Gibberish paper written using iOS autocomplete accepted in confab

One professor in New Zealand who jokingly submitted a paper written by Apple’s iOS autocomplete has been accepted to present his “findings” at a nuclear physics “conference” in the US.

Christoph Bartneck, an associate professor at the University of Canterbury, was amazed that his “nonsense” paper secured a spot at the International Conference on Atomic and Nuclear Physics, which is scheduled to be held in November in Atlanta.

“Since I have practically no knowledge of nuclear physics I resorted to iOS auto-complete function to help me write the paper,” Bartneck wrote in a blog post on Thursday. “I started a sentence with ‘Atomic’ or ‘Nuclear’ and then randomly hit the auto-complete suggestions.”

The paper’s abstract resulted as a gibberish and silly paper that could not qualify academic standards.

“Atomic Physics and I shall not have the same problem with a separate section for a very long way. Nuclear weapons will not have to come out the same day after a long time of the year he added the twos ideas will have the two leaders to take the same way to bring up to their long ways of the same as they will have been a good place for a good time at home the united front and she is a great place for a good time,” the abstract read.

SCREENGRAB from Scribd/ Bartneck’s blog post

The paper concluded with the gobbledygook sentence, “Power is not a great place for a good time.”

Bartneck registered his “masterpiece” under the pseudonym “Iris Pear,” which is a play on Apple’s Siri. Iris Pear claimed to be a lecturer at “Umbria Polytech University” located at Cupertino, California. After turning in his work, he received the confirmation e-mail after three hours and requested him to pay US$1,099 (P53,000).

“I know that iOS is a pretty good software, but reaching tenure has never been this close,” he further penned in his blog post. He also uploaded a manic instruction clip of his magic trick on YouTube.

Bartneck, noticing that the conference might be a bogus and fishy trap, told Guardian Australia that he is not interested in going, “I did not complete this step since my university would certainly object to me wasting money this way,” Bartneck said.  Gianna Francesca Catolico