporter's job is to elicit quotes from both parties and present them side-by-side. Almost inevitably, this "balanced" approach sheds no light on the matter, and leaves the reader shaking his head, "There they go again..."
Many comments have been made on the possible shortcomings of the referral system for published articles, and also on the criteria for acceptance of a thesis and subsequent delivery of a Doctorate of Philosophy. Frank Wilczek
Frank Wilczek
Frank Anthony Wilczek is a theoretical physicist from the United States and a Nobel laureate. He is currently the Herman Feshbach Professor of Physics at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology ....
, who edits Annals of Physics (and is now a Nobel laureate
Nobel Prize in Physics
The Nobel Prize in Physics is awarded once a year by the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences. It is one of the five Nobel Prizes established by the will of Alfred Nobel in 1895 and awarded since 1901; the others are the Nobel Prize in Chemistry, Nobel Prize in Literature, Nobel Peace Prize, and...
), told the press that the scandal motivated him to correct the journal's slipping standards, partly by assigning more reviewing duties to the editorial board.
Prior to the controversy, the reports on the Bogdanov theses and most of the journal referees' reports spoke favorably of their work, describing it as original and containing interesting ideas. This has been the basis of concerns raised about the efficacy of the peer-review
Peer review
Peer review is a process of self-regulation by a profession or a process of evaluation involving qualified individuals within the relevant field. Peer review methods are employed to maintain standards, improve performance and provide credibility...
system that the scientific community and academia use to determine the merit of submitted manuscripts for publication; one concern is that over-worked and unpaid referees may not be able to thoroughly judge the value of a paper in the little time they can afford to spend on it. Regarding the Bogdanov publications, physicist Steve Carlip remarked:
Referees are volunteers, who as a whole put in a great deal of work for no credit, no money, and little or no recognition, for the good of the community. Sometimes a referee makes a mistake. Sometimes two referees make mistakes at the same time.
I'm a little surprised that anyone is surprised at this. Surely you've seen bad papers published in good journals before this! ... referees give opinions; the real peer review begins after a paper is published.
Similarly, Richard Monastersky, writing in The Chronicle of Higher Education, observed, "There is one way...for physicists to measure the importance of the Bogdanovs' work. If researchers find merit in the twins' ideas, those thoughts will echo in the references of scientific papers for years to come." As of July 2009, the Bogdanovs' six published papers had been cited four times in SPIRES
Spires
Spires may refer to:* SPIRES, a database for publications in High-Energy Physics* Speyer , a city in Germany* The Spires, a commercial conference centre, operated out of Church House, Belfast by the Presbyterian Church in Ireland...
, a database of particle physics articles. For comparison, a somewhat controversial cosmological model known as the "ekpyrotic universe
Ekpyrotic
The ekpyrotic universe, or ekpyrotic scenario, is a cosmological model of the origin and shape of the universe. The name comes from a Stoic term ekpyrosis meaning conflagration or in Stoic usage "conversion into fire"...
" was published in 2001 and had been cited 569 times by July 2009. Before the controversy over their work arose, the scientific community had shown practically no interest in the Bogdanovs' papers; indeed, according to Stony Brook
State University of New York at Stony Brook
The State University of New York at Stony Brook, also known as Stony Brook University, is a public research university located in Stony Brook, New York, on the North Shore of Long Island, about east of Manhattan....
physics professor Jacobus Verbaarschot, who served on Igor Bogdanov's dissertation committee, without the hoax rumors "probably no one would have ever known about their articles." As of 2009, the Bogdanovs have not published any scientific papers since 2003.
Comparisons with the Sokal Affair
Several sources have referred to the Bogdanov Affair as a "reverse Sokal" hoax, drawing a comparison with the Sokal AffairSokal Affair
The Sokal affair, also known as the Sokal hoax, was a publishing hoax perpetrated by Alan Sokal, a physics professor at New York University. In 1996, Sokal submitted an article to Social Text, an academic journal of postmodern cultural studies...
