Bro Toyin,
I find this reponse pasted below, culled from http://www.nairaland.com/nigeria/topic-19285.32.html not only hilarious but instructive of the MASSIVE brainwashing Program inflicted on Africans who doubt Dr. Oyibo's discoveries. See the comments highlighted in RED. If Nigerans and the Nigerian Government refuse to fund Dr. Oyibo's research to bring it from the theorectical tothe practical,YET they want tear him down even though his mathematical geometric POSUTULATES andTheoremshave been declared sound by the highest scientistin the world. I pity Africa!
Dear Ugwumba,
I have come to notice that scientists seem to be too
emotional when it appears that a fellow scientist is making a headway.
I have read your posts on Emeagwali but i must tell you that I may be
justified if I conclude that your attack is driven by jealousy rather
than reason. Why? I have observed that your attack has crossed the
boundary of Emeagwali and drifted to Oyibo. I must tell you that you
may have some grudge against Emeagwali but PLEASE I beg you, don't even
try to tongue-lash a two time Nobel-Nominee named Professor G.A. Oyibo.
You are a Physicist and you know what it is to develop such a formula
(GAGUT).
What you are doing is exactly what one Professor Ama Nduka
in my University (FUTO) did when Oyibo visited our school. Nduka has
this habit of getting aggressive whenever any other physicist appears
to outshine him. When The Profs. who felt they could lash Oyibo started
displaying heights of childishness like you are doing, Oyibo said
something, "Don't attack me, Attack my formula" They could not. Look,
Oyibo is not your mate. I don't think you know what it is to be
nominated for a Nobel Prize.
In the academia, the number of
references you have i.e the number of authors that refer to your work
or book, affects your prestige. Chike Obi as I heard, has about 20
international references. I don't relly know how true that is, but
thats enormous if you know what an "International Reference" is. A
Russian mathematician, Professor Sagas (or something of that sort - not
sure of the spelling) read Oyibo's Gagut and found nothing
mathematically wrong with it. Sagas has 201 references! How many do you
have?
You should know that Oyibo's work is on Mathematical
Physics. Einstein was a mathematical physicist. In mathematical physics
you move from equations to reality. i.e You develop equations and give
experimental physicists to try out and it works. Einstein's work was
developed with equations - scratches of a pen on paper and when US
tried it, it destroyed Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Remember that Einstein's
equation was also looking physically unreal but because it was
mathematically faultless, it worked. That's what theoretical Physics is
all about. If the conditions are satisfied, the physical must obey.
Remember, those equations were founded on time-tested laws of physics.
Oyibo is very intelligent and you may not reason like him. If there is
a fault in GAGUT then there is a fault with one of the underlying
principles that were applied while deriving the equation (Gij,j = 0).
Maybe calculus, relativity, Gauss, poisson's, laplace's or lagrange's
theorems could be faulty. Attack those people who founded those
theorems i.e Newton, Einstein, Laplace, etc. Read his childhood story
and see how he discovered Gauss's equation without having prior
knowledge of such a theorem - in primary school! The discovery thing is
in Him. Behave Yourself! The most likely thing that is pushing you
against Oyibo is Jealousy.
Behave Yourself!
Ogonna.
'Speculation is a deadly game; revise what you KNOW, the UNKNOWN must then drive the known' ~~ Ogonna'
'Remember to recollect YOUR past, discover YOUR present, then invite YOUR future to participate in ALL ~~ Ogonna'
--- On Thu, 10/21/10, Ogonna Anyabolu <ogo...@yahoo.com> wrote:
From: Ogonna Anyabolu <ogo...@yahoo.com>
Subject: Re: ||NaijaObserver|| Re: NigerianID |On Dr. Gabriel Oyibo's GAGUT- Exposing the HATRED and FRAUD of Sahara Reporters and their Acolytes
To: NaijaO...@yahoogroups.com
Cc: "Niger...@yahoogroups.com" <Niger...@yahoogroups.com>, "Bring your baseball bat" <NaijaO...@yahoogroups.com>, "NIgerianW...@yahoogroups.com" <NIgerianW...@yahoogroups.com>, "TalkN...@yahoogroups.com" <TalkN...@yahoogroups.com>, "Egbuwara isi group" <naijain...@googlegroups.com>, "naija_it_professionals" <Naija_IT_Pr...@yahoogroups.com>,
naija...@yahoogroups.com
Date: Thursday, October 21, 2010, 8:48 AM
Bro. Toyin,
You have a need to pick on my INTELLIGENCE this morning??? Let's go for it.
You ask:
"Ogonna,
Can you show us ONE ARTICLE or BOOK by a scientist that JUSTIFIES your position on Emeagwali and Oyibo? "
I'll
give you one, reference Prof. Animalu (just happens to be Nigerian's
own foremost celebrated Cambridge trained mathematician) detailed
27-page mathematical-proof review on the ABSOLUTE authenticity of the
GAGUT theorem, Gij,j = 0 http://www.math.buffalo.edu/mad/physics/Animalu_Alex_GAGUTreview1.pdf
Bro.
Toyin, don't hit your head on the wall on your way out and if you choke
on the 'differential equations' --you only need to ask for help and
I'll throw you a lifeline.You need me to show you how I google-wiki
search THIS EVIDENCE??? But before
you proceed on your quest, glean on the CONTRADICTIONS which Prof.
Gabriel Oyibo himself pointed to elendureporters on WHY Africans are
their OWN worst ENEMIES when it comes to seeking validation from the
White man and waiting for their colonial masters to fund their OWN
research. Bro. Toyin, if you were a true reasearcher and NOT a fraud in
the Likes of SAHARA mal Reporters, you would have at leastfollowed the
reference highlight below in red, as preliminary pointers BUT did you??? (excerpted from Prof. Gabriel Oyibo: Mad Man or Genius? By Jonathan Elendu, July 12, 2005) http://elendureports.com/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=41&Itemid=1
JE: What does the science community in America think of your
theorem? GO:
I think the American mathematical society has no
problem with the proof, Gij, j=0. The European mathematical society has
no problem with it either. In fact the American mathematical society
has been reviewing the work since the mid-nineties. The formula came
out early 90's and in 1995, my institute OFFAPIT, organized an
international conference of top-notch mathematicians in the world,
including a former head of the math department of Stanford, including a
former head of the math department from Caltech, Julian Cole. It was
presented and everybody was stunned! It was also presented earlier at
Copper MT, Colorado. It was overwhelming, everybody…Russians, were
lining up to talk to me. After the 1995 presentation, it was clear to
me that GAGUT is godly because there was not a single mathematician of
the top group that could touch it. Then it was published in various
forms and finally American mathematics society…the first review was
done, I believe, in 1996. They selected an expert called, Jaume Carot,
a French mathematician to review the work. He is one of the best in
relativity. He had no problem. He signed off on it. Then the European
mathematics society selected a true legend to review the work, in the
person of Gregory Tsagas. Before his death in 2003, was the president
of the Balkan Association of Geometry. He also signed off on my work.
