France's Bogdanoff Twins Die Days Apart | Hacker News Reader

France's Bogdanoff Twins Die Days Apart

bbc.co.uk

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can I get a quick rundown of these guys?

Roughly half the article was a quick rundown of these guys

"Can I get a quick rundown" is a meme related to them.

Thanks, I had no idea who they were so no idea about the meme either. Also, your username checks out.

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

This is actually a fascinating read by a mathematical physicist about the alleged academic fraud perpetrated by the brothers.

(If you post a link, a little context helps others to see if it is something they might like to read.)

They became a meme in the cryptocurrency world https://youtu.be/KV5QlSgq7lg

They ran a TV show in the 80s about science fiction, and that aired The Twilight Zone.

[All french geeks now in their 40s took that show right in their face] #love

With Metal Hurlant [known in the US as Heavy Metal] also being popular in France at that time, plus the arrival of first role playing games (both US ones and french ones), it was a high time for us, the geeks.

Coroners bow to Bogdanoffs, in contact with morticians, possess cadaver-like abilities...

They had a sci-fi show in the 80s, Temps X, or Generation X. The title seems fitting in retrospect.

Does anyone know if they were liked by the public? I doubt they were much loved in the scientific community based on what I read in the wikipedia entry. Their history seems patchy per wikipedia.

Also I am trying to understand their relevance / importance in the grand scheme. Why is this getting traction?

I don't know much about them, but everybody I know makes fun of them and considers them to be funny-looking, mostly-inoffensive charlatans.

That's just my social bubble, no idea about the wider public.

They are memes.

French here. Lately they weren't that much loved by the public and mostly mocked because of their weirdness but they were still pretty famous and respected by geeks because of their successful (and pretty influential) show about sci-fi back in the 80s. I guess they were still benifiting from that golden era of them, but the consensus is that they were freaky.

> respected by geeks

I don't think that is true at all for "geeks" that witnessed first-hand[1] their manipulative and deceptive attempts at defending their PhDs and scientific papers in early 2000's. After that they doubled down on the intelligent design bullshit, used any opportunity to promote their books (fair enough), while attacking the few journalists that actually tried to expose the fraud.

They should have sticked to sci-fi, but even in their early days they couldn't help but try to vulgarize proper science, even though they weren't really qualified. Good intentions don't make up for peddling pseudoscience, plagiarism, and the constant smoke and mirrors. And it seems they were also facing some pretty serious legal issues in their personal life.

[1] https://forum.hardware.fr/hfr/Discussions/Sciences/topikunik...

Thanks two both of you for the comments - have a better understanding now of their relevance to the greater conversation. Add in their meme nature and I have the full story.

Charlatans and pseudoscience are like moths to a flame. :(

You are right. I should have specified they were still respected for their contribution to sci-fi in France, but scorned for all their scientific frauds.

Talking about sci-fi on mainstream French TV was indeed pretty novel in the 80s. And they also brought up real R&D topics and scientific research, I remember one episode of Temps X when they talk about Dennis Meadows' limits to growth.

I was too young but I'm still not convinced their TV show didn't raise a few eyebrows back then too, since they didn't hesitate to invite crackpots and talk about stuff like telekinesis.

I loved them as a kid but they lost everything when they became fraudsters. Instead of being interesting journalists they wanted to become Great Scientists without the brains for it.

To my children they are just a fascinating case of botched cosmetic surgery

They were used in crypto as a sort of bogeyman representation of the old guard financial world keeping down crypto. Locked in mortal combat with Sminem, the representation of the little guy trying to make it in the current world of extreme wealth inequality.

See- https://youtube.com/watch?v=-5OeVSiisLU

Long before that, they were vilified on 4chan's /biz/ board for being a tongue-in-cheek representation of "old money", so to speak.

I think that Bogdanoff twins invented a time-machine, traveled to 2021 and used GPT-3 to generate their Ph.D. theses with correct Quantum Field Theory jargon but nonsensical otherwise :-) </joke attempt>

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.

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).

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.

many student work is also "word salad".

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.

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.

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.

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.

Their faces had been butchered and begging for attention. Exactly the same that Jocelyn Wildenstein did to herself.

I always think that there must be a component of drug addiction in people that undergoes so much extreme transformations, and still go back for more. Maybe Painkillers applied in those surgeries have something to do with that. Is a trap for rich people affected from personal insecurities

Perhaps notably, they died of the coronavirus and had not been vaccinated.

