Thanks
toyin
-- On 26 October 2010 21:37, Kayode Robbin-Coker <ronrobco@gmail.com> wrote:
Published on Sahara Reporters (http://www.saharareporters.com)
"Father Of The Internet": Alan Karp, 1989 Gordon Bell Prize judge,
Debunks Emeagwali's Claims
By siteadmin
Created Oct 26 2010 - 19:31
Alan Karp, a key judge in the 1989 Gordon Bell Prize won by Mr. Philip
Emeagwali, has debunked Mr. Emeagwali's claims concerning that prize
and his place in science and technology, and pointed out that none of
Emeagwali's experiments could be regarded as "discoveries or
inventions".
In an email exchange with Saharareporters, Mr. Karp, who is currently
Principal Scientist, Virus Safe Computing Initiative at the Hewlett-
Packard Laboratories in Palo Alto, California, confirmed that many of
the claims made by Emeagwali regarding his Gordon Bell Prize were
inaccurate or misleading.
Saharareporters had sent to Mr. Karp three of the recent claims by Mr.
Emeagwali's wife and representative, "Donita Brown," and heard back on
each point.
• Mrs. Emeagwali's first claim was: "The four judges that gave
him the 1989 Gordon Bell Prize interviewed him daily by email for 60
days. Those four judges, in turn, emailed his discoveries and
inventions to as many as 400 fact-checkers and experts."
Responded Mr. Karp, who said the other judges left those things to
him: "I definitely did not communicate with him every day for 60
days. Further, I did email his "discoveries and inventions" to one or
two outside experts, not 400."
• Mrs. Emeagwali's second claim was: "Specifically, he claimed
he reprogrammed 65,536 subcomputers to compute as a supercomputer and
to communicate as an internet that sends and receives answers via
emails to and from 65,536 unique email addresses, each a unique string
of sixteen zeroes and ones."
This claim was aggressively peddled by Mrs. Emeagwali on 234next.com
in response to an article written by Jubril Ibrahim, in which the
writer also accused Emeagwali of fraud.
Responded Mr. Karp: "The Connection Machine that he used, the CM2,
consisted of 65,536 one-bit processors with a proprietary interconnect
and was intended to be used as a single supercomputer. No
"reprogramming" was required. To say that one used email to
communicate on an Internet among them is misleading at best. The CM2
did not use email as we would understand it today for its internal
communications. An Internet, as the name implies, is made up of many
independent networks connected together. The CM2 was a single
network."
• The third issue, regarding Mr. Emeagwali's claims of
"discoveries or inventions," attracted Mr. Karp's most potent
dismissal. He made it clear that none of Emeagwali's experiments
could be regarded as "discoveries or inventions". This might largely
explain why Mr. Emeagwali never had a patent at the USPTO except his
trademark over his website domain name, "Emeagwali.com."
• The final claim by Mrs. Emeagwali last week, was about the
CM2 machine, and she wrote: In 1989, there was only one
supercomputer that was powered by 65,000 subcomputers. It only allowed
ONE programmer. Philip Emeagwali was logged onto it sixteen hours a
day, 365 days a year. Philip Emeagwali was then the only full time
programmer of the supercomputer powered by 65,000 subcomputers. It was
a one man race…"
To this claim, Mr. Karp told Saharareporters that Mr. Emeagwali didn't
win "by default," and conceded that "as a lone graduate student he
solved a harder problem that could have taken a team to solve," as our
earlier Citizen Report suggested. He however expressed disbelief
about the uniqueness of the machine, saying, "I doubt that there was
only one CM2 in existence in 1989 because the performance winner that
year also used a CM2. If there was, then that group used the same
machine as Mr. Emeagwali, so he could not have been the only
programmer on it…I don't recall if we were ever told who gave Mr.
Emeagwali access to the CM2, but that person can answer this
question."