That's why I can talk to you the way I am doing. JE:
Why, do you think, the American science community is
not embracing you or up in arms defending you against criticisms? GO:
That's where the challenge comes in. Its part of
your responsibility as a journalist to be able to help that process.
There are any numbers of reasons why they will not come out to
celebrate me. Number one, every race has been searching for this. It is
the understanding of some people that the race that will be blessed
with the secret code to the universe will be considered as the most
blessed race or the most gifted race or the smartest race. Therefore,
you don't expect the Europeans to celebrate a gift that was given to
Africa which they wanted for themselves. It is simple logic. So, you
are the one who is supposed to start the celebration. That is why the
Nigerian Senate motion is so critical. As a journalist you will need to
promote the truth. Don't do it for me, don't do it for yourself, if you
believe in God, do it for God. Promote the truth, the over-all truth,
the God's truth, the total truth…to let your people know that rather
than slaughtering yourselves and dying of AIDS and hunger…you should be
celebrating, you've got the prize now. JE: So, why is the Nigerian science community not defending their own? GO:
Because they haven't heard from you? They haven't
heard from you to say Elendureports.com will now play the role of New
York Times. The New York Times came up with relativity. It changed
hands from the non-Jewish to Jewish when relativity was developing in
1905. And have since grown up through reporting about Albert Einstein.
In fact Prof Animalu wrote that in one of his reviews. There are people
like Prof. Animalu and Pro. Iya Abubakar who have testified on
television that GAGUT is solid but the masses haven't been able to deal
with that. Of course, we went around the various universities.
Nigerians should be thanking God on their knees and recognize that God
has given them the blessings that the whole world will envy them. This
is why they kept the review of GAGUT on low key because they will not
come out of their way to say what a major discovery. But Harvard
University has my books on this development. They keep my books in the
most prestigious libraries in Harvard. Stanford University has
classified my institute (OFFAPIT) among the top places for physicists
in the world. But as I'm telling you, there are no GAGUT books in
Nigeria. Some members of the Senate had requested that the Nigerian
Universities Commission buy my books for Nigerians. I spoke to Pres.
Obasanjo within the past couple of weeks and he gave me the assurance
that he was going to put that into action. Add to your list numerous tracking devices from Min. Clemson Brown's Aug. 23rd 2005 article - Rebutal to Review of Gagut -- http://nigeriaworld.com/articles/2005/aug/235.html
And please note that Dr. Oyibo is IGALA and I'm IGBO before you inject your poison of tribalism into this matter. Ogonna.
'Speculation is a deadly game; revise what you KNOW, the UNKNOWN must then drive the known' ~~ Ogonna'
'Remember to recollect YOUR past, discover YOUR present, then invite YOUR future to participate in ALL ~~ Ogonna'
--- On Thu, 10/21/10, Ogonna Anyabolu <ogo...@yahoo.com> wrote:
From: Ogonna Anyabolu <ogo...@yahoo.com>
Subject: Re: ||NaijaObserver|| Re: NigerianID | EMEAGWALI - REBUTTAL AND REPLY TO HIS CRITICS BY HIS AGENTS
To: NaijaO...@yahoogroups.com
Cc: "Niger...@yahoogroups.com" <Niger...@yahoogroups.com>, "Bring your baseball bat" <NaijaO...@yahoogroups.com>, "NIgerianW...@yahoogroups.com" <NIgerianW...@yahoogroups.com>, "TalkN...@yahoogroups.com" <TalkN...@yahoogroups.com>, "Egbuwara isi group" <naijain...@googlegroups.com>
Date: Thursday, October 21, 2010, 8:01 AM
Bro. Toyin,
You have a need to pick on my INTELLIGENCE this morning??? Let's go for it.
You ask:
"Ogonna,
Can you show us ONE ARTICLE or BOOK by a scientist that JUSTIFIES your position on Emeagwali and Oyibo? "
I'll give you one, reference Prof. Animalu (just happens to be Nigerian's own foremost celebrated Cambridge trained mathematician) detailed 27-page mathematical-proof review on the ABSOLUTE authenticity of the GAGUT theorem, Gij,j = 0
http://www.math.buffalo.edu/mad/physics/Animalu_Alex_GAGUTreview1.pdfBro.
Toyin, don't hit your head on the wall on your way out and if you choke on the 'differential equations' --you only need to ask for help and I'll throw you a lifeline.You need me to show
you how I google-wiki search THIS EVIDENCE??? But before you proceed on your quest, glean on the CONTRADICTIONS which Prof. Gabriel Oyibo himself pointed to elendureporters on WHY Africans are their OWN worst ENEMIES when it comes to seeking validation from the White man and waiting for their colonial masters to fund their OWN research. Bro. Toyin, if you were a true reasearcher and NOT a fraud in the Likes of SAHARA mal Reporters, you would have at leastfollowed the reference highlight below in red, as preliminary pointers BUT did you???
(excerpted from Prof. Gabriel Oyibo: Mad Man or Genius? By Jonathan Elendu, July 12, 2005) http://elendureports.com/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=41&Itemid=1
JE: What does the science community in
America think of your
theorem? GO:
I think the American mathematical society has no
problem with the proof, Gij, j=0. The European mathematical society has
no problem with it either. In fact the American mathematical society
has been reviewing the work since the mid-nineties. The formula came
out early 90's and in 1995, my institute OFFAPIT, organized an
international conference of top-notch mathematicians in the world,
including a former head of the math department of Stanford, including a
former head of the math department from Caltech, Julian Cole. It was
presented and everybody was stunned! It was also presented earlier at
Copper MT, Colorado. It was overwhelming, everybody…Russians, were
lining up to talk to me. After the 1995 presentation, it was clear to
me that GAGUT is godly because there was not a single mathematician of
the top group that could touch it. Then it was published in various
forms and finally American mathematics society…the first review was
done, I believe, in 1996. They selected an expert called, Jaume Carot,
a French mathematician to review the work. He is one of the best in
relativity. He had no problem. He signed off on it. Then the European
mathematics society selected a true legend to review the work, in the
person of Gregory Tsagas. Before his death in 2003, was the president
of the Balkan Association of Geometry. He also signed off on my work.
That's why I can talk to you the way I am doing. JE:
Why, do you think, the American science community is
not embracing you or up in arms defending you against criticisms? GO:
That's where the challenge comes in. Its part of
your responsibility as a journalist to be able to help that process.