More notable is actuarial data that shows that all cause mortality remains stubbornly elevated. Actuaries study death for a living and they need to get it right or the life insurance companies they work for go bust.

What the data suggests is that in aggregate we're largely moving death around. From who to whom is the question.

With a large population of unvaccinated people, and the virus affecting record numbers of people, what did you really expect to happen to all cause mortality??

Excess mortality stats show this to be obviously false

"Indiana life insurance CEO says deaths are up 40% among people ages 18-64"

That's not the old cohort that typically dies from Covid anymore.

https://www.thecentersquare.com/indiana/indiana-life-insuran...

Isn't excess mortality the aggregate? That was way up in 2020 (in the US at least) no? How is this moving death around?

I am not in the figures but I understand "moving death around" this way:

If you do not properly hospitalize serious Covid patients, you get more Covid death... If you properly treat them, you postpone the treatment of other sicknesses and increase death count in another population.

Then you keep an excess mortality that just moves around.

But excess mortality is the total. It's not the slice of the pie where if you grow one, the other shrinks, it IS the pie no? There was an huge bump in excess mortality year-over-year. If it was moved around you'd expect the total of all the dips to come close to the bump? That's not what has been observed.

So something caused more people to die than usual. What is it? (rhetorical question not asking directly).

At the risk of being flippant, is this any more than "Crazy people die of preventable disease"?

dump it!!!

"Aged 72, the brothers had not been vaccinated against Covid-19.

Their friends said they were convinced their healthy lifestyle would protect them and they were admitted to hospital in mid-December."

"Several friends told them to get themselves vaccinated but they felt because of their lifestyle and their [lack of] comorbidity, they weren't at risk of Covid."

Imagine being over 70 thinking you aren't at risk.

It's really a shame.

There are likely many, many commentors on HN who have family members in that (somewhat open-ended) age bracket who insist that they are not at risk. Either because they don't trust vaccines, or feel perfectly healthy, or feel that 'it is just a flu'.

I do (just the one thankfully, whose 'intuition' tells them that it will be quite alright, despite having frequent contacts with other people), and it's really not great knowing that there is very real risk of seeing them on the ICU at some point.

As time went on and the numbers showed that I would probably be fine if I caught it given my age and health. I started to worry a lot less about it. But I still got vaccinated. Can't really relate to this kind of thinking, and I hope your friend remains healthy.

What kind of thinking? The one where you worry for your elderly unvaxxed family member when fatality rates for the unvaxxed elderly remain quite high?

I read "this kind of thinking" as relating to the quote from the parent comment, talking about the mindset of people who avoid the vaccine because they insist they are not at risk of severe illness or death, despite being members of a population who demonstrably are.

Oh I mean thinking that just because you aren't at risk you don't need the vaccine. I think the twins were mistaken of course, given their age. But for example, myself being younger and healthy I believe I'm also low risk. But I am still relieved to be vaccinated. I know people who still have breathing issues because they caught it and it continues to impact them months after recovering from the virus itself.

I can relate but don't agree with them. I found it helpful to try to put myself in their shoes.

In their peer group they have many very unhealthy people and seen a lot of friends die. Some died from botched unnecessary medical interventions or were causalities of medical bureaucracy or malpractice. Some have also been screwed over significantly by government authorities at different points in their lives. This leads to hesitancy and skepticism for new treatments, and authorities.

That is to say, they need to be convinced that the health authorities promoting vaccines now are different from the ones that promoted treatments that killed their peers. They need to be convinced that the same government authorities promoting or requiring vaccines are now more trustworthy than when they fucked them over in the past.

This isn't necessarily a good reason with respect to the vaccine, but I hope it helps you relate

We are we going to start to see being old as a medical condition in and of itself?

TL;DR version not antivax but choose not to vax because feeling healthy at 72.

"die of Covid"

"the brothers had not been vaccinated against Covid-19."

"Their friends said they were convinced their healthy lifestyle would protect them"

"Asked why they had chosen not to have the Covid vaccines if they were not themselves anti-vaxxers, Luc Ferry said on Monday: "Like Igor, Grichka wasn't antivax, he was just antivax for himself. "They were both athletic, with not an inch of fat, and they thought the vaccine was more dangerous than the virus.""

https://www.lamontagne.fr/paris-75000/actualites/covid-19-qu...

