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Mohamed El Naschie ( ar, محمد النشائي, born 1943) is an Egyptian
engineer Engineers, as practitioners of engineering, are professionals who Invention, invent, design, analyze, build and test machines, complex systems, structures, gadgets and materials to fulfill functional objectives and requirements while considerin ...
and the former editor of a controversial journal, '' Chaos, Solitons & Fractals''. The controversy concerned El Naschie's publication, over many years, of over 300 papers of questioned scientific merit authored by himself in his own journal with little or no apparent peer review. Published reports of his eventual departure from the editorship of the journal led to a lengthy libel court case that raised questions about the libel laws in Great Britain. The controversy has also played a role in discussions of the "
impact factor The impact factor (IF) or journal impact factor (JIF) of an academic journal is a scientometric index calculated by Clarivate that reflects the yearly mean number of citations of articles published in the last two years in a given journal, as ...
" as a quality measure for scientific journals, and of the methodology of
university ranking College and university rankings order the best institutions in higher education based on factors that vary depending on the ranking. Some rankings evaluate institutions within a single country, while others assess institutions worldwide. Ranking ...
s.


Early life and education

El Naschie grew up in
Germany Germany,, officially the Federal Republic of Germany, is a country in Central Europe. It is the second most populous country in Europe after Russia, and the most populous member state of the European Union. Germany is situated betwee ...
. His initial training was as an engineer, obtaining an engineering degree from
Leibniz University Hannover Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz University Hannover (german: Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz Universität), also known as the University of Hannover, is a public research university located in Hanover, Germany. Founded on 2 May 1831 as Higher Vocational Sc ...
."Der Felix Krull der Mathematik"
, ''Die Zeit'' 27 March 2009
He later studied in
England England is a country that is part of the United Kingdom. It shares land borders with Wales to its west and Scotland to its north. The Irish Sea lies northwest and the Celtic Sea to the southwest. It is separated from continental Europe ...
and was awarded a doctorate by the
University of London The University of London (UoL; abbreviated as Lond or more rarely Londin in post-nominals) is a federal public research university located in London, England, United Kingdom. The university was established by royal charter in 1836 as a degr ...
in 1974, with a thesis entitled "The roll of formulation in elastic buckling" 'sic''


Publications

Between 1974 and 1990 El Naschie published eight papers, mostly relating to the mathematics of
buckling In structural engineering, buckling is the sudden change in shape ( deformation) of a structural component under load, such as the bowing of a column under compression or the wrinkling of a plate under shear. If a structure is subjected to a ...
, in the ''
Journal of Applied Mathematics and Mechanics The ''Journal of Applied Mathematics and Mechanics'', also known as ''Zeitschrift für Angewandte Mathematik und Mechanik'' or ''ZAMM'' is a monthly peer-reviewed scientific journal dedicated to applied mathematics. It is published by Wiley-VCH on ...
''. Since then he has published over 400 articles, mostly in the field of theoretical physics, the majority in '' Chaos, Solitons & Fractals'', a journal of which he was the editor-in-chief, and where standards of
peer review Peer review is the evaluation of work by one or more people with similar competencies as the producers of the work ( peers). It functions as a form of self-regulation by qualified members of a profession within the relevant field. Peer revie ...
have been questioned. The majority of El Naschie's later publications concern his own, controversial, ''E-infinity'' theory, that the
universe The universe is all of space and time and their contents, including planets, stars, galaxies, and all other forms of matter and energy. The Big Bang theory is the prevailing cosmological description of the development of the univers ...
has an infinite number of dimensions and is based on a
Cantor A cantor or chanter is a person who leads people in singing or sometimes in prayer. In formal Jewish worship, a cantor is a person who sings solo verses or passages to which the choir or congregation responds. In Judaism, a cantor sings and lead ...
continuum. Mathematical physicist professor John C. Baez of the
University of California, Riverside The University of California, Riverside (UCR or UC Riverside) is a public land-grant research university in Riverside, California. It is one of the ten campuses of the University of California system. The main campus sits on in a suburban dist ...
has called El Naschie's work "undisciplined
numerology Numerology (also known as arithmancy) is the belief in an occult, divine or mystical relationship between a number and one or more coinciding events. It is also the study of the numerical value, via an alphanumeric system, of the letters in ...
filled with impressive
buzzword A buzzword is a word or phrase, new or already existing, that becomes popular for a period of time. Buzzwords often derive from technical terms yet often have much of the original technical meaning removed through fashionable use, being simply used ...
s", while
cosmologist Cosmology () is a branch of physics and metaphysics dealing with the nature of the universe. The term ''cosmology'' was first used in English in 1656 in Thomas Blount's ''Glossographia'', and in 1731 taken up in Latin by German philosopher ...
Neil Turok Neil Geoffrey Turok (born 16 November 1958) is a South African physicist. He holds the Higgs Chair of Theoretical Physics at the University of Edinburgh since 2020, and has been director emeritus of the Perimeter Institute for Theoretical Physi ...
of the
Perimeter Institute Perimeter Institute for Theoretical Physics (PI, Perimeter, PITP) is an independent research centre in foundational theoretical physics located in Waterloo, Ontario, Canada. It was founded in 1999. The institute's founding and major benefactor i ...
, testifying as an
expert witness An expert witness, particularly in common law countries such as the United Kingdom, Australia, and the United States, is a person whose opinion by virtue of education, training, certification, skills or experience, is accepted by the judge as ...
against El Naschie in a British court case, has strongly criticized the quality of El Naschie's papers, based on criteria such as the occurrence of meaningless or obscure statements, statements that are wrong, and the lack of any substantial contribution of new knowledge to the field concerned. In 2002, El Naschie was awarded a Fellowship by the Frankfurter Förderverein für Physikalische Grundlagenforschung, a private organisation devoted to supporting research, in appreciation of his "original ideas in developing a theory of fractal space-time allowing the determination of the basic constants of nature".