There are any numbers of reasons why they will not come out to
celebrate me. Number one, every race has been searching for this. It is
the understanding of some people that the race that will be blessed
with the secret code to the universe will be considered as the most
blessed race or the most gifted race or the smartest race. Therefore,
you don't expect the Europeans to celebrate a gift that was given to
Africa which they wanted for themselves. It is simple logic. So, you
are the one who is supposed to start the celebration. That is why the
Nigerian Senate motion is so critical. As a journalist you will need to
promote the truth. Don't do it for me, don't do it for yourself, if you
believe in God, do it for God. Promote the truth, the over-all truth,
the God's truth, the total truth…to let your people know that rather
than slaughtering yourselves and dying of AIDS and hunger…you should be
celebrating, you've got the prize now. JE: So, why is the Nigerian science community not defending their own? GO:
Because they haven't heard from you? They haven't
heard from you to say Elendureports.com will now play the role of New
York Times. The New York Times came up with relativity. It changed
hands from the non-Jewish to Jewish when relativity was developing in
1905. And have since grown up through reporting about Albert Einstein.
In fact Prof Animalu wrote that in one of his reviews. There are people
like Prof. Animalu and Pro. Iya Abubakar who have testified on
television that GAGUT is solid but the masses haven't been able to deal
with that. Of course, we went around the various universities.
Nigerians should be thanking God on their knees and recognize that God
has given them the blessings that the whole world will envy them. This
is why they kept the review of GAGUT on low key because they will not
come out of their way to say what a major discovery. But Harvard
University has my books on this development. They keep my books in the
most prestigious libraries in Harvard. Stanford University has
classified my institute (OFFAPIT) among the top places for physicists
in the world. But as I'm telling you, there are no GAGUT books in
Nigeria. Some members of the Senate had requested that the Nigerian
Universities Commission buy my books for Nigerians. I spoke to Pres.
Obasanjo within the past couple of weeks and he gave me the assurance
that he was going to put that into action. Ogonna.
'Speculation is a deadly game; revise what you KNOW, the UNKNOWN must then drive the known' ~~ Ogonna'
'Remember to recollect YOUR past, discover YOUR present, then invite YOUR future to participate in ALL ~~ Ogonna'
--- On Thu, 10/21/10, toyin adepoju <toyin....@googlemail.com> wrote:
From: toyin adepoju <toyin....@googlemail.com>
Subject: ||NaijaObserver|| Re: NigerianID | EMEAGWALI - REBUTTAL AND REPLY TO HIS CRITICS BY HIS AGENTS
To: "O.M.O." <ogo...@yahoo.com>
Cc: "Niger...@yahoogroups.com" <Niger...@yahoogroups.com>, "Bring your baseball bat" <NaijaO...@yahoogroups.com>, "NIgerianW...@yahoogroups.com" <NIgerianW...@yahoogroups.com>, "TalkN...@yahoogroups.com" <TalkN...@yahoogroups.com>, "Egbuwara isi group" <naijain...@googlegroups.com>
Date: Thursday, October 21, 2010, 7:33 AM
Oga O.M.O,
Are you not the same person who boasted about the achievements of these men?
You have nothing to show us to prove your point?
Na wa o....
toyin On 21 October 2010 11:58, O.M.O. <ogo...@yahoo.com> wrote:
Bro. Toyin,
Quit with your jeguda jegura politics of picking on your opponents brain to satisfy your motions-- this issue is NOT Ifa Chronicles and I'm not Afis-- I'm more thorough and unforgiving towarfs people who go about 'assasinating other people's character without thorough research'.
I've told you, I know NOT much about Emeagwali except what you read on the internet-- so far I'm learning that his 'contributions' go beyong what google wiki-search could offer fr the recent 'rebuttal'. I urge you to deal with that first before you come asking me for more answers.
On Oyibo, I've warmed you to do your research--- there's a website, he has a school in Long Island NY--- do you research , pay him a field visit ( like ai did) and satisfy your curiosty. Afterall, you've put yourself in the middle of the maelstrom, I suggest you
navigate your way through that.
I'm on a different mission now, to expose the hoarde of Nigerian Intellectuals and their accompanying Political Acolytes who help Underdevelop Nigeria.
Regards,
Ogonna.
Sent from my iPhone
Ogonna,
Can you show us ONE ARTICLE or BOOK by a scientist that JUSTIFIES your position on Emeagwali and Oyibo?
If they have achieved so much,the scientific world should be agog celebrating them.
Right now,I am asking for only ONE scientific article in an academic journal.I am not even asking for a book.
Please help us.
Show us ONE article that supports your view of their work.
If you cant find that show us ONE article that even DISCUSSES the work of any of these men.
Ogonna,if you are either of these men,would you be happy if your fellow scientists don't recognise and discuss your work,leaving the job to journalists and Internet fora to defend you?
This is far from a tribal issue.
Thanks Toyin On 20 October 2010 18:14, O.M.O. <ogo...@yahoo.com> wrote:
Maazi Joe Eto,
I agree with you totally , this is the perfect case of ANYAOKU-- Envy hate mixed Jealousy --- the difference is that these professors CANNOT distinguish between Genius and Distinguished fellows-- Dr. Emeagwali and Dr. Oyibo are Genuises for Altering our views of the Physical Laws of the Universe not just inventing.
As far as I'm concerned , let Sahararepirters and their group of hater z eat their hearts out--- infant after we are done with them Both figures Oyibo and Emeagwali will be more popular than ever.
Ogonna.
Sent from my iPhone
NIGERIANS:
I strongly suggest that you make an effort to read the
forwarded hate job on Phillip Emeagwali by Saharareporters, and the counter
posted by Emeagwali's agents. It is very obvious that Saharareporters
and their contributors of this master smear are driven solely by envy to destroy
a fellow Nigerian, just for being recognized on a world stage, and truly for the
contribution he has made to world domain science frontiers. Emeagwali's Nigerian
envy machine openly lament that he is the one accorded world recognition (not
them), citing some college and agency laboratory experiments they successfully
conducted, according to un-queried peer boards. They frantically organize
public media campaign to reverse high level achievements and matching accolades
bestowed on a fellow Nigerian, instead of working to get themselves on the same
world achievers stage, thereby increasing Nigeria/Africa presence on the list of
world contributors to global science and technology development. Check this
out:
"Only recently,
the USAfricadialogue googlegroups listserv managed by Professor Toyin Falola of the University of Texas hosted a
discussion on Philip Emeagwali’s vast fraud"
Saharareporters.
