A puppet commenter informs me that El Naschie is suing Nature. El Naschie, you may remember, was the journal editor of Chaos, Solitons and Fractals who was accused of not reviewing his own papers in the journal. To be expected, I suppose. But the commenter that pointed this out is entertaining:
Sarah Limbrick [Pontiff: writer of the above linked article about the suit] 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.
OOooh, Nobel laureates in a libel case and conspiracy theories to boot! That’s bigger than the Scopes monkey trial!
I wouldn’t feel special, QP: the same comment appears whenever someone criticizes el Naschie, e.g. here:
http://www.scientificblogging.com/truth_universally_acknowledged/blog/youre_mean_one_mr_el_naschie
And it’s definitely a puppet.
Eric: Yeah I saw the Simon Singh stuff. UK libel is, in my humble opinion, absolutely crazy. Sorry Brits, your libel standards suck (see if I can spark some spirited defense.)
D. Eppstein: not sure where to find the relevant old article.
I don’t know if you followed the Simon Singh affair that several of your biomedical SciBlings posted about, but being sued for libel in the UK is no laughing matter. All that the plaintiff has to do to gain standing is to show that the article harmed his reputation (check). After that the burden of proof is on the defendant, and the truth is not always a valid defense. El Naschie’s lawyer is of course talking his book when he calls the Nature article tabloid reporting (assuming that your anonymous commenter is accurately reporting that lawyer’s opinion), but it’s Nature that has to prove that it’s not libelous.
The old location of the Nature story has gone offline. Any ideas where to find a cached copy? It makes it difficult to evaluate how hyperbolic El Naschie’s lawyer is being when we can’t see the piece he’s calling “tabloid journalism”. And shouldn’t he have reason himself to use care in badmouthing others?
The old location of the Nature story has gone offline.
So has the n-Category Cafe post devoted to the topic. This is probably related to the libel lawsuit: as I said above, once the plaintiff shows that the allegedly libelous material harmed his reputation (easy for El Naschie to satisfy, as their publication led to his resigning/being fired as editor of that journal), the burden of proof is on the defendant. Your best bet is to look in the library to see if they have a dead-tree copy.
Pedantry: *English* libel law is insanely out of control; there is no UK libel law. I doubt very much you’ll see a spirited defence of English libel law; it really is crazy.
English libel law, whatever, it still stinks. 🙂
Did you hear the recent study that American’s speech is closer to traditional English than the current stuff spoken in England?
The more I mull on this, the more nervous I get. Perhaps I’m being overly Chicken Little here, but the only way to fend off the libel action might be to collate and marshall the sock-puppets’ accusations (in themselves libelous) as evidence. Otherwise the courts could get sucked into a narrative of “private individual bullied by bigshots”.
Jeffrey Shallit found a cached copy here.
Sadly, it appears that el Naschie is not being represented by Carter-Ruck. With their recent successes in the area of reputation management, I’d have thought they’d be the ideal choice.
you can find the nature article at the elnaschie watch blog, http://elnaschiewatch.blogspot.com/, or email me for a pdf copy of the article.
cheers,
Martin Klicken
Just fixing the typo in the link Martin gave:
El Naschie Watch
Eric, as it seems the disappearance
of the n-Category Cafe post is not related to a libel lawsuit. Read more at the elnaschie watch blog:
http://elnaschiewatch.blogspot.com/
Here is a direct link to the n-category archive:
http://elnaschiewatch.blogspot.com/2009/02/that-hard-to-find-baez-material.html
These posts discuss why Baez took it down:
http://elnaschiewatch.blogspot.com/2009/02/did-baez-and-distler-succumb-to-legal.html
http://elnaschiewatch.blogspot.com/2009/05/my-phone-call-with-john-baez.html
http://elnaschiewatch.blogspot.com/2009/05/my-emails-with-john-baez.html
Jason
What’s that smell? Smells like socks? Sniff, sniff.
