Your next paper could be computer-generated

Are you tired of writing a paper, based on real experiments? SciGen could come to the rescue, at least if you do computer science research. SciGen is a program that creates random papers, complete with results, discussion, graphs and references. Some of these random papers have been accepted at conferences or even for publication.

SciGen is of course a hoax. There are other famous hoaxes in science, including the 1996 Alan Sokal paper “Transgressing the Boundaries: Towards a Transformative Hermeneutics of Quantum Gravity”.

What do these hoaxes have in common? They randomly generate pseudo-scientific language. Important ingredients are buzzword frequently used in the field and standard phrases. If we look carefully, we find examples of this random-talk in our own work as well.