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Bogdanov affair

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The Bogdanov Affair is a controversy in theoretical physics about the merit of a series of papers published in some reputable scholarly journals and the academic credentials awarded based on the content of those publications. The affair received widespread media attention outside of academic physics, where commentators questioned the strength of the peer-review system that the scientific community and academia use to determine the merit of work.

During 1999–2002, popular French TV presenters Igor and Grichka Bogdanov obtained Ph.D. degrees on the basis of two theses (one in mathematics, one in theoretical physics) from the University of Burgundy. From this work, they published six papers in refereed physics and mathematics journals, including Annals of Physics and Classical and Quantum Gravity. After reading the abstracts of both theses, a French physicist named Max Niedermaier stated them to be pseudoscience, consisting entirely of dense technical jargon in a manner similar to the Sokal Affair. On 22 October 2002, Niedermaier subsequently sent an email to this effect to various physicists. An eventual recipient of this email, the American mathematical physicist John Baez, created a discussion on the Usenet newsgroup sci.physics.research entitled, "Physics bitten by reverse Alan Sokal hoax? "

This question immediately attracted worldwide attention, both in the physics community and in the international popular press. Following Niedermaier, most of the participants to the Usenet thread of discussion created by Baez made assumptions that the work was a deliberate hoax in the style of Sokal, to which the Bogdanov brothers have continued to make vehement rebuttals. Niedermaier issued a private and public apology to the Bogdanovs on 24 October 2002 for assuming from the outset that their work was a deliberate hoax (he has not endorsed the validity or merit of the work in question).

In response to contacts by a number of the journal's readers, the Editorial Board of the journal Classical and Quantum Gravity (CQG) issued a statement saying:

Regrettably, despite the best efforts, the refereeing process cannot be 100% effective. Thus the paper "Topological theory of the initial singularity of spacetime" by G Bogdanov and I Bogdanov, Classical and Quantum Gravity 18 4341-4372 (2001) made it through the review process even though, in retrospect, it does not meet the standards expected of articles in this journal.
The journal's Editorial Board became aware of this situation already in April 2002. The paper was discussed extensively at the annual Editorial Board meeting in September 2002, 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. However, there are at this time no plans to withdraw the article. Rather, the journal publishes refereed Comments and Replies by readers and authors as a means to comment on and correct mistakes in published material.

The Bogdanovs point to support of referees of their CQG submission :

Sound, original and of interest. With revisions I expect the paper to be suitable for publication.The author's make the interesting observation that, in the limit of infinite temperature, a field theory is reduced to a topological field theory which may be a suitable description of the initial phase of the universe. (...) I can accept that in the limit of infinite temperature, contact can be made with a topological phase of some field theory (the type of field theory needs to be elaborated on however). The crucial question, however, is how does the initial topological phase break down to a universe we see today.

The Bogdanovs' work purports to encompass quantum groups, KMS theory, and topological field theory, culminating in a proposition of a theory for describing what occurred before the Big Bang. Whilst the general public cannot be expected to have the expertise to evaluate the specialised technical claims of either side in this dispute, currently nearly all physicists who have published on web forums and sci.physics.research newsgroups are of the opinion that the Bogdanov paper is a hoax, "gibberish", or at best, a piece of sloppy work plagued by errors, while a few other theoretical physicists currently defend the Bogdanov theory.

On the other hand, and before this widespread "hoax" discussion, the reports on their thesis and most of the journal referees' reports spoke favorably of their work. This is at the root of questions regarding the strength of the peer-review system that the scientific community and academia use to determine the merit of submitted manuscripts for publication. Physicist Steve Carlip remarks about this:

... The referees made a mistake. Well, accidents happen. Referees are volunteers, and get very little reward for their service to the community. Sometimes they get overwhelmed ... and get careless. Sometimes they don't want to admit that they don't understand a paper. Sometimes they read their own ideas into a paper. Two referees are better than one, but once in a while they'll both make mistakes.

At the opposite, theoretical physicist Lubos Motl comments :

"...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.)

An indication of the impact that these theories may have on theoretical physics can be inferred by the references made to them in subsequent papers by other theoretical physicists (5 references today on SPIRES database for a total of 6 published papers and one unpublished preprint).

Meanwhile, the Bogdanovs continue to vigorously defend their work as genuine and to stand behind their original claims. The general topic of "before the Big Bang" is a complicated and technical field, and their work purports to present forward-looking theories.

In 2004, the Bogdanovs published a highly successful popular-science French-language book, Avant Le Big-Bang ("Before the Big Bang"), based on a simplified version of their theses, where they presented their own approach amongst other cosmological models. In the framework of a short weekly television program, created by the Bogdanovs in 2002, a 90-minute cosmology special broadcast went on the air on the French channel France 2 in August 2004. Both the book and television show have been criticized for scientific inaccuracies, while others admire the Bogdanovs' ability to bring the subjects of cosmology and relativity to a wider audience.

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