From 31 may to 14 november 2021 a total of 2854 unvaccinated people died of COVID19 in France and 2179 died while having at least one shot of vaccine.

About 77% of the population has at least one shot in France.

I'm not someone who believes in conspiracy theories, but one could come to the conclusion, that this massive campaign against vaccinations, and the general downplaying of the pandemic is a conspiracy to get rid of dumb people.

A distinction without a difference.

It's a pretty contradicting statement to say in the same sentence "I'm not antivax but I think the vaccine is more dangerous than the virus"

It seems like they were actually antivax but did not want the social stigma associated with the term. "I'm not antivax but however yadda yadda"

It reminds me of the classical "Racism is pretty fun because it does not exists, just ask around you'll see nobody is"

It's a valid opinion that for most people the vaccine is beneficial, but for some people the vaccine is more dangerous than the infection. Usually the plausible example are young children, not people over 70 though.

Afaik no young child has been killed by the vaccine in the US, whereas a few hundred have been killed by covid.

Most vaccine deaths seem to be among 20 somethings

The fact that health authorities have not been vaccinating young children on the basis of the data we do have has made some contribution to the fact that young children haven't had reactions to it.

They are vaccinating children older than 5, you are talking about below this?

There's no evidence you have for this assertion that for children the vaccine is more dangerous than the illness. Neither are particularly dangerous at all for young children, but the disease has been linked to deaths in children.

The chances of myocarditis didn't seem to decrease with age as fast as the chances of a serious case of the virus, so maybe there's an inflection point somewhere... Could be at three weeks before birth though for all I know.

In the UK, back in July 2021 the government's scientific advisers said, based on the evidence at the time, the health benefits of universal vaccination in children and young people below the age of 18 years do not outweigh the potential risks [1].

Subsequently better evidence became available, and it was decided to extend vaccination to under-18s.

Perhaps whatshisface is merely recalling six-month-old official advice?

[1] https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/covid-19-vaccinat...

I don't know the statistics and generally believe that everybody should probably get the shot, I just wanted to point out that it's not a lunatic position to simultaneously believe that the vaccine is good and refuse to take it because you yourself might be in a group where the risk of an infection is lower than the risk of the vaccine.

Yes, and I agree. I am just unsure whether anyone in the world without an autoimmune disorder actually finds themselves in that position.

What does make it a valid opinion? Can you back it with any data?

It's valid if your opinion of the word "valid" is the opposite of what everyone else thinks it means.

Until recently we didn't vaccinate children under 12, we still don't vaccinate children under 5. I'm sure there are other groups of people we will never vaccinate. Therefore it's not completely bonkers to believe that you personally don't need the vaccine because you're in a very special group of people while also believing that almost everybody should get vaccinated.

It reminds me of the classical…

In the U. S., it would have been a sentence ripped right out of the jackass playbook: “I’m not a racist, but…”, <says blatantly racist statement>.

I enjoy the confusing reversal when you pair it with something not racist:

“Now look, I’m not racist but the dry air this winter has done a number on my sinuses”

It's not an unreasonable opinion where small children with no comorbidities are concerned. Extremely low risk from COVID; tiny but not non-existent risk from the vaccine. It's a different matter when you're in your early 70s though.

> It's a pretty contradicting statement to say in the same sentence "I'm not antivax but I think the vaccine is more dangerous than the virus"

In more general terms, outside of covid for a moment, do you think so? If you have been vaccinated for X, Y, and Z, but think the risks of vaccinating for R out weigh the benefits, does that make you antivax?

I'd say anyone who buys into the wave of fearmongering against vaccines is antivax, even if they've had previous vaccinations. Two twins in their 70s choosing not to get vaccinated would fall into this camp.

Conversely, if there's someone for whom medical consensus agrees is legitimately better off without vaccines (e.g: due to some immune system condition), then I wouldn't call them antivax.

Yeah, nowadays, many people want to avoid any and all controversy.

One of my friends says he is not vegetarian or vegan, he just doesn't eat meat and tells everyone they should not eat meat.

Do we know why some vaccinated people still die of Covid? That would probably help a lot in figuring out who will benefit from the vaccine.

Because for your body to fight a virus, it needs to have a good working immune system. Some people lack that for various reasons. A vaccine helps in this case but it's not 100%.

Being "fit" certainly helps your immune system. But as we see here, it doesn't make you invincible.

He bought?

DOOMP EET

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