ACCUSATIONS that two French TV presenters sneaked bogus papers into reputable physics journals has sent the sedate world of academic physics into turmoil. Opinions over the fracas remain divided, but one view is that it shows the peer-review system has become outdated.
The saga began when Max Niedermaier, a physicist at Tours University in France, alleged in an email to another physicist that twins Igor and Grichka Bogdanov gained PhDs for 鈥渟poof鈥� theses about the Universe鈥檚 creation.
The allegations triggered a heated debate on the newsgroup Sci.Physics.Research, which gained momentum amid rumours that the twins had also published four 鈥渕eaningless鈥� papers in serious scientific journals, including Classical and Quantum Gravity (vol 18, p 4341). Physicist John Baez of the University of California, Riverside, reported details on his website. 鈥淪ome parts of their papers almost seem to make sense, but the more carefully I read them, the less sense they make. Eventually I either start laughing or get a headache,鈥� he says.
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During the discussion, it emerged that the Bogdanovs had been taken to court over a book they published in 1991 called Dieu et la Science (God and Science). The case was brought by Trinh Thuan, an astronomer at the University of Virginia, Charlottesville, who claimed that the brothers had plagiarised his own book, The Secret Melody, published in France in 1988. But the twins claimed Thuan plagiarised their earlier work. The case was settled out of court but it emerged that the cover of the Bogdanovs鈥� book said they both had PhDs, although at the time they did not. The 52 year olds, who studied applied maths in the 1970s, both gained PhDs in the past three years from the University of Burgundy in Dijon.
The Bogdanovs insist they have not hoaxed anyone, adding that scientists don鈥檛 understand their work because the maths is unconventional and their theses are in French. Daniel Sternheimer, the twins鈥� PhD supervisor, backs them. He understands the gist of their ideas, even if he doesn鈥檛 agree with them, he says.
But cosmologist Andrei Linde of Stanford University in California says that at least one statement in a paper by Igor Bogdanov is 鈥渞ubbish, plain and simple鈥�. But revolutionary theories often sound crazy, he says. 鈥淚t takes a lot of experience to distinguish between creative craziness and plain stupidity or an inventive hoax,鈥� he adds.
The editors of Classical and Quantum Gravity now say they should not have published the Bogdanovs鈥� paper. 鈥淚t does not make any sense to me,鈥� says editor Hermann Nicolai of the Max Planck Institute for Gravitational Physics in Potsdam.
The message, says Baez, is that peer review doesn鈥檛 guarantee quality. Baez says journals are becoming obsolete and should be replaced by electronic archives, to which peers can add comments. 鈥淭here are lots of flaws in the publishing system,鈥� says Baez. 鈥淢aybe it takes a ridiculous case like this to get people thinking about something else.鈥