Why would a Nigerian professor be spending time to debunk
the basis of recognition and award bestowed on a fellow Nigerian by powerful
world (non- Nigerian) bodies instead of fighting for his own recognition by
those who make similar awards in his own field of endeavor? What is Toyin
Falola's motive for this Pull Him Down (PHD) organized action? What effort
has this Nigerian professor made to query other nationals who have
similarly been recognized? Read the next cull from Saharareporters on why
Emeagwali is being discredited:
"The most important reason why celebrating the likes of
Mr... Emeagwali is ultimately detrimental to Nigeria (and by extension Africa)
is that it takes attention away from the genuine black/Nigerian achievers that
deserve to be celebrated and projected as models of black/Nigerian ingenuity. It
is an outrage that, as African intellectuals were discussing Mr.... Emeagwali’s
multi-layered fraud on the USAfricadialogue forum, the exploit of Professor John
Dabiri, who recently won a McArthur Genius Award, received barely a blip in the
Nigerian and black press. Professor Dabiri is a fluid dynamics expert at the
California Institute of Technology (Caltech) and was among a select few who
received the highly prestigious prize that carries a $500,000 cash award.
Another Nigerian, Dr. Joseph Igietseme, led a team of scientists at the
prestigious, Atlanta-based Center for Disease Control (CDC) to win this year’s
award for outstanding research. Yet another Nigerian, Professor Sam Adeloju beat
out 14 finalists to win the James Dyson International Design Award with a device
he calls Buoyancy Bazooka that can be shot to a drowning person to save their
life at sea. This innovative Nigerian scientist and designer barely got any
attention among Nigerians and black people.
In literature, Professor Pius
Adesanmi recently won the inaugural Penguin Prize for African Writing, the
latest in a long line of young Nigerian writers to win prestigious awards in the
last 15 years. One does not even have to mention the Nobel-winning Wole Soyinka,
or the multiple award winning Chinua Achebe, whose Things Fall Apart is the most
translated work of fiction in Africa and perhaps the world. These two giants are
not on Nigeria postage stamps, but intellectual frauds like Emeagwali and
Gabriel Oyibo (of GAGUT infamy) are!"
All of
this tantrum is motivated by envy and hopefully not the Nigeria's tribalistic
bias largely blamable for her shameful state of the union 50 years post
independence.
Notice
that Emeagwali's Nigerian haters conveniently checked US government register for
"patents" to discredit him, when Emeagwali's website lists his "inventions", and
not patents. Note that Emeagwali's inventions are not being disputed. This
is symptomatic of Nigeria's 1978/79 PHD mantra of bridging the gap between the
North and the South. The deployment of strategic tools to actualize this
objective led to a government executive order transferring Nigeria's high
institutions to the federal ministry of education in the 1980s. This move led to
the mass exodus of renowned professors to off shore institutions and the
consequent evaporation of ranked higher institutions in Nigeria.
Individuals who are motivated by envy to pull down fellow humans can only
wallow in self pity and degradation. Self and personal energies are better spent
in quality competitive work. Others and peers will recognize you as well when
you achieve. When the people and the systems recognize you for always fighting
to pull down those who have recorded achievements for humanity, they begin to
track your personal performance. Most of the time you make no measurable
achievements worthy of public or institutional recognition.
Those
who have Nigerian government's authority and mandate for international image
making should call Saharareporters and the likes of Prof. Falola on this hate
job. The article they published on Emeagwali is replete with smear that borders
on criminal defamation. They have attacked him for putting Nigeria and Africa on
the world map, not for bribing anyone to confer on him what trophies, accolades
or material gains due them. As a Nigerian, I am highly offended by this reckless
hate job by fellow Nigerians, and truly hope that the Nigerian government would
see this smear as possible treason; it is chipping away at badly needed positive
image recorded for Nigeria and Africa on the international
platform.
Joe
Eto.
REPLY AND REBUTTAL FROM EMEAGWALI AND HIS AGENTS
Posted by Donita Brown on Oct 17 2010 in the
NEXT newspaper on Philip Emeagwali
You have 99 percent of your
?facts? wrong! Contrary to what you claim, the White
House, CNN, TIME, BBC
hired fact checkers.
President Bill Clinton knew he was speaking on record and his speech
that
described Philip Emeagwali as ?one of the great minds of the
Information Age?
was scripted and fact-checked for accuracy. 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. Why will Philip Emeagwali
(who?s been married for
30 years) claim an older, overweight,
ex-sister-in-law with four grown children,
whom he has never seen in person
as his ?second? wife? Polygamy is illegal in
the United States! For your
record, Gloria Emeagwali never sued Philip Emeagwali
as you said she
claimed. Her ex-husband said that a few months after they
arrived in
Nigeria, Gloria abandoned him to live with an ?Alhaji.?
ON WHY CLINTON
CALLED EMEAGWALI A ?GREAT MIND? President Bill Clinton [who had
science
advisors] called Emeagwali ?one of the great minds of the Information
Age?
because he solved grand challenge problems that simultaneously pushed the
frontiers of physics, maths, computation and communication. His discoveries
were
front page news in all four fields.
He discovered that for 330 years Force is NOT equal to mass times
acceleration
for all that flows underneath the Earth. The Gordon Bell prize
committee agreed
with him on the latter. The communication follows the
computation which follows
the maths which follows the physics. If the
foundation of the maths, computation
and communication is wrong, then the
maths, computation and communication had to
be reinvented.
The Gordon Bell Prize Committee agreed he did. He proved to them that
there are
FOUR forces, not three. Your high school physics book ?said the
SUM of ALL the
forces,? not some of the forces as is the case in ALL POROUS
MEDIA [including
petroleum reservoir simulation] textbooks. He said it took
him 41 reinventions
[not patents] to fix that 330-year-old error. He claimed
41 inventions, not
patents just as you can publish 41 articles, without
copyrights. Nobody has or
can get a patent on the Internet, as you implied.
To focus on patents, instead
of inventions will be akin to focusing on the
hero?s medal, rather than his
heroism. A few ramifications:
1. For 330 years, the most important law in physics [Second Law of
Motion] is violated in its most important application [oil recovery]. 2.
For 200 years, the most important formula in engineering F=ma is UNBALANCED ?
i.e. Your FORCE is NOT equal to my MASS times ACCELERATION is UNBALANCED.
