Re: USA Africa Dialogue Series - Fw: Phillip Emeagwali

I treated you as poorly as you treated me. The man, Mr. Philip Emeagwali is a certified fraud and loser. Why should we strip his nonsense of all his fraudulent claims and then reward him for his ONE truth? Is this the kind of role model you want for your kids? Na wa O! There are real giants here on our listserve that deserve to be celebrated in song, let's start naming them, beginning with real professors Toyin Falola, Bolaji Aluko, Omolola Ogunyemi, Charles N. Rotimi, Clement Adebamowo, Ayo Obe, etc, etc, but you will not hear them say squat about themselves. They will not get squat either because they have not doctored their achievements. What is wrong with us?

Hear you:
"Your categorization of this man is very helpful. Can we not strip down his falsehoods, remove the false parts of his half truths, and highlight his true achievement so as to see the true Emeagwali? Will there still be something concrete left at the end of it all to make him worth being held up as a worhy Nigerian?"

!!!! Let me be sure I understand this. The man flunks his PhD program, he proceeds to call himself "doctor" and on some good days, "professor." You say ah, shebi he did some good things. He once claimed he was the Father of the Internet based on a $1,000 prize he got in 1989, at least TWENTY YEARS after the Internet was birthed and you want to make him a great Nigerian! Have you been to his website? No, I forget, there is no light, there is no petrol, your houseboy has not come with your bucket of water! Whine! Whine! Whine! I pray that our resident scam artist fraud and loser, "Professor" "Dr" Philip Emeagwali gets his national award. Some country, Nigeria.

Abeg leave me alone jare! I don't have time for wahala this morning!

- Ikhide

Sent via BlackBerry by AT&T

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From: Amiel Fagbulu <amiel.fagbulu@ymail.com>

Sender: usaafricadialogue@googlegroups.com

Date: Sun, 19 Sep 2010 15:36:32 -0700 (PDT)

To: <usaafricadialogue@googlegroups.com>

ReplyTo: usaafricadialogue@googlegroups.com

Subject: USA Africa Dialogue Series - Fw: Phillip Emeagwali

----- Forwarded Message ----
From: Amiel Fagbulu <amiel.fagbulu@ymail.com>
To: Ayoola Tokunbo <toks_ayoola@hotmail.com>
Sent: Sun, September 19, 2010 11:28:47 PM
Subject: Re: Phillip Emeagwali

Ayoola,

Thank you for the answers you gave to my questions to Ikhide. To put the whole event in perspective please let me clarify what led to this Emeagwali thing.

 

For some time now, at least two times a week, the local Federal Radio in Osun State (FM 95.5) has been broadcasting the names of some worthy Nigerians as promotional material for the 50th Independence Celebration. Wole Soyinka, Philip Emeagwali and Okonjo-Iweala lead the pack. It came as a shock to me when  in a totally unrelated matter Ikhide in passing condemned Nigerians who were falsely misrepresenting themselves to Nigeria and specifically zeroed on Emeagwali. To me it was breaking news in that someone like Emeagwali,if what Ikhide said about him was true, being  touted for honor nationally would bring discredit to our counrty. The only thing I knew about him was what I read in an international magazine several years ago. I turned to the internet and ran through the titles of the first two pages of the 28,400 search results from Google. The  six or eight I browsed seemed to repeat and confirm the claims of this fellow. Since I access the internet mainly between 10:00 pm and 1:00 am Nigerian time every night, using a generator most of the time, I could not afford the time or the luxury of spending my limited resources digging further into this that night so I asked those questions.

 

It seemed likely to me that those in charge of that promotional material could be in the same darkness that I was in. The intention was to get the facts and alert them since no sane person will like to expose this country to ridicule on such a grand scale on such occassion.

 

The only response I got from Ikhide was a lot of negative things about myself so your response proved very useful. I have since gone further and my findings seem to tally with what you aided me with..

 

BUT I HAVE MORE QUESTIONS TO ASK

 

Your categorization of this man is very helpful. Can we not strip down his falsehoods, remove the false parts of his half truths, and highlight his true achievement so as to see the true Emeagwali? Will there still be something concrete left at the end of it all to make him worth being held up as a worhy Nigerian? 

 

That is the way I look at events. If it can be done those who have researched him could try to present a Balanced Naration of Emeagwali's Achievements.

 

On my part I am trying to alert those in charge of this honor thing to check the facts that I can now direct them to on the net if it is not too late.

 

Cheers and thanks.

 

Amiel

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From: Ayoola Tokunbo toks_ayoola@hotmail.com.
To: amiel.fagbulu@ymail.com
Sent: Sat, September 18, 2010 7:50:48 PM
Subject: Re: Phillip Emeagwali

Amiel,
The following might answer those questions you were asking Ikhide.