, where the physicist Alan Sokal
Alan Sokal
Alan David Sokal is a professor of mathematics at University College London and professor of physics at New York University. He works in statistical mechanics and combinatorics. To the general public he is best known for his criticism of postmodernism, resulting in the Sokal affair in...
published a deliberately fraudulent and indeed nonsensical article in the humanities journal Social Text
Social Text
Social Text is an academic journal published by Duke University Press. Since its inception as an independent editorial collective in 1979, Social Text has addressed a wide range of social and cultural phenomena, covering questions of gender, sexuality, race, and the environment...
. Sokal's original aim had been to test the effects of the intellectual trend he called, "for want of a better term, postmodernism
Postmodernism
Postmodernism is a philosophical movement evolved in reaction to modernism, the tendency in contemporary culture to accept only objective truth and to be inherently suspicious towards a global cultural narrative or meta-narrative. Postmodernist thought is an intentional departure from the...
". Worried by this "more-or-less explicit rejection of the rationalist tradition of the Enlightenment
Age of Enlightenment
The Age of Enlightenment was an elite cultural movement of intellectuals in 18th century Europe that sought to mobilize the power of reason in order to reform society and advance knowledge. It promoted intellectual interchange and opposed intolerance and abuses in church and state...
," Sokal decided to perform an experiment which he later cheerfully admitted was both unorthodox and uncontrolled, provoking a maelstrom of reactions which, to his surprise, received coverage in Le Monde
Le Monde
Le Monde is a French daily evening newspaper owned by La Vie-Le Monde Group and edited in Paris. It is one of two French newspapers of record, and has generally been well respected since its first edition under founder Hubert Beuve-Méry on 19 December 1944...
and even the front page of the New York Times. One of the earliest to draw a comparison between the two events was physicist John Baez, in his October 2002 post to the sci.physics.research newsgroup
Newsgroup
A usenet newsgroup is a repository usually within the Usenet system, for messages posted from many users in different locations. The term may be confusing to some, because it is usually a discussion group. Newsgroups are technically distinct from, but functionally similar to, discussion forums on...
.
Both Igor and Grichka Bogdanov have vigorously insisted upon the validity of their work, and possess academic qualifications in the fields in which they are publishing, although the bona fides of their credentials are a bone of contention. In comparison, Alan Sokal was an outsider to the field in which he was publishing—a physicist, publishing in a humanities journal—and promptly issued a statement himself that his paper was a deliberate hoax; indeed, Sokal published the article to expose the weakness of the journal's editorial process. Replying on sci.physics.research, Sokal referred readers to his follow-up essay, in which he notes "the mere fact of publication of my parody" only proved that one particular journal's editors were "derelict in their intellectual duty". (According to the New York Times, Sokal was "almost disappointed" that the Bogdanovs had not attempted a hoax after his own style. "What's sauce for the goose is sauce for the gander," he said.) Baez, one of the first to make the comparison, later retracted, saying that the brothers "have lost too much face for [withdrawing the work as a hoax] to be a plausible course of action."
In a letter to the New York Times, Cornell
Cornell University
Cornell University is an Ivy League university located in Ithaca, New York, United States. It is a private land-grant university, receiving annual funding from the State of New York for certain educational missions...
physics professor Paul Ginsparg
Paul Ginsparg
Paul Ginsparg is a physicist widely known for his development of the ArXiv.org e-print archive and for contributions to theoretical physics.-Career in physics:...
writes that the contrast between the cases is plainly evident: "here, the authors were evidently aiming to be credentialed by the intellectual prestige of the discipline rather than trying to puncture any intellectual pretension." He adds that the fact some journals and scientific institutions have low or variable standards is "hardly a revelation." Both matters have, however, provoked discussion of peer-review reliability, value of academic papers published under credentials alone, and adequate evaluation of scholarly work by academia at large.
External links
- Mathematical Center of Riemannian Cosmology, Igor Bogdanoff's website
Initial discussion
Theses and papers:
- Scientific publications by Igor and Grichka Bogdanov Grichka Bogdanov's PhD thesis Igor Bogdanov's PhD thesis Comments on Grichka Bogdanov's unpublished preprint by Damien Calaque
Critical websites
- John Baez's discussion of the Bogdanov affair
- «Pot-Pourri» from Igor & Grichka Bogdanov's Before the Big Bang by Jean-Pierre Messager
- A small journey in the Bogdanoff universe by Alain Riazuelo