3. For 100 years, the most important partial differential equations are also
UNBALANCED because they are derived from UNBALANCED formula F=ma. 4. And
a dozen more. Once again, these 330-year-old errors were corrected by Philip
Emeagwali. It was the first time in the history of science and technology
that one person single-handedly pushed the frontier of four major fields ?
physics, maths, computation, and communication. Again, that?s why President
Bill Clinton called him a ?great mind.? http://emeagwali.com/video/president-bill-clinton/one-of-the-great-minds-of-the-information-age.wmv
Regarding his Michigan accolades: Philip Emeagwali is arguably the most
honored scientist ? white or black ? that ever lived and worked in the state
of Michigan. The state has two flagship universities. You should ask the
president of Michigan State University why she paid him and invited him to
speak on April 18, 2007. See http://emeagwali.com/awards/citations/philip-emeagwali-michigan-state-university-april-19-2007.jpg
You should ask the president of the University of Michigan why her
university?s flagship publications dedicated special issues honoring the
discoveries and inventions of Philip Emeagwali? [Read MICHIGAN TODAY,
February 1991, University of Michigan, http://www.ns.umich.edu/MT/ ] You should query the
entire members of the Michigan House of Representatives why they passed a
resolution thanking Philip Emeagwali for his "tremendous impact on the state
of Michigan" in April 2007. Have you asked the Mayor of Lansing (capital of
Michigan) and the Mayor of East Lansing why they declared April 18, 2007 as
PHILIP EMEAGWALI Day? Have you queried the Governor of Michigan why
she gave an award to Philip Emeagwali for his "tireless contributions" to
Michigan in 2007? For your record, a supercomputer costs 1.32 BILLION
dollars (Wall Street Journal, October 4, 2010). The budget of many
universities and even African nations is less than one billion dollars. 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. Think
about it: How many programmers
? white or black ? will be so trusted and/or
have EXCLUSIVE access to program
the new 1.32 BILLION dollars supercomputer?
It?s important because you must have
a billion dollar equipment to make
ground breaking discoveries.
Only the United States and Japan can afford
such machines. As you know, to win
the Gordon Bell Prize you defend it
before 10,000 Who?s Who in Supercomputing.
He also gave invited lectures on
his partial differential equations in
Washington, D.C. in July 8-12, 1991 at
an international congress of applied
mathematicians, held once in four
years.
The ten thousand attendees, was the largest gathering of the Who's Who
in
mathematics. He recently headlined the 2009 Kshitij the largest science
festival
in Asia. And so on. Why do you think ? 21 years later - scientists
continue to
pay him a speaker?s fee equivalent to a professor?s yearly
salary? You should
check your facts to understand why TIME magazine called
Philip Emeagwali "the
unsung hero behind the Internet." CNN called him "a
father of the Internet. BBC
called him a ?Digital Giant? He has been voted
history's greatest scientist of
African descent.
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
SAHARAREPORTERS
REPORT ON EMEAGWALI
Posted: October 18, 2010 - 21:25
Posted by
siteadmin
caption: Philip Emeagwali -Photo BBC News
A Citizen
Investigative Essay On SaharaReporters, New York
Philip Emeagwali stirs up
diverse emotions in Nigerians, Africans, and black people around the world. His
claim of being a father of the Internet, of having invented the Connection
Machine, of possessing 41patented inventions, of winning “the Nobel Prize of
Computing” and of being a “doctor” and/or “professor” have been conclusively
debunked with widely documented evidence.
Fraudulent claims help Emeagwali get on the Nigerian N50 postal
stamp
Yet, the figure of Emeagwali as a black scientific, engineering, and
information technology genius and pioneer continues to loom large over
discussions of black achievement. The legend of Philip Emeagwali’s purported
inventions, widely proven to emanate from the perverse deceptive genius of the
man himself, endures and proliferates among Nigerian and black groups around the
world.
Only recently, the USAfricadialogue googlegroups listserv managed by
Professor Toyin Falola of the University of Texas hosted a discussion on Philip
Emeagwali’s vast fraud. Participants in the discussion included Nigerian and
African intellectuals, scientists, engineers, and IT professionals. Overall, the
discussion reinforced and reiterated one of the worst kept secrets in the
Nigerian Diaspora, especially in its online community: that none of Emeagwali’s
highfalutin claims, on whose strength he has curried and continues to curry
favor and recognition from gullible and hero-hungry black people, is true.
Yet, just a few days ago, one of Nigeria’s more visible dailies, The Vanguard,
included the academic and intellectual fraud in its list of 20 “most influential
Nigerians.” Curiously, unlike previous Nigerian publications and profiles on Mr.
Emeagwali, the biographical write-up accompanying the nomination does not repeat
any of the well-known claims and “achievements” that Emeagwali has aggressively
and fraudulently peddled about himself — claims that many of our people regard
as truth. Apparently, the journalists at The Vanguard have become exposed to the
widely available refutations of those claims and now know that they are false.
But that, precisely, is the outrage. If they know that he is not a father of the
internet, did not win “the Nobel Prize” of Computing as he claims, has no
invention patents, did not invent the connection machine, does not have a single
academic publication, and is neither a “doctor” nor a “professor” by any
definition of those terms, why did they include him on the list? What makes Mr.
Emeagwali “influential,” his ability to deceive Nigerians and line his pockets
on the black speechmaking circuit?
Nigerians and black people deserve to know
who the real Philip Emeagwali is. This will save them from the embarrassment of
continuing to celebrate a fraud while real black scientific achievers and
pioneers starve for attention and recognition. To correct Nigeria’s scientific
and technological lag there is a need for investments — both financial and
motivational — in the sciences, engineering, and IT fields. Nigerian youths need
inspiration in the quantitative and scientific disciplines, but they should get
it from actual, not pretending, black scientific, computing, and engineering
heroes, not from phonies like Mr. Emeagwali.
Patented Inventions Or The Invention Of Patents? Debunking the
many myths of Mr. Emeagwali’s “achievements” is one the easiest things to do on
earth if you have a computer with Internet access. Let us start with his claim
of possessing 41 (32 by some accounts on some hero-worshipping black websites)
patents for various inventions. A simple search at the website of the US Patent
and Trade Mark Office (here: http://tarr.uspto.gov/) reveals that
Mr. Emeagwali has only one registered patent, for Emeagwali.com, his website. He
has no other patent listed against his name. It is the same patent that most
owners of independent websites apply for to legally protect their proprietary
rights over the website and its contents. We can state conclusively then that
Mr. Emeagwali has no patented invention of any kind, contrary to his and his
supporters’ claim. Specifically, Mr. Emeagwali claims to have invented the
Connection Machine (CM-2). This false claim is displayed boldly and shamelessly
on Emeagwali.com in the section on “inventions” and “discoveries.” Some black
websites like this one http://inventors.about.com/od/blackinventors/a/black_historyE.htm
credit Emeagwali with inventing the Hyberball Machine Networks (or the
supercomputer). Both claims are demonstrably false. The connection Machine,
which is capable of conducting simultaneous calculations using
65,000-processors, was conceived by Daniel Hills and built by Thinking Machine
Corporation, which Mr. Hills, along with Sheryl Handler, founded in 1982. This
information is widely available on the web. The so-called supercomputer is
therefore clearly not the child of Mr. Emeagwali by even the most generous
stretch of the imagination. Internet Pioneer? Mr. Emeagwali claims to have used the CM-2 Machine to
carry out billions of calculations by connecting over 65,000 processors
(computers) around the world. He claims that this was the rudimentary foundation
of the Internet. It is on this ground that he has aggrandized to himself the
title of “father of the internet.” But this is a barefaced lie at worst and an
egregious exaggeration at best. And it is so absurd in its circular logic that
it is hilarious. First, as stated earlier, Emeagwali did not invent the
Connection Machine on which his “experiment” relied. Second, Emeagwali used more
than 65,000 independent processors "around the world" (meaning on the Internet)
to do his calculation. This means that the Internet already existed and that he
RELIED ON it for his calculations. Unless the Internet he claims to have
fathered is different from the Internet that already existed at the time of his
experiment (and which we all know as the existing internet today), he COULD NOT
have invented the Internet or fathered it. He could not have been using an
internet that, by his claim, did not exist until he invented it. As this website
http://www.boutell.com/newfaq/history/emeagwali.html
makes very clear, Emeagwali’s research did not contribute to or help invent any
of the known components of what we now know as the internet: Philip Emeagwali
did work in supercomputing in the [late] eighties……. But supercomputing and the
Internet are very different areas. And Emeagwali did not contribute to even one
of the hundreds of Internet standards, or RFCs (Requests For Comments), that
were created in the early decades of the Internet—an open process that anyone
could participate in. His supercomputing research was completely unrelated to
the Internet. Emeagwali’s research was thus irrelevant to the evolution of
the internet. Emeagwali did his supercomputing experiment in the late 1980s. By
then, the “core standards” and protocols for information and data flow on the
Internet already existed. And although, improvements have been made to the
template since then, Emeagwali did not make any of those improvements and cannot
therefore claim credit for them. Emeagwali's tenuous—and fraudulent—claim to
internet fatherhood rests on his assertion that "the Supercomputer is the father
of the Internet,” “because both are networks of computers working together.”
