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By Becky Jungbauer | December 24th 2008 10:25 PM | 24 comments | Print | E-mail | Track Comments
About Becky

A scientist and journalist by training, I enjoy all things science, especially science-related humor. My column title is a throwback to Jane

...

View Becky's Profile
"You really are a vacuum fluctuation / You're as cuddly as a fractal, you're as fuzzy as multi-instanton knots, Mr. El Naschie."

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."

Comments

The link to John Baez page doesnt work anymore. Something is going on there, it seems like El Naschie is trying to intimidate people. There is a copy though and collection of material at http://elnaschiewatch.blogspot.com in case it disappears somewhere else.

Becky Jungbauer's picture
Thanks for the update! That's one of the perils of linking to other sites; who knows how long they'll stay live.

El Naschie Watch is in fact my blog. Thank you for pointing to it!

http://elnaschiewatch.blogspot.com

It is really a hopeless situation to talk to somebody in a sensible way who is in the habit of unleashing all sorts of insults on suspicion without a shred of a proof. It is mean to call somebody mean only because someone else has said something mean about him. You have no idea who is El Naschie nor what he has done. You are taking the word of people who are acting in bad faith. The whole campaing against him was materminded by a german lady who is now working in Holland. The reason is money, a great deal of money. There is also an element of vendetta and malignant jealousy. If you check your facts you will find that Nature has removed the defamatory article against El Naschie. If you research your subject you will find that John Baez has withdrawn his allegations, closed his blog and went into hiding. If you check in the court in Hamburg, you will find a court case. You will also find a big scandal. Someone has pulled the leg of Nature and several other publications and journals owned by the same company namely Macmillan. El Naschie is totally innocent. He is a victim of unscrupulous people who have no fear whatsoever from slandering, defamaing and even threatening innocent people to achieve their despicable aims. When you check with the Old Bailey in London, you will find even more perturbing news about the standard of the internet today. You can practically destroy the life of anyone if you are mean enough. If you are not, you should take off this despicable heading of your article.

Jean Pierre

Hank's picture
If you research your subject you will find that John Baez has withdrawn his allegations, closed his blog and went into hiding.

I assume by 'hiding' you mean he hasn't written anything in the last 4 or 5 days.    Hardly a sign that El Naschie's Eye of Agamotto (he inhabits a world of magic, after all) caused him to disappear from the planet.

Jean Pierre said "insults on suspicion without a shred of a proof". LOL

It is almost certain "Jean Pierre" is an Egyptian. The Naschienal Socialists are famous for their extensive but inept use of sock puppetry.

Best regards,

Jason

The story about El Naschie is complete fabrication and deliberate defamation by those who are hoping to benefit financially from it. You are totally out of date. In fact you are totally out of touch even with the internet. John Baez has closed his site. Nature has withdrawn its article. There are two Court cases pending decisions. There is no doubt that some heads will roll. If you have any decency you will remove all these despicable comments which are baseless. Alas this is the internet. If you do not have a scandal, you invent one. What is extremely worrying is the extent of viciousness characteristic for those who write behind false identities. Before the internet this was not possible. Now the animal inside the human being is taking over. If it goes on like that there is no doubt that there will be draconian measures against internet vandalism. The ultimate winner will then be dictatorship and real criminal organizations. You are bringing about what you have always been trying to avoid. Anarchy which is the present status of the internet and blogs always ends in dictatorship and state controlled everything. By the way you should see the site of Mr. Jason. If you vomit you have been warned. This is the kind and standard of those who are defaming El Naschie. That alone raises the man in my eyes. Many respectable blogs have banned him and these types from posting there. As for John Baez it is meant of course that he no longer comments on El Naschie and his infantile mathematical jokes about El Naschies analyses turned against him. By denying that there are eight exceptional E line Lie groups and that there is nothing called two Stein and three Stein spaces he officially declared his ignorance and incompetence. He stopped talking because he is ashamed of himself having been exposed as what he really is. A one man internet army he calls himself. True. An army of mercenaries being unemployed lazy internet layabouts.
G. Wyte

Hi Becky,

Jean Pierre and G. Wyte are Naschie Party sockpuppets. I have extensive experience identifying them. I am sorry if these creeps are bothering you; some bloggers kick them off. But if you have the stomach to put up with them, more power to you.

El Naschie denounced my El Naschie Watch blog by name recently in an Arabic language media interview. They post here because they're afraid to enter the lion's den by posting on my blog.

Jason

Hank's picture
I looked at your blog a few days ago.  That is funny stuff.

Hehe
Thanks Hank!

Becky Jungbauer's picture
I agree with Hank - good stuff. Thanks for posting here!

That is what you are good at you guys. If the webmaster or Mr. Hank find the stuff of Jason and those characters fun and fine then that speaks only for their character, education and the milieu in which they grew up.

