Bogus Research, Even-More-Bogus Researcher

Abstract

Peer-reviewed journals usually frown on the use of obscenities. So when a paper titled “ Get Me Off Your [Expletive] Mailing List” was recently reviewed and accepted by the International Journal of Advanced Computer Technology (IJACT), more than a few eyebrows were arched. The profane paper is the creation of Eddie Kohler, now at Harvard University, and David Mazieres, now at Stanford University. In 2005, the computer science professors were annoyed by the amount of spam e-mail they were receiving from an illegitimate research conference soliciting paper submissions. Eager to communicate their desire to be left alone, the duo wrote and submitted “Get Me Off Your [Expletive] Mailing List,” which is laid out like a normal research paper, complete with abstract, headings, subheadings, and concluding summary. The only difference is that unlike a normal research paper that features actual research, Kohler and Mazieres’s paper features its titular phrase repeated over ...