This, experts agree, is not true, as supercomputing is just one component of the
Internet and in fact RELIES ON the rudiments of what we know as the internet to
work. So, if anything, the internet concept is the father of supercomputing, not
vice versa. But even if we accept Emeagwali’s wrong logic, the fact that he did
not invent or pioneer supercomputing means that even on this flawed premise and
logic he cannot be considered a father of the internet. Authentic histories
of the internet are accessible all over the web. One can be found here: http://www.isoc.org/internet/history/brief.shtml#SC69.
Many people played leading roles in inventing, improving, and constituting the
vast technologies, protocols, and ideas that gave birth to and perfected the
Internet. It is interesting that none of them is nearly as vocal in claiming
that he is a father of the internet as Mr. Emeagwali, who did not contribute to
the invention of the internet in any shape or form and in fact relied on the
already existing internet to conduct his research. One of the most significant
contributors to and pioneers of the internet is Vinton Cerf, who is today a Vice
President and Chief Internet Evangelist at Google Inc. Other important figures
in the development of the Internet include JCR Licklider, Bob Taylor, Paul
Baran, Donald Davies, and Lawrence Roberts. If anyone deserves the title of
father of the Internet, it is these people. Yet, none of them craves or has
appropriated the title. When interviewed about their contribution to the
Internet, they often humbly outline their actual contribution, crediting others
with other components and shunning the title or insinuation of having fathered
the Internet. The only “history of the internet” source to even recognize
Emeagwali as a legitimate computer scientist to be mentioned when chronicling
the history of the internet is the book History of the Internet: A Chronology,
1843 to the Present by Christos J. P. Moschovitis, Hilary Poole, Tami Schuyler,
Theresa M. Senft. The book was published in 2001. Although Mr. Emeagwali proudly
displays the book’s reference to him on his website and claims that the “father
of the internet” moniker (which has since been lazily picked up by several media
platforms) originated in the book, there is absolutely no such reference in the
book. The book’s reference to Emeagwali only states how Emeagwali’s research
“effectively stimulate[d] petroleum reserves” by “harnessing the power of
parallel computing.” And it is clear from a cursory analysis of the linguistic
properties of this specific reference to Emeagwali that Emeagwali himself
supplied the material and the claims articulated in it. It is also clear from
the reference that it has nothing to do with the internet but is about improving
the modeling of oilfields or oil reservoirs. The content and prose are eerily
identical to the autobiographical write-ups and claims on Emeagwali.com and on
black websites that simply lift and republish Emeagwali’s claims and
self-written biography. The Nobel Prize Of Computing? Emeagwali’s other claim is that of winning
the “Nobel Prize of Computing.” He is, of course, referring to the Gordon Bell
Prize, which he won in 1989. Many uninformed observers have since picked up this
fraudulent reference, which emanated from Emeagwali.com, and given it wings. The
truth is that the Gordon Bell Prize does not come close to the Nobel in status,
recognition or prize money and to compare the two prizes is to insult the
prestige of the Nobel and grossly exaggerate the Gordon Bell’s importance. The
Gordon Bell Prize is, properly speaking, an annual competition that young,
driven, engineering upstarts — mostly graduate students — enter. Winners are
usually those whose research are innovative and on the cutting edge of new
processes in the field. So, on that score, winning the Gordon Bell Prize is a
reward for doing research work that is important and solves an application
problem at the time that the award is given. But let us put the award in
perspective and recognize that it is actually a very minor award in the narrow
field of supercomputing and in the larger computing and scientific community.
Here is why the Gordon Bell Prize, Emeagwali’s only legitimate achievement, is
much less than what he has portrayed it as:
• The cash award for the prize is a mere $1000. Often,
the amount of an award is a good guide to its prestige and significance in the
field. • Consider the fact that the most
prestigious prize in the field of computing (and yet it cannot even be called
the Nobel of Computing without insulting the real Nobel) is the Turing Prize,
which carries a cash prize of $100,000.
• The Gordon Bell is awarded in the narrow subfield of
supercomputing, thereby further thinning the applicant pool and reducing the
intensity of the competition. • The
prize is further subdivided into several categories. Emeagwali won in one of
those categories, the price/performance category. The more prestigious overall
Peak Performance category was won by the entry submitted by a team from Mobil
and TMC. • It is interesting that apart
from Emeagwali no other winner(s) of the Gordon Bell annual prize makes noise
about winning it or claims to have won “the Nobel Prize of Computing.” They
usually go on to do bigger and better research in the field, the Gordon Bell
being just a launch pad for future significant work. The public does not even
know the other winners because it is a minor prize even in the field of
computing. • Finally, and most
importantly, Philip Emeagwali only won the prize in the price/performance
category by default. His calculation of 3.1 Gflops was the second fastest speed.