The assertion by Mr. Karp that the Gordon Bell prize was awarded to
Emeagwali after "careful consideration to his submission by a lone
graduate student on a hard problem" however remains at odds with the
official record of the 1989 Institute of Electrical and Electronics
Engineers in 1989 (IEEE) Gordon Bell Prize, which clearly states that
he only won it because the Mobil/TMC team (which had a higher speed/
price performance) was forbidden from claiming more than one prize.
Even as the light of truth begins to shine on the numerous fraudulent
claims by Emeagwali, he continues to make outrageous claims, including
one that "scientists continue to pay him a speaker's fee equivalent to
a professor's yearly salary". We would be happy to share the
limelight of any Nigerian so respected in his field he commands such
speaking fees, but this claim lacks merit, as no serious scientific
fora invites Mr. Emeagwali. Indeed, Nigerian officials, who spend
thousands of dollars to invite him to speak at Consulate-sponsored
events, do. Through his outrageous claims, he has managed to con the
Nigerian government to put him on a federal stamp in which he is
referred to as a "Super Computer Genius".
Emeagwali has also mastered the concept of quietly removing his false
claims from articles that are challenged by those who are familiar
with his trickery. That was the case of his biodata on the Lemelson-
MIT journal which claimed he had 31 patents to his credit; that claim
was discreetly removed in 2004 after it was discovered that Mr.
Emeagwali had lied, but a web archive of the original material as seen
here proved Emeagwali's downfall. After we unsuccesfully searched for
Emeagwali's name from Lemeslon-MIT website, SaharaReporters e-mailed
Stephanie Martinovich,External Relations Officer of Lemelson-MIT
Program to inquire why the center removed Emeagwali's citation from
its website, a short response from her stated, "I looked into this and
no one knows what happened to the link or why it was removed. Sorry we
can't be more help."
After contacting the center today they also removed the web archive of
Emeagwali's biodata completely from their website.
Another trick is to downgrade his claims whenever possible. One
example is the often repeated claim of being "the father of the
internet." In a curious climb-down, following withering critical
assaults, that has now been downgraded, and his current claims only
refer him as "a father of the internet" or "one of the fathers of the
internet". But it should also be mentioned that another variant
implied by Donita Brown's response to our initial piece on
Emeagwali's facebook page is that of "father of an internet."
It was obvious from Mr. Karp's response to Saharareporters that the
judges who awarded him the Gordon Bell Prize in 1989 would like to end
his falsehoods. Mr. Emeagwali, however, thrives on using racism to
attack largely white scientists who try to challenge his false
claims.
On the Nigerian front, the ethnic card seems to be his favourite
weapon, as he encourages those who are more interested in ethnic
bigotry, and—like Science itself—less in the facts and proof.
Emeagwali often compares himself to Albert Eistein, (even as he claims
that white scientists deny him of his place in scientitific history)
here in Switzerland he poses in front of Einstein's Apartment
* Dale Emeagwali
* father of the internet
* gordon bell prize
* philip emeagwali
Source URL:
http://www.saharareporters.com/news-page/father-internet-alan-karp-1989-gordon-bell-prize-judge-debunks-emeagwali%E2%80%99s-claims
--
You received this message because you are subscribed to the "USA-Africa Dialogue Series" moderated by Toyin Falola, University of Texas at Austin.
For current archives, visit http://groups.google.com/group/USAAfricaDialogue
For previous archives, visit http://www.utexas.edu/conferences/africa/ads/index.html
To post to this group, send an email to USAAfricaDialogue@googlegroups.com
To unsubscribe from this group, send an email to USAAfricaDialogue-
unsubscribe@googlegroups.com
You received this message because you are subscribed to the "USA-Africa Dialogue Series" moderated by Toyin Falola, University of Texas at Austin.
For current archives, visit http://groups.google.com/group/USAAfricaDialogue
For previous archives, visit http://www.utexas.edu/conferences/africa/ads/index.html
To post to this group, send an email to USAAfricaDialogue@googlegroups.com
To unsubscribe from this group, send an email to USAAfricaDialogue-
unsubscribe@googlegroups.com
No comments:
Post a Comment