[leephillips]

The APS rules are that any member can submit an abstract, which will be printed in the Bulletin, and be allowed to either give a 10-minute talk or stand next to a poster. The abstracts are printed without regard to content, as long as they are in the right format. So they have to put the crank ones somewhere, and this is one solution.

There is a rule that the submitter of an abstract must attend the meeting to present. In the Fluid Dynamics division, there was a guy who submitted weird, incomprehensible abstracts every year for many years—but he never showed up as far as I know. You could recognize his abstracts immediately because he jammed as much as possible in there. Each abstract referred to previous ones, as if they were publications. He built his own little empire of self-referential, unreviewed abstracts. The APS handled that by (eventually) scheduling his talks at the ends of sessions so that the no-show would not disrupt the schedule. They could have banned him for repeat submissions without appearing to give a talk, but they erred on the side of allowing an obvious crackpot to have his say, which I thought was both wise and kind.

I don’t know if the current APS would be so thoughful; I hope so. I got fed up with them years ago and stopped paying my dues.