The fastest speed belonged to the Mobil/TMC team’s entry, whose calculation,
according to the official record of the IEEE, which administers the prize (IEEE
Software, May 1990, p. 101), bested Emeagwali’s speed. The speed of the
Mobil/TMC Team’s solution to the seismic data processing problem was almost
twice that of Emeagwali’s at almost 6Gflops. Similarly, and of more relevance
for our purpose here, the Mobil/TMC team’s entry achieved the best speed/cost
ratio (price-performance) at 500 Mflops per $1 Million, beating out Emeagwali’s
entry, whose speed/cost ration was less than 400 Mflops per $1 Million. In fact
the prize in the price/performance category was actually awarded to the
Mobil/TMC initially. However, because the Mobil TMC team won also won in the
overall Peak Performance category and the IEEE’s prize rule does not allow more
than one prize per entry, the Mobil/TMC team forfeited their prize in the
price/performance category, sticking with the prize for overall Peak
Performance, a more significant category. As a result, Emeagwali’s entry, the
second placed entry with the second highest speed/cost ratio, was automatically
bumped to first place. For all these reasons, it is the height of
self-promotion and delusional exaggeration for Mr. Emeagwali to claim that he
won the Nobel Prize of Computing or that the Gordon Bell is regarded as the
Nobel of Computing. Nobody except Mr. Emeagwali regards the prize as such. It
is noteworthy that both Emeagwali and the Mobile/TMC Team relied on the CM-2
Machine (the Connection Machine) for their calculations, the same machine that
Emeagwali falsely claims to have invented! A final point to note here is that
the research for which he won the Gordon Bell Prize (by default) has application
and relevance only in the narrow area of oil flow reservoir modeling and oil
prospecting. His entry for the competition utilized and optimized the capacity
of parallel computing, that is, relied on an already existing Internet.
Emeagwali’s own website states that he “accessed the supercomputers over the
Internet from local workstations.” Neither the research nor the prize had
anything to do with the Internet. The Internet was already invented and fairly
perfected by then; otherwise he would not be, in his own words, “accessing the
supercomputers over the Internet.” This clarification is necessary and important
because some of Emeagwali’s supporters and victims tend to assume wrongly that
his purported fatherhood of the internet derives from the research for which he
won the Gordon Bell Prize. All these facts can be easily accessed here: http://www33.brinkster.com/iiiii/inventions/emeag.html“Dr.” Emeagwali Or Doctored Emeagwali? Emeagwali’s final fraudulent
claim is that of being a “doctor” and “professor.” Several years ago, before
eagle-eyed Nigerians and Africans decided to scrutinize his eye-popping claims,
his website audaciously referred to him as “doctor” and “Professor.” Because of
recent exposures of his scam, he no longer refers to himself on his website as
“Dr. Emeagwali” or “Professor Emeagwali.” However, in what is typical of the
Emeagwali scam, his website is still littered with many media references to “Dr
Emeagwali” and “Professor Emeagwali.” These stealthily promoted references then
get picked up by unsuspecting black media people who are eager to promote black
achievement and excellence. Sometimes, he approaches black websites and
organizations, asking them to link to or publish his false claims. In the course
of the discussion on the USAfricadialogue forum, Ms. Funmi Okelola , the owner
and webmaster of cafeafricana.com, revealed that Mr.
Emeagwali approached her a few years ago, asking her to help propagate the lie
that he is “a father of the internet.” Ms. Okelola, herself an Adjunct Professor
of IT, flatly turned down his request, refusing to participate vicariously in
his fraud. For good measure, she advised him to seek help for his delusions of
grandeur. But many proprietors of black websites and publications have not
been as alert to Emeagwali’s antics as Ms. Okelola and have been falling for his
scam. In their eagerness to embrace what they believe to be the proud
achievements of a “brother,” they have inadvertently donated space and platform
to Emeagwali to consolidate and spread his false claims. Because of the virility
of the internet, even some non-black websites have picked up these ubiquitous
references that are patently false. Here, on this website http://www.answers.com/topic/philip-emeagwali for
instance you will find a clear reference not only to “Dr Emeagwali” but also the
following reference in their documentation of his education: “Ph.D., Scientific
Computing, University of Michigan, 1993.” He will not correct what is clearly
a false reference, preferring to take cover in the deniability of being able to
say that it is others, not him, who use these false, unearned titles to refer to
him. The reason he will not correct this falsehood is that it emanated from him
in the first place; most of the references were picked up from his website in
the days before scrutiny spooked him into avoiding such direct self-referencing.
The clearest evidence yet of his complicity and culpability in this
misrepresentation is that he sits through interviews where the clueless, awed
interviewers refer to him as “Doctor Emeagwali” and “Professor Emeagwali” and he
does not correct them. There is a particularly revolting video on youtube ( http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=8244498418903739405#)
in which the female interview repeatedly calls him Dr. Emeagwali, obviously
assuming and/or reading from her script that he has a PhD. He sits there and
nods and smiles through those references without correcting her. Having planted
the false biographical information about himself in the first instance, he
understandably makes no effort to discourage people from using it or to correct
them. The false references to him as “doctor” and “professor” are not the
only falsehoods that Emeagwali coyly and deftly promotes; he routinely lets
interlocutors repeat the many false claims that are based on his own prolific
misrepresentations. On this website http://inventors.about.com/library/weekly/aa111097a.htm,
for instance, the misinformed interviewer, a black woman who is proudly
interviewing “a black inventor” for a book she was writing on black inventors,
asks him the following question: “You have submitted 41 inventions to the U.S
Patent and Trademark Office concerning seven technologies. Can you give us
expanded details?” Clearly, the interviewer was repeatedly the false claim on
Emeagwali’s website and in his self-written biographical profiles, without
realizing that, as we showed at the beginning of this essay, he has no patent
for any technology or invention. Here is Mr. Emeagwali’s response to her
question: “Inventors are reluctant to provide expanded details of their
inventions until they receive full patent protection. The reason is that the
Patent and Trademark Office can deny patents to inventors that publicly provide
details of their invention.” But the truth is that he has neither registered
patents for his non-existent inventions nor a patent-pending status. He has no
inventions or technologies to patent! The response itself contains a lie.
Contrary to Emeagwali’s insinuation that inventors cannot publicly discuss their
work until they are patented or that doing so would jeopardize their patent
application with the US Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO), inventions and
products with “Patent Pending” status are routinely discussed, advertized, and
marketed on American television. In fact these public discussions of unpatented
inventions always carry the disclaimer that patents are pending, meaning that
applications have been made. If public discussion of inventions and technologies
were detrimental to patent applications, none of these unpatented and “patent
pending” technologies and inventions would be on the American market or be
advertized on television. This was Emeagwali seeking to perpetuate the myth that
he has several technological inventions that are patented or awaiting patents
but avoiding having to mention or discussion the specific fictitious inventions
for which he claims to have patents in order to have deniability when checks are
made at the USPTO and he is confronted with the truth of his falsehood. Racism Or Laziness? The case of Philip Emeagwali is a cautionary tale on
the pitfalls of self-delusion, laziness, and a sense of entitlement. Mr.
