Randomly generated articles

Struggling to write a paper?  Three grad students in a research group at MIT CSAIL have the answer — a program that can generate random research papers.  So far it’s restricted to the field of Comp Science, but it’s only a matter of time before some savvy law students see the gap in market (now that plagiarism’s fairly well covered on the Net) and produce one for their overburdened  lecturers.  The grads give a taster of the results, and record their delight at getting a randomly generated paper accepted at the WMSCI 2005 conference (Orlando, FL).  With the aid of web-generated donations they’re attending the conference to give ‘a completely randomly-generated talk, delivered entirely with a straight face’.  Hope they sneak a videotape of the event. 


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2 responses to “Randomly generated articles”

  1. Michael Hughes avatar

    Unfortunately they’ve had the paper returned and their invitation rescinded, they are still however trying to go.

  2. Paul avatar
    Paul

    So I heard — all power to them. If I were the conference organisers I’d organise a session around them on the subject of peer review, etc. I’ve just written a paper on, with Nigel Duncan, editor of The Law Teacher, about the web-based peer-review processes that we used for the special edition of the journal on ICT & legal education.
    By the way, congrats on being the first commentator on this blog, Michael….