
Bogdanov affair - luu
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bogdanov_affair
======
mappu
_> "The Bogdanoffs' work is significantly more incoherent than just about
anything else being published. But the increasingly low standard of coherence
in the whole field is what allowed them to think they were doing something
sensible and publish it."_

There's a certain beauty in an entire field losing coherency.

I feel like this quote could be about javascript libraries too. For instance
[http://vanilla-js.com/](http://vanilla-js.com/) has all the right jargon and
could be mistaken for a serious project.

~~~
koolba
> For instance [http://vanilla-js.com/](http://vanilla-js.com/) has all the
> right jargon and could be mistaken for a serious project.

That's hilarious. I like the counter showing the size as you add features: "
_0 bytes uncompressed, 25 bytes gzipped_ "

~~~
cynicaldevil
I remember my friend mentioning this when I told him I had just started web
development and wanted to learn a new framework. I even selected the features
I thought I should have, hit the download button, and was surprised to see an
empty folder in my downloads *facepalm"

------
fermigier
For many years (in the 1980s), the Bogdanoffs claimed (for instance, in the
back covers of their popular science books) to be "authentic geniuses", with
combined IQs > 400 and two (2) PhD's each.

This was, obviously now, not true, at least for the "PhD" part of the claim,
so at one point they had to try to pass PhDs for real. It took them quite a
bit of time and effort, and this effort, as I had been told at the time the
"affair" was unraveling by mathematicians who had been involved in this
process, was to call famous scientists of their time over the phone asking
them questions about the subject of their thesis (after all they were some
sort of journalists so at least they knew how to ask questions), and
transcribe the answers. Unfortunately they only understood the words of these
conversations but not their meanings, which explains why their thesis can look
like some genuine science if you look at the sentence level, but doesn't make
any sense when you try to find any meaning in it.

Some recent discussion about the affair (in French):
[http://sciences.blogs.liberation.fr/2015/07/02/les-
bogdanov-...](http://sciences.blogs.liberation.fr/2015/07/02/les-bogdanov-
condamnes-au-profit-du-cnrs/)

What's doubling truly sad in this story, IMHO, is that:

1) While the are obviously not the scientific geniuses they claim to be, they
are even not good science popularisers, they are actually really bad.

2) There are still people, and not only people attracted by pseudoscience or
the bizarre aspects of their personality, that take them seriously. I
remember, for instance, that that have been interviewed in recent years on
France Info (national public french information radio) about the Higgs boson
discovery or their recent books.

~~~
agumonkey
They're weird beasts, not taken seriously anymore by academics, and not taken
seriously by tv audience, that just want a bit of smart stuff on stage to feel
educated for 5 minutes. Before they divert the interviews in jokes and music.

One more thing, being a science populariser requires a special ability to
bridge different mindsets, it's not easy, for instance Cedric Villani is not
good at that, his tv appearances goes quickly into silent misunderstandings. A
guy like MIT's ex W. Lewin is better at this IMO.

~~~
baby
> not taken seriously by tv audience

last time I checked, most people still think they are legit in France.

------
freerobby
This got me real good:

> One of the scientists who approved Igor Bogdanov's thesis, MIT's Roman
> 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."

~~~
grondilu
> "All these were ideas that could possibly make sense. It showed some
> originality and some familiarity with the jargon. That's all I ask."

Wow. Talk about low standards.

------
v4nn4
Grichka thesis : [https://tel.archives-
ouvertes.fr/tel-00001502/document](https://tel.archives-
ouvertes.fr/tel-00001502/document)

Igor thesis : [https://tel.archives-
ouvertes.fr/tel-00001503v1/document](https://tel.archives-
ouvertes.fr/tel-00001503v1/document)

~~~
chm
Unacceptable. Proper formatting is a prerequisite. It's not about being
elitist - it's about readability and efficient communication. The equations in
these "theses" are so badly formatted I would have taken off marks if an
undergrad gave me something similar.

It's fine if you have a handful of equations in your text. But for a PhD in
maths? Unacceptable.

~~~
baby
Even their sentences don't make sense, they just pile up complex words
together. There is not one sane line written.

------
revelation
I come away from reading this Wikipedia article still unclear if their thesis
and papers are nonsense.

I figure it's bad news for the field of big bang physics when you can't
falsify nonsense. I thought that was the point of the whole science thing.

~~~
agumonkey
This quote is clear though

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bogdanov_affair#cite_ref-le-
mo...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bogdanov_affair#cite_ref-le-monde_14-1)

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.[14]

------
wott
I had no idea they were "famous" on English Wikipedia.

~~~
agumonkey
I'm still processing the presence of this on HN's FP.

~~~
angry_octet
It is interesting to contrast the discussions of 'impostor syndrome' with
actual impostors. When I hear various snake-oil spiels ( _blockchain_ springs
to mind) or just a self-hype I often wonder if the person has self-awareness
of their being a phony.

------
dcgudeman
Wow I just googled these guys. Not that it should matter but this is how they
look:

[http://imgur.com/0X0myNJ](http://imgur.com/0X0myNJ)

I could be wrong but it looks like they have had a lot of plastic surgery...

~~~
asveikau
Two things I notice...

First: before the surgeries, they have facial features that would be common in
Russia but would stand out in a crowd of western europeans. It is a bit sad if
this part contributes to the comment that they look weird. I think it does.

Second: at some point they start to seem obsessed with some twisted idea of
looking youthful and in deep denial of their age. For example, the same faces
with shorter, grayer hair would look better.

------
junke
> Since 1979, Igor and Grichka Bogdanov have been widely known in France as
> television-show hosts.

They recently had their own parodical song:

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HbXj2OGXFjI](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HbXj2OGXFjI)

This is about their supposedly abnormally long chin (people regularly joke
about Bogdanov being aliens).

