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| title | chunk | source | category | tags | date_saved | instance |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Bogdanov affair | 3/7 | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bogdanov_affair | reference | science, encyclopedia | 2026-05-05T09:29:43.001702+00:00 | kb-cron |
=== Thesis readers === One of the scientists who approved Igor Bogdanov's thesis, Roman Jackiw of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, spoke to The New York Times reporter Dennis Overbye. Overbye wrote that 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, Ignatios Antoniadis (of the École Polytechnique), 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.
=== Pre- and post-publication official commentary on the journal articles === In May 2001, the journal Classical and Quantum Gravity (CQG) reviewed an article authored by Igor and Grichka Bogdanov, titled "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 the journal's senior publisher, Andrew Wray, and its co-editor, Hermann Nicolai. 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 was, however, not officially 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. Moreover, Die Zeit quoted 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 is difficult to describe what is wrong in Section 4, since almost nothing is right. [...] 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."
=== Online criticism of the papers ===
After the start of the Usenet discussion, most comments were critical of the Bogdanovs' work. For example, John C. Baez 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 [Bogdanovs'] 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. 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:
Since the big bang happened everywhere, 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: