Perhaps those would really be the words had Dr. Seuss known about M.S. El Nashchie. A Christmas Eve shout-out to Slashdot (news for nerds) for this story. Nothing like a good mathematical publishing scandal to get you in that warm fuzzy Christmas spirit.
The scandal is about one El Naschie, editor in chief of the 'scientific' journal Chaos, Solitons and Fractals, published by Elsevier. This is one of the highest impact factor journals in mathematics, but the quality of the papers in it is extremely poor. The journal has also published 322 papers with El Naschie as (co-)author, five of them in the latest issue. Like many crackpots, El Nashie has a kind of cult around him, with another journal devoted to praising his greatness.A post by John Baez on the physics, math and philosophy blog n-Category Cafe details some of the inaccuracies step by step - an interesting read.
The journal, published by the company that employs me (although thankfully I'm not anywhere near the same division), does really exist. Check it out here. And the journal referenced in the Slashdot post is the International Journal of Nonlinear Science and Numerical Simulation. I'm sure you're all familiar with it; I know I keep it on my bedside table for light reading. Here's a post on the n-Category Cafe site referencing the self-adulating and the "crackpotness" of El Naschie. Two of the quotes pulled from the post: "Our Chinese Scientists on Nonlinear Dynamics are in infinite love and admiration to both the man and his science. ... Treading the path of El Naschie, we gather together to celebrate the century’s greatest scientist after Newton and Einstein, and share his greatest achievement."
I also enjoyed reading through some of the comments on the Slashdot story site. Great comment that I'm sure every scientist would like to see written about him or her: "Maybe he's being published more for the humorous aspect of it all than for the actual information."
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