Cute. Another sock puppet.

Mohamed El Naschies name is featuring in a brand new Royal Society Article just published. The paper is titled The Invariant Set Postulate a new geometric framework for the foundations of quantum theory and the role played by gravity. Proc. R. Soc. A published online 19 July 2009. Prof. Palmer is a theoretical physicist who participates in a sort of technology transfer bringing the mathematical methods of high energy physics and quantum mechanics to bear on weather forecast. Inspired by the work of Mohamed El Naschie he seems to have seen the light. He put his case succinctly using the following apt description. He said quantum mechanics is blind to fractals and this is the source of all paradoxes and contra intuitive interpretations of quantum mechanics. Many leading scientists regard Palmers paper as a milestone and blatant admission of the mainstream that they have been missing the point for decades. If this is the only good thing which came out of the work of Mohamed El Naschie then he was more than justified in publishing all his work in his own journal which is incidentally untrue. He has published in many other journals than Chaos, Solitons and Fractals. I was pleased to see that Palmer as befitting an Englishman and scientist acknowledged his indebtedness to the work of Ord Nottale and Mohamed El Naschie. He clearly is scornful of the cheap propaganda which has been conducted now for far too long against Mohamed El Naschie and his associates. I think it is time for the proprietor of this blog to change the titled of his article and acknowledge the bitter truth that the campaign against El Naschie was malicious deceptive and intended to serve the purpose and hidden agendas of certain quarters.

With all due respect to you Hank if you find that the crap written by Jason funny in the sense of amusing, then you should as a matter of urgency see your shrink as soon as humanly possible. If you however mean by funny malignant suspicious and downright unappetizing then of course I agree with you up to a point. The best thing and best policy of dealing with the scum of American industrial product is to ignore them. It is conduct unbecoming to let a creep like Jason or for that matter his paymasters advertise their smelly blogs in your blog which according to its name is devoted to science. I hope you can take these remarks in the same spirit in which they were written. I apologize for the harsh tone of my comment but the situation is from my perception intolerable at least for scientists. Incidentally I was directed to check in the High Court of England and there is a huge case filed by El Naschie against Nature and Macmillan. I understand that he is requiring a minimum of 10 million pounds compensation for the harm caused to him. The sad thing is that an ordinary professor could not possibly take arms against such malicious campaign as that launched against El Naschie. We are equal vis a vis the law provided we can pay the bill of lawyers who are capable of representing us, It is a sad sad story for science and scientists. How long can we remain on the receiving end and how long can we tolerate this internet and blogging anarchies.

It is a matter of public document that Mohamed El Naschie alias M Saladin Al Nashai as the correct Arabic spelling is, has taken Nature to the High Court. The writ against Nature is a public document which anyone can inspect by visiting the webpage of the High Court of London. The writ must have taken Nature by surprise and they have not been able to file a defence until this point of time. M S El Naschies lawyers are a big name in the UK and internationally. They are asking in private negotiations for a settlement in the order of 10 million pounds sterling. In news which have leaked through the lawyers offices of Nature. The only conclusion is that John Baez has misled Nature and he himself is in a trap of his own doing. I sincerely hope El Naschie wins his case so that this internet disgrace and anarchy could be tempered in the future for the benefit of all of us. We have seen the big scandal of banking in the US and elsewhare. I hope the media moguls like McMillan and Elsevier should be the next in line.

Scott is right and the readers of this blog may like to have a look at Sarah Limbricks article dated 2 Nov 2009. It is clear from this article entitled Editor of Scientific journal sues Nature that El Naschie has taken serious legal steps against the subject matter of your blog. Mohamed El Naschie has hired one of Englands leading libel experts and a well established firm Collyer Bristow of London. It will definitely be a long and costly legal battle. However it is now clear to any level headed person that M.S. El Naschie must have profound reasons to take this step in the High Court. I think it is the new culture of internet defamation which must be stopped. Without the internet the allegations made by N Category Cafe could not have been possible and consequently this entire regrettable affair.

Sarah Limbrick would surely be interested to know what the leading libel expert in England had to say about the Nature article complained of. He said he is in a state of disbelief that the worlds most respectable scientific journal Nature should publish an article which bears all the hallmarks of the tabloid press. Another interesting point is the conspiracy theory linking the plagiarism of El Naschies work published in Scientific American with the Nature article as well as a far worse article published in Die Zeit. Interestingly all of these three publications are owned by Macmillan. I understand from confidential sources that a mega surprise will be released at the trial engulfing highly reputed names some of whom are Nobel laureates. The site is http://www.pressgazette.co.uk/story.asp?sectioncode=1&storycode=44545&c=1.

