Hacking Google Scholar

Finally, we enjoyed (but were dismayed by) the account given on Reese Richardson's blog about how Google Scholar can be "hacked".  Phony papers are uploaded onto ResearchGate, to boost citations to one's own (possibly equally fraudulent) papers.  There are companies offering to carry out such a citation-boosting campaign for paying customers, but Richardson shows how easily one can do it oneself.  However after he wrote about it, Google Scholar removed the fraudulent citations to the work of "Larry Richardson" (a cat), without necessarily implementing a global solution to the problem.

Predatory conferences: an expose!

Also in this week's Nature, an investigation of predatory conferences!  Journalist Christine Ro actually attended one.  Her observations are eye opening.

I get spam emails from these conferences on a weekly basis.  I've never been tempted to attend one.  I tend to go to conferences sponsored by professional societies that I know fairly well, or other established conference series.  However, as the article shows, many do not have the luxury of being as picky as I am.  Predatory conferences are basically rip-offs, of both the attendees and those who evaluate their CVs.

DTLR hereby denounces predatory conferences, and urges scientists to boycott these sham events.

More Earth Science

The June issue of Physics Today featured an interesting article by Gayen and Klocker, "Deep Convection Drives Oceanic Overturning", pointing to the inadequacy of the classical Rayleigh-Benard model of ocean convection.  This reinforces my questioning of the sincerity of those who study small aspect ratio thermal convection, when they make claims that their research is somehow relevant to real convection in planetary or stellar environments.

This month's Eos has a really nice summary of the flaws of the Colorado River Compact, by Ge et al.  Although I don't live in the Colorado River catchment, I am not far away, and this is a case study of the inevitably ugly collision of science and politics.

Speaking of which, this week Nature has a news article by Jeff Tollefson on a whistle-blower at the U.S. Geological Survey.  Unfortunately, any government bureau is necessarily politically accountable, and this leads to unavoidable clashes betweeen scientific "experts" and political authorities.  Formal whistleblower protections codified in federal law have little or no actual value in the real world. though federal employees are forced to take annual trainings on them.  It is a colossal deceit.

An Antarctic expedition

I would also like to strongly recommend a delightful article by a journalist (Sofia Moutinho) who joined a scientific expedition to Antarctica, described in the June issue of Eos.  As someone who does not routinely do field work, this piece was an intriguing glimpse at the intense tempo of operations, and extreme conditions, for such an expedition.

The debunking of superluminal neutrinos

The July issue of Significance includes an article in its "Bad Stats" series by Robert Matthews about the claim made in 2011 by experimental physicists in San Grasso, Italy, of detecting faster-than-light neutrinos from CERN.  This was the story of the OPERA experiment (Oscillation Project with Emulsion-tRacking Apparatus).  Among the literature cited by Matthews is a very good write-up on the episode by Chad Orzel, in the MIT Ptess Reader.  This article originally appeared in a 2020 book, Pseudoscience, published by MIT Press.  Orzel's piece is probably the best non-technical summary and post-mortem of the incident that I've run across - a keeper.  DTLR recommends it!

Happy Birthday, APS!

May 20 was the 125th birthday of the American Physical Society (APS).  Founded in 1899 at Columbia University, and later taking over publication of the Physical Review (founded in 1893 at Cornell University) in 1913, the society has expanded both its core early functions (conferences and journal publications) as well as added many other programs in the last century and a quarter.

I joined the APS around 1997, and its Centennial Meeting in Atlanta (1999) was the first national scientific conference I ever attended, and the first one I ever gave a talk at.  That year, the March and April meetings were combined into a grand extravaganza, with (if I recall right) well over 10,000 attendees.  I remember following (by coincidence) at least one Nobel Laureate down an escalator (J. Friedman) and recognizing others in the hallways or meeting rooms.  I presented again at the 2002 March Meeting in Indianapolis, though my findings were shot down by a very prominent scientist in the audience.  That was the second and final time I presented at an APS conference, though in later years I've attended "for fun" on my own time on several occasions, including last year.  I have also attended a number of APS section meetings, as well as the Division of Fluid Dynamics annual meetings.  I once published in an APS journal (Physical Review E), but that was during the end of my time in graduate school.

Since I have not been a practicing physicist for over two decades, I have not been an active APS member, but I am a Life Member of the parent organization and a number of its individual units.  Indeed, I have been an APS member for just over 20% of APS's own lifetime, and just over 50% of my own lifetime!  Many Happy Returns, APS!

Physics Today and fluid mechanics

Back in December, I discussed a couple recent items in Physics Today of great relevance to fluid mechanics.  I remarked that we don't get to see fluid mechanics on the cover of PT very often.  Well, lo and behold, the last couple months have proven me delightfully wrong!  The cover of the April issue featured "Fluid Dynamics of Dry Salt Lakes", referring to a "quick study" article by Beaume, Goehring, and Lasser.  It discusses a theory of groundwater convection as a possible explanation of polygonal patterns on dry lake beds ("salt polygons").  The very next month, the cover features "A Shocking Start to Stars", referring to a piece by Ceccarelli and Codella, on the role of shock waves in the interstallar medium, especially in star formation, and even in synthesizing certain precursor molecules of life itself.

However, I was personally most enthralled by another piece that also appeared in the May issue by meteorologist Tim Palmer, "The real butterfly effect and maggoty applies".  The title seems to have been taken from two earlier efforts, one coauthored by Palmer in 2019 on the real butterfly effect (published in Nonlinearity), and the other a 2002 PT Reference Frame article by Sir Michael Berry on singular limits.  Both these papers seem to have had a strong influence on this article, which mainly deals with weather predictibility, and more generally the predictability of nonlinear systems, including the limits of artificial intelligence-based prediction.  The article is very good, informative, and very readable.  I'd come across the singular limit concept in discussions of aerodynamic lift, where viscosity is the parameter that when taken to exactly zero (and not just a limit approaching zero) results in the impossibility of lift.  Reading Palmer's piece, and then Berry's, has helped me understand that there are other such examples in physics.