Those who are interested in the truth could benefit from reading the case of El Naschie against Nature in chronological order. First a few facts. El Naschie wrote some 900 papers all in all according to those who gave the effort to find out. The majority of his papers was in engineering science and were published at the time before on line internet publication. You need to give effort as many of us have done by physically going into the main library of your nearest university or patent office. It is claimed El Naschie published 320 papers over 17 years during which he was the Editor-in-Chief. It strikes me as silly to suggest that someone who neither needs money nor fame should publish 320 papers so that nobody notices. To the best of our knowledge El Naschie has never applied for funding or for any position. He has all what he needs since he was 35 which you can find documented in his biography. Furthermore El Naschie went on lecturing tours with Nobel laureate Gerard ‘tHooft. I have seen them myself at least five times talking sequentially either within a conference or a double lecture by both of them. It is ridiculous and completely unbelievable to suggest that a charlatan or a crackpot should choose a Nobel laureate in his specialization of all people to accompany him on nonsensical lecturing tours. Now we come to the chronological order of events. First was Garrett Lisi. Lisi is a protégé of Lee Smolin who is a close associate of ‘tHooft and Renate Loll. Lisi published a paper on E8 almost identical to the work of El Naschie which preceded his own by five years. You can read all about that in an article entitled Surfer dude published in the Daily Telegraph. I find the comments which were partially removed or edited to be quite revealing. Then came the second onslaught on El Naschie which was the article published last year in Scientific American by Renate Loll and two of her colleagues. You do not need to be a specialist nor in fact a scientist to realize that this article is based entirely on El Naschie’s work as well as the work of Garnet Ord in Canada as well as Laurent Nottale in France. The idea of fractals as a model of spacetime is almost entirely due to these three scientists. About 650 comments expressing indignation at Loll’s behavior who did not acknowledge the work of the three men in any form were lodged on Scientific American which must have caused great embarrassment not only for Loll but also for her boss, Nobel laureate Gerard ‘tHooft as well as the University of Utrecht as a whole. There is ample evidence that at this point a master plan for a counter attack by Loll was worked out to discredit El Naschie so that her behavior in not citing his work becomes acceptable. This was no trivial matter because Renate Loll personally as well as her Institution received millions of Euros for the work on fractal spacetime or Cantorian spacetime as El Naschie calls it. Renate Loll called upon her friend and long time associate John Baez for help. Prof. John Baez from Riverside University, California prides himself for his nickname A one man internet army. I think grossly underestimated El Naschie or M.S. El Naschie as some call him strength of conviction. The n-category café campaign by Baez was only a prelude and a softening attack to precede much worse to come unless El Naschie ducked and ran away. Those who know El Naschie knows he does not duck. He had no reason to do so. That is how Schiermeier, the author of the Nature article was drafted and when that also became a fiasco, they called on another German Christoph Drosser from Die Zeit. Drosser thought he was safe because Germany has as much as no defamation law. He wrote the worst article of them all. By court order he was forced to make minor modifications. However if Drosser would have written an article like that in England, he would probably end in prison all apart of paying a substantial sum of money for compensation. The conspirators forgot a few things. First most of the information they obtained from a mentally sick relative of El Naschie were wrong. Said Salah El Din Hamad is a very sick man. His wife stole the money of his mother and went to prison. For the record his wife’s name is Shadia. Said suffers from paranoia and schizophrenia. John Baez and his puppet Zoran Skoda thought they had real information in their hands and went too far. First Renate Loll, Quirin Schiermeier and Christoph Drosser are all German and they know each other. Second Schiermeier is the expert on Holland where Renate Loll resides. Third all the three publications are owned by the same holding company Macmillan. I have seen sufficient documents to persuade me that this is not an ordinary defamation case. It is a conspiracy to plagiarize and defame. Of course Loll and John Baez draw comfort from the fact that they are backed by a big publisher like Macmillan and a syndicate of mainstream scientists including half a dozen or so Nobel laureates. What Baez and Loll are underestimating is the power of the truth and that there are people behind it who are adamant that the truth must prevail no matter how dear the cost is. They are also underestimating that the public at large is sick and tired from the old boys’ club and mega concerns who think they can walk over any body. If the truth about mega structures such as Lehman Brothers could come out, then so can the truth about these shadowy Nobel committees and scientific cliques. Incidentally Mohamed El Naschie was not removed as the Editor in Chief of Chaos, Solitons & Fractals and I challenge anyone to prove the opposite.
I do not know who is Renate Loll. Never met her, never emailed with her, saw a web page after one of similar comments like comment above making big conspiracy stories.
I met John Baez once, in 2009, what si AFTER these guys like above started to associate us. Look people who see that trash is a trash do not need to be associated among themselves. They just have to have sane expertise in this field, the good scientific method which is not shown by El Naschie’s articles. So as long as those bad papers are out new and new people will find them and laugh at them. If there is indeed 900 laughable articles out there (I have sen much less) there is 900 reasons to laugh or cry for pure paper spent for that and all other resources wasted on pseudoscience.
Heh. For the record, I’ve never met John Baez or Zoran Škoda. I’ve also never met or communicated with Renate Loll in any fashion.
Mr. Skoda your language and your vocabulary speaks volumes about you. Need I say more?
Brian, I imagine his English is better than your Croatian.
BTW, Brian, it’s “your language and your vocabulary speak” not “speaks”
Likewise, it should not matter how God created life, whether it was through a miraculous spoken word or through the natural forces of the universe that He created. The grandeur of God’s works commands awe regardless of what processes He used.
Check this El Naschie Interview video out:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v3sHXakElPg
That’s a paradigm shift, indeed!