I must disappoint you as Sarah Limbrick is not interested in anything. Sarah Limbrick is part and parcel of the John Baez internet army. She does not allow any comments on her half page article except if they defame Prof. El Naschie. Incidentally all the three comments which Sarah published are bogus. The last two are from the same crackpot Said Hamad. You can read about his background and conviction at http://thecaseofsaidelnashaie.blogspot.com/2009/01/case-of-said-elnashai.... I am afraid Nature will have to pay for all that. Of course Nature belongs to Macmillan who are so large that they may think they are above the law. However we have seen what happened to Leeman Brothers. No one is above the law.

Sehr geehrter Herr Blog-Intendant,
anscheinend machen Sie sich ernsthafte Gedanken über Islam und Wissenschaft. Ich nehme an, dass Sie nicht an einer Verleumdungskampagne teilnehmen wollen, denn dafür gibt es im Internet genügend Personen die ihr Leben damit vertrudeln andere Menschen aus Frust zu beschimpfen und ihnen alles Mögliche in die Schuhe schieben. Wenn ich in dieser Annahme richtig bin, dann möchten Sie sicherlich folgendes wissen.
1. John Baez ist kein ernsthafter Mathematiker und noch weniger Physiker. Er hat sich lediglich durch seine große Klappe einen Namen gemacht.
2. Renate Loll hat viele Arbeiten veröffentlicht, die letzte in Scientific American, die nichts anderes sind als eine Reformulierung der Theorie von Mohamed El Naschie, Laurent Nottale und Garnet Ord. Dies ist eine wissenschaftliche Unehrlichkeit in größtem Maße.

3. Als Rache an EL Naschie hat Loll die mit Baez sehr befreundet ist ihn beauftragt die Verleumdungskampagne zu inszenieren. Nature, Quirin Schiermeier und Christoph Drösser waren nur Werkzeuge von John Baez.
4. Rückenstärkung bekommt Professor Renate Loll von ihrem Chef dem Nobellaureat Geradus `t Hooft. Schließlich wird das Preisegeld zusammen geteilt.
5. Geradus `t Hooft ist ein enger Freund und Kollege von El Naschie. Was für eine Freundschaft. Der Rest ist Schweigen.
6. Wenn Sie im Obergericht in London nachfragen, werden Sie wissen, dass El Naschie Nature, Quirin Schiermeier, DIE ZEIT und Scientific American vor den Kadi genommen hat. Das ist das erste Mal in der Geschichte der renommierten Zeitschrift Nature, dass sie vor Gericht stehen. Glauben Sie im Ernst, irgendein Professor wird diesen Schritt wagen wenn er im Unrecht wäre. Sie müssen auch wissen, das die größte Anwaltskanzlei Londons Professor Mohamed El Naschie repräsentiert. Diese Kanzlei würde niemals jemanden gegen Nature repräsentieren wenn er im Unrecht wäre. Die haben einen Namen zu bewahren.
Das sind die Tatsachen und wenn Sie es unverändert in Ihrem Blog veröffentlichen dann helfen Sie dabei die Wahrheit ans Tageslicht zu bringen.

The time of Huxley and Darwin were the golden age of science. Now we have funding, American style. Once you have money playing such a fundamental role, as is the case in big science, then for better or worse, ethical standards change. You remember a theorem a day means promotion and pay. Mohamed El Naschie was of course quite naïve. He is an engineer. High energy physics is not his professional work. He practices it in a gentlemanly manor as a hobby. He was woken up in a bitter way. Unlike engineers prizes are the only way for theoretical physicists to come to big chunks of money. Do I need to say more? Good luck with your litigation. You will need all your savings, El Naschie that is, to pay your lawyers.

Here is what a great Swedish scientist Tonu Puu said about Mohamed El Naschie or M.S. El Naschie in his beautiful book Art, Science and Economics published by Springer in 2006. The last paragraph of the preface says I was most honoured when some time ago Professor Mohammad El Naschie, Editor-in-Chief of one of the most exciting and successful journal publishing ventures (Elsevier) I have ever been involved in, suggested to publish this essay in parts in the shape of articles, though I naturally prefer the present connected publication form. This does not sound like a mean man and common decency requires that the blog master of this site should change the appalling title.

The case of El Naschie versus Nature has progressed quite a bit since the last article in the Press Gazette by Lyssa Limrick. You should check the High Court. El Naschie is a victim of a well planned defamation campaign to divert from a scandal in scientific American caused by an article on Fractal spacetime in 2008. We in the Gulf area know exactly what this is all about. When you in the West want our oil, you take it by force. Now you want to take our pride. You want us to doubt our people. You will not get what you want. Whether Prof.El Naschie wins this case or not, we believe him. We have no trust whatsoever in those who are behind the Nature tabloid article.

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