[reacweb]

I am French, I was interested in the brothers when there was the controversy. Their "phd" was a translation error in their bio. To silence the controversy, they decided to actually pass a phd. Neither brother claimed to be a genius, but while they have many other activities, they passed their phd with work similar to an average student. They deserve their phd.

Their books are generally intended to popularize the scientific work of real researchers. They are well written. Their public appearances on TV are not without humor and self-mockery. They have deserved the sympathy of many french people.

[Freak_NL]

Another commenter posted this link about their academic endeavours:

https://math.ucr.edu/home/baez/bogdanoff/

If this summary is correct, they seem to have deserved their PhD in the sense that they managed to bluff their way through it. A bit like getting the gold medal for a marathon as a consolation price when you've managed to do just 10 metres of it (on a unicycle, for reasons unclear to anyone observing).

[VHRanger]

Their PhD are absolutely not "work similar to an average [phd] student"

It was utter nonsense, and a quick read of any page in any of the papers supporting their PhD thesis from someone with working knowledge of the area will show it to be word salads.

Others linked to John Baez's analysis of the case, which stands correct 20 years later.

[reacweb]

many student work is also "word salad".

[hocuspocus]

What you claim is truly insulting to PhD students in hard science, especially in a country like France where academia is underfunded.

Universities don't hand out PhDs to just anyone who can spare a few years writing non-sensical papers for free.

Try to get into a half-decent MSc program, let alone doctoral school, without the relevant undergrad degree. If you aren't TV famous, good luck with that.

[reacweb]

Not every student who graduates will become a world-renowned researcher. In assessing the quality of their work, I trust more what their reviewers have said publicly, than a researcher who is so far above the rest of the world that he will be able to critique most of the papers in his field in the same way.

[hocuspocus]

You're completely out of touch with reality.

> Not every student who graduates will become a world-renowned researcher.

Nobody claims the opposite. But that doesn't imply that PhD grads who don't become top researchers have just spent 3-6 years of their life writing non-sensical papers. Many PhD students drop out if they reach a dead-end, even though they were perfectly qualified otherwise. If you can't produce research that gets cited, you're a net negative to the lab and its staff, any supervisor that has skin in the game won't just let you go on for years.

> a researcher who is so far above the rest of the world

Except it's not just one professor but literally everyone who tried to engage with them in a reasonable discussion. Hell, I was an undergrad student at the time, and one of my calculus TAs was part of these people trying to make sense of their claims (there was no shortage of online forums where the brothers would try to defend themselves). Not a world-class researcher or even someone who made an academic career, just a competent PhD student in quantum groups.

The CNRS has written a 30+ page report that explains why their work is completely devoid of anything of scientific value, and for the few parts that make sense, not even at the standards of an MSc thesis. Do you think the typical CNRS researchers have enough spare time to read two PhD theses, multiple papers and write a comprehensive report, for fun?

And that's not even the worst part. If they had been acting in good faith, they wouldn't have sued several newspapers and regularly misquoted/mistranslated renowned physicists.

They were fraudsters, and just paid the ultimate price of their lack of scientific integrity.

[reacweb]

The CNRS was condemned for defamation. The brothers are not fraudsters. The phd in mathematic was well deserved. The other phd was just the minimum to get a pass.