''Chaos, Solitons & Fractals''

At the end of the 1980s,
chaos theory Chaos theory is an interdisciplinary area of scientific study and branch of mathematics focused on underlying patterns and deterministic laws of dynamical systems that are highly sensitive to initial conditions, and were once thought to hav ...
and
fractal In mathematics, a fractal is a geometric shape containing detailed structure at arbitrarily small scales, usually having a fractal dimension strictly exceeding the topological dimension. Many fractals appear similar at various scales, as ill ...
mathematics Mathematics is an area of knowledge that includes the topics of numbers, formulas and related structures, shapes and the spaces in which they are contained, and quantities and their changes. These topics are represented in modern mathematics ...
were in fashion, and El Naschie wished to apply these concepts to engineering. In 1991 El Naschie founded the scientific journal ''Chaos, Solitons & Fractals'', initially with the
British British may refer to: Peoples, culture, and language * British people, nationals or natives of the United Kingdom, British Overseas Territories, and Crown Dependencies. ** Britishness, the British identity and common culture * British English, ...
publisher
Pergamon Press Pergamon Press was an Oxford-based publishing house, founded by Paul Rosbaud and Robert Maxwell, that published scientific and medical books and journals. Originally called Butterworth-Springer, it is now an imprint of Elsevier. History The c ...
. When Pergamon was sold, the journal passed to the
Elsevier Elsevier () is a Dutch academic publishing company specializing in scientific, technical, and medical content. Its products include journals such as '' The Lancet'', '' Cell'', the ScienceDirect collection of electronic journals, '' Trends'', ...
stable. He served as its Editor-in-Chief until his retirement in 2009. El Naschie published over 300 of his own papers in the journal, and this extremely high rate of self-publication by the editor-in-chief led to charges that normal standards of peer review were not upheld at the journal. Peter Woit of
Columbia University Columbia University (also known as Columbia, and officially as Columbia University in the City of New York) is a private research university in New York City. Established in 1754 as King's College on the grounds of Trinity Church in Manhatt ...
was quoted as saying "it's plain obvious that there was either zero, or at best very poor, peer review, of his own papers". El Naschie has said "Senior people are above this childish, vain practice of peer review." Otto Rössler, an honorary editor of the journal and a biochemist best known for his involvement in a failed lawsuit to halt the
Large Hadron Collider The Large Hadron Collider (LHC) is the world's largest and highest-energy particle collider. It was built by the European Organization for Nuclear Research (CERN) between 1998 and 2008 in collaboration with over 10,000 scientists and hundr ...
due to fears that it would generate mini black holes, stated in British court testimony that "if you have something new to offer, peer review is dangerous" and "delays progress in science". The journal also had a high level of self-citation, which increased its
impact factor The impact factor (IF) or journal impact factor (JIF) of an academic journal is a scientometric index calculated by Clarivate that reflects the yearly mean number of citations of articles published in the last two years in a given journal, as ...
.


''Nature'' libel case

In 2008 the journal ''
Nature Nature, in the broadest sense, is the physical world or universe. "Nature" can refer to the phenomena of the physical world, and also to life in general. The study of nature is a large, if not the only, part of science. Although humans are ...
'' published a news article by Quirin Schiermeier alleging that some of El Naschie's papers did not appear to be properly peer-reviewed, and that he claimed institutional affiliations that could not be confirmed."Nature magazine accused of libel"
''The Guardian'' 18 November 2011
El Naschie disputed these allegations and sued ''Nature'' for libel. In July 2012 the case was dismissed, with the judge ruling that the article was "substantially true", contained "honest comment" and was "the product of responsible journalism". The judgement noted that El Naschie, who represented himself in court, had failed to provide any documentary evidence that his papers had been peer-reviewed."Nature libel verdict 'a victory for free speech'"
''The Guardian'' 6 July 2012
Judge Victoria Sharp also found "reasonable and serious grounds" for suspecting that El Naschie used a range of false names to defend his editorial practice in communications with ''Nature'', and described this behavior as "curious" and "bizarre".


University ranking controversy

El Naschie's practice of publishing a great number of articles in a journal of which he himself was the editor also came to public attention when it was identified as a crucial contributing factor for propelling
Alexandria University Alexandria University ( ar, جامعة الإسكندرية) is a public university in Alexandria, Egypt. It was established in 1938 as a satellite of Fouad University (the name of which was later changed to Cairo University), becoming an indepen ...
into the top group of the ''
Times Higher Education ''Times Higher Education'' (''THE''), formerly ''The Times Higher Education Supplement'' (''The Thes''), is a British magazine reporting specifically on news and issues related to higher education. Ownership TPG Capital acquired TSL Education ...
'' magazine's university rankings. This evidence of such rankings being easily skewed has led to criticism of the methodology of university rankings in general.Questionable Science Behind Academic Rankings
''The New York Times'' 14 November 2010.


References


External links


''Professor Mohamed El Naschie'', El Naschie's scientific homepage
* Judgment
El Naschie v Macmillan Publishers and Schiermeier
{{DEFAULTSORT:Naschie, Mohamed Living people Egyptian physicists Pseudoscientific physicists 1943 births Scientific misconduct incidents University and college rankings 20th-century Egyptian engineers Alumni of the University of London