~~~
Fiahil
But why?

How could we, as a society, let that happen?

~~~
SFJulie
TL DR; France is the country where Cargo Cult science is born, and that what
was Feynman has been warning against, because it it was beginning to
contaminate US at his time (has finished by now)

It is called academism: when you respect the look&feel of science more than
science itself.

Some very well known moralists that have been making some real scientific
breakthrough such as Pasteur, Cuvier have used this to publish pseudo science
based on their scientific credit France has hence created some very disturbing
_pseudo-science_ backed by academy

Pasteur was a convinced puritan. When the league of virtue came to him to shut
down the sinners who where drinking alcohol, he backed a totally un-scientific
study to claim absinth was a poison. The prohobition in USA is based on a
similar lobbying.

Cuvier who was friend of Linné, after going to a pub by seeing one poor girl
from south african born with a dysmorphia made a very nice theory from one
sample stating that the «black» where closers to the gorillas than the
«whites». Giving racism a «scientific credit».

Than in the early XXth helped by politics, scientific academy claimed that all
about crimes could be solved with science, hence the birth of scientific
police and «scientific methods to investigate» (CSI) including: using
graphology, numerology, the face of the people (based on Cuvier) and extended
to say stuff like the facial trait of jews that were more akin to be
criminals, polygraphs and shits.

One of our greatest and first she PhD, Marie Curie (who was born polish) was
at the opposite of Bogdanov constantly under the fire of criticism of «our
scientific institutions» for being too free. (She divorced, had an affair, and
above all CLAIMED to be able to do science by herself). Thus French scientific
academy have asked the Royal Academy of Stockholm to not give her the Nobel
prize in 1906. Stupidity that they happily ignored.

French science had always a tendency to prefer the appearance of science over
its content (reading Molière is very informative on the topic), and until
recently USA developed itself greatly by abhorring this model (read
quicksilver from Stephenson as a good picture) greatly inspired by the
«erudition» held by the church.

But after the WWII amazingly USA have been all the more looking like France in
its worst part they have been bashing France.

I think the biography of Feynman and the part on the introduction of
Fundamental Math is instructive. It is the fundation of the cargo cult story.
Or the book of Pr Gleick on dynamic systems where it is described why
Mandelbrot prefered to give up on polytechnique (french Ivy league) or even
the Sokal scandal can depict a pretty accurate picture of the slow convergence
of US academism towards french one.

America's greatness in knowledge is being held down by this: conformism, and
giving more credit to institution than they ought to have.

~~~
ralfd
> the introduction of Fundamental Math is instructive. It is the fundation of
> the cargo cult story.

What do you mean by that?

~~~
SFJulie
according to Feynman autobiography the talk he gave was inspired by the
feelings that he had reading the textbook while in the californian commission
for it. At the time of the introduction of «Mahtématiques fondamentales» a
french revolutionary (lol) methodology for learning maths.

He expressed a concern that this kind of math did look savant, but was wrong
in helping having intuition. Arithmetics vs geometry.

Stuff for which he may be right since Bourbaki actually designed their math
teaching on formalism over intuition/geometry after a feud with Poincaré who
dismissed the influence of «french school» in his work...a very horrible crime
of lèse majesté.

The Ignorance of Bourbaki:
[https://www.dpmms.cam.ac.uk/~ardm/bourbaki.pdf](https://www.dpmms.cam.ac.uk/~ardm/bourbaki.pdf)

------
fzn
As an aside, they did a marketing video for the commodore Amiga
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JjRNAndfFEY](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JjRNAndfFEY)
:)

------
agumonkey
Funny, coincidentally read about Schon's scandal, read this
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sch%C3%B6n_scandal](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sch%C3%B6n_scandal)
which list this thread's link too.

------
musgravepeter
In some ill-defined dual space of a Bogdanov manifold there is the Sokal
affair:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sokal_affair](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sokal_affair)

------
dfsegoat
Almost sounds a bit like Elizabeth Holmes...

------
phtrivier
Popular culture sidenote : in France, the Bogdanov's brothers are now _the_
standard butt of jokes related to:

\- aesthetic surgery (in a close race with actresses Emanuelle Beart and
Angelina Jolie)

\- aliens (or people looking like, claiming to have met, or communicate with
aliens)

\- chins (a rather popular comedian has based about 12% of all his jokes about
silly puns with Bogdanov's brothers and the word 'menton')

\- lots of other stufff

\- mad scientists

\- and, I suppose, cosmologists (although it is probably a challenge to make a
cosmologist joke in front of a regular audience.)

For whatever it's worth, next time you have to make a standup routine in
France.

~~~
77pt77
> aesthetic surgery

[http://assets.nydailynews.com/polopoly_fs/1.446201.131459328...](http://assets.nydailynews.com/polopoly_fs/1.446201.1314593283!/img/httpImage/image.jpg_gen/derivatives/article_750/alg-
split-bogdanoff-brothers-jpg.jpg)

~~~
skrebbel
Does anyone here understand why people do this to themselves? Is it some sort
of disorder, like anorexia?

~~~
DanBC
Body dysmorphia is relatively common, has a high rate of attempted suicide and
deaths by suicide.

[http://www.medscape.com/viewarticle/740015](http://www.medscape.com/viewarticle/740015)