Philip Emeagwali myths

This page briefly addresses some specific claims appearing on Emeagwali's self-promotional website and elsewhere. For a more in-depth discussion of Emeagwali's "outright lies, half-truths, and numerous unsubstantiated claims," see the article Self-Promotion and Self-Authentication: "Father of the Internet" by Chioma Ezeilo.

MYTH #1:
Emeagwali made the "world's fastest computation" in 1989

Each year since 1987, the judges for the annual Gordon Bell competition have given out multiple prizes for supercomputing applications, usually including one for performance (fastest speed), and one for price/performance (best speed/cost ratio; specifically, "price-performance ratio as measured in megaflop/s per dollar on a genuine application").
Despite what you may have read on the Internet, the 1989 prize for the fastest performance was awarded not to Emeagwali, but to another entrant:

In the performance category, we awarded the prize to a team from Mobil Research and Development and Thinking Machines Corp. [...] Their solution of a seismic data-processing problem ran at almost 6 Gflops on a CM-2 Connection Machine.

"Special Report: 1989 Gordon Bell Prize," IEEE Software, May 1990, p. 101

The winning speed of 6 Gflops was almost double that of Emeagwali's entry (3.1 Gflops, a speed that Emeagwali has repeatedly misrepresented as the "world's fastest"). The Mobil/TMC team achieved the best price-performance ratio too, but since no entry was allowed more than one prize, the price/performance award passed to Emeagwali (who also used a CM-2 Connection Machine) even though his score in that category was about 20% worse than the leading score:

We awarded the price/performance prize to Philip Emeagwali [...] His model ran at a price/performance of slightly less than 400 Mflops per $1 million. While the Mobil/TMC team achieved almost 500 Mflops per $1 million, we decided to award only one prize per entry.

"Special Report: 1989 Gordon Bell Prize," IEEE Software, May 1990, p. 101

See the yearly results for the performance and price/performance categories. In no year did Emeagwali achieve what he claims he did.

MYTH #2:
Emeagwali won computing's equivalent of the Nobel Prize

In spite of efforts by Emeagwali and his admirers to hype up his $1000 Gordon Bell award as the "Nobel Prize" of computing, the rest of the computing world continues to associate that lofty label with the Turing Award, which Emeagwali has never won. The Gordon Bell prize, however, is just one of many other annual computing awards, respectable but not at all comparable to either the Nobel Prize or the Turing Award in prestige or prize money. Nor are the selection criteria analogous: Emeagwali was awarded for his performance in an annual competition, not in recognition of lasting contributions to his field.

MYTH #3:
Emeagwali is a "Father of the Internet"

1. Emeagwali's paternity claims to the Internet are judged and found baseless. Emeagwali has not shown any evidence that he was involved with ARPA or any other research organization or company connected with the genesis of the Internet, nor did he express his ideas in technical journals or any other channel through which he could have influenced the development of the Internet during its formative stages.
2. Is there a father of the Internet? A discussion of the main contenders: JCR Licklider, Bob Taylor, Paul Baran, Donald Davies, and Lawrence Roberts.

MYTH #4:
The "Connection Machine" was invented by Emeagwali

A few Web sources expand the fallacy that Emeagwali created the fastest computer program, insisting that he was also responsible for the massively parallel supercomputer on which the program ran. However, the 65,000-processor "Connection Machine" that allowed such speedy computations was actually the brainchild of Danny Hillis and was built by Thinking Machines Corporation, the company Hillis co-founded. The fact is extensively documented on the web and is so well established that I won't devote more attention to it.

MYTH #5:
Emeagwali has lots of patents or patent applications

The number of Emeagwali's patents or patent applications is sometimes claimed to be as high as 30. However, a search of the USPTO and esp@cenet patent databases (as of September 2003) reveals the true number to be zero. The U.S. Patent and Trademark Office, which has a fully searchable online database for all U.S. patents since 1976 as well as all current applications, simply has nothing on file for Emeagwali.

MYTH #6:
"Dr." Emeagwali?

Emeagwali is frequently referred to on his own and other websites as "Dr. Philip Emeagwali" or simply "Dr. Emeagwali." Though he did in fact enroll in a PhD program at the University of Michigan, he did not get the degree after failing his qualification examinations twice and having his thesis rejected by a committee of faculty members. Emeagwali subsequently sued the university, alleging civil rights violations and racial discrimination. His case was dismissed without trial. When Emeagwali appealed to a higher court, a three-judge panel rejected his discrimination claims unanimously.

• article describing the court decision
• decision from the MI Court of Appeals.