Emeagwali enrolled in a doctoral program in Civil Engineering at the University
of Michigan in 1987. His coursework over, he took the comprehensive examination
that qualifies one for candidacy. He failed the exam twice and did not take it a
third time. In the meantime, he conducted the research that would later win him
the Gordon Bell Prize, a research he began as a class project for one of his
graduate courses. In 1991, two years after winning the Gordon Bell by default,
he petitioned the Dean of the School of Engineering to be allowed to submit a
dissertation (despite not having passed his candidacy exam and therefore not
being a doctoral candidate) in a different department — the Department of
Electrical and Electronic Engineering. His request was curiously granted in what
was clearly a sidestepping of standard procedure. Emeagwali submitted the
dissertation, basically a rework of his entry for the Gordon Bell competition,
on July 24, 1992. A team of internal and external evaluators examined it and
found it unworthy of a doctorate and turned it down. Emeagwali then sued the
University of Michigan for racial discrimination. The lawsuit was dismissed for
lacking merit and also failed on appeal in 1999. The details of Emeagwali’s
graduate school records and of the dueling contentions in the lawsuit are all
documented here http://www.michbar.org/opinions/appeals/1999/102999/5473.html
in the court record of the Michigan Court of Appeals. A dispassionate
analysis of the details, affidavits, and arguments submitted in the lawsuit and
in the appeals process reveals the following:
• Emeagwali was a fairly brilliant student but he was lazy and
would not put in the work necessary to earn his degree.
• He had a sense of entitlement, feeling that since he was
black and had made it into the University of Michigan, he was entitled to a
special treatment and academic favors. •
This sense of entitlement escalated after he won the Gordon Bell Prize. He
thought that he was entitled to a PhD on the strength of the Gordon Bell
competition entry when in fact he was not even a doctoral candidate, having
failed his comprehensive examination twice.
• Emeagwali was more concerned with parlaying his newfound
default Gordon Bell fame into profitable self-promotion than with the serious
academic effort required to complete the PhD.
• He petitioned to be allowed to submit a dissertation only
after he realized that he would not be taken seriously as a researcher and may
not be able to find a secure job in research or teaching if he did not possess a
PhD. This is a story of how a promising, modestly brilliant graduate student
was destroyed by his own hubris, entitlement mentality, and laziness. What
Emeagwali failed to earn through hard work and diligence, he has since
appropriated to himself by calling himself and getting others to call him
“doctor” and “professor.” Emeagwali is not a doctor of whatever kind. He is
not a professor. He has not held any research or teaching job in any educational
or research institution since he failed to get a doctorate degree at Michigan.
He has also not done any new research. Emeagwali has no single publication in
any scientific journal. A search of the most comprehensive scientific
publication database (which can be done online) yields only a reference to his
Masters Degree dissertation. Here we have a man who is unemployed, has no
serious standing in the scientific, engineering, or computing communities. Yet
he is widely referred to as “a father of the internet,” “an internet pioneer,”
“the greatest black scientist that ever lived,” “Bill Gates of Africa,” among
other over-the-top and unearned titles. The question to pose is: how did the
world get so deceived and why did many reputable people and organizations buy
into Emeagwali’s con job? Emeagwali is a very industrious, persistent, and
successful scam artist; you have to give him that. Very few intellectual frauds
have successfully mainstreamed their false claims as Emeagwali has
done. Intellectual Fraud And Its Unwitting Validators Even former
president Bill Clinton was suckered by the fraud, famously referring to
Emeagwali as “one of the great minds of the information age” in his speech to
the Nigerian National Assembly in 2000. The Clinton reference has provided cover
and alibi for Emeagwali to perfect and spread his false claims. Predictably,
Emeagwali’s defenders point to the Clinton reference and to CNN’s and TIME
Magazine’s references to him as “a father of the internet” and “the unsung hero”
of the internet age respectively. These references are boldly displayed on
Emeagali.com for the obvious purpose of convincing the uninformed that his
claims have been vetted and endorsed by these entities. The problem is that
these media organizations sadly endorsed the claims without vetting them. Part
of it is sloppiness, but much of it is the result of what black intellectuals
who live in the West understand and experience as white liberal pandering, which
is itself borne out of white liberal guilt and the fear of the “r” word
(racism). Obviously Clinton was pandering to his Nigerian hosts who believed
Emeagwali to be a scientific genius and national hero. Clinton, the savvy
politician that he is, and a man who perfected white liberal outreach and
pandering to black/African peoples, was relying on the image and descriptions of
Emeagwali that was already in the black and mainstream press —descriptions that
are traceable to Emeagwali's own misrepresentations on his websites. What
Emeagwali does is so clever as to ensnare even a skeptical and vigilant
observer, especially one that is already inclined to believe or seek out claims
of black scientific achievement for whatever reason. As indicated earlier,
Emeagwali plants these autobiographical write-ups that are ridden with
falsehoods and misrepresentations in unsuspecting black publications. He does
this by aggressively pitching these claims to their editors as he tried to do
unsuccessfully with Ms. Okelola. Then, fired by liberal guilt and a desire to
seem welcoming to black achievement and excellence, the mainstream media like
TIME and CNN, lazily pick up these references and descriptions. Emeagwali then
links to, disseminates, and publicizes these mainstream press references and
descriptions (which are actually based on his own descriptions of himself and
his "achievements”), thus perfecting and furthering the fraud. This way, he
creates deniability for himself. The deception comes full circle but the cycle
continues to repeat itself, populating and repopulating the Internet with
Emeagwali’s falsehoods. The sophistication and complexity of the fraud
notwithstanding, there is no excuse for reputable organizations like CNN and
TIME not to have done a simple due diligence on the false claims of Emeagwali.
It is true that at the time that TIME and CNN made the glowing references to
Emeagwali, the now widely available refutations of his claims were probably not
yet available on the internet. Even so, a basic inquiry from the appropriate
quarters would have revealed the truth about the claims on which the references
to Emeagwali were based. The two reputable organizations failed to carry out
this basic fact checking, an elemental reportorial and investigative duty of
journalists. Instead, they relied on Emeagwali’s widely disseminated falsehoods
for their stories. The case of TIME is particularly scandalous. The story in
which it extols Emeagwali is clearly directly based on Emeagwali’s own
autobiographical claims on Emeagwali.com. In fact it is a faithful, almost
verbatim reproduction of Emeagwali’s self-written profile. It is lazy, sloppy
journalism at its worst. There is similarly no excuse for President Clinton’s
speech writers not to have done basic checks or asked some of the president’s
own appointees and advisers who are engineers and scientists about the true
value of Emeagwali’s work. Had they done this relatively simply investigation,
they would have realized that being a default winner in one category of a minor
supercomputing competition for work that has a specific, limited application in
the narrow field of oil reservoir modeling does not qualify one to be called
“one of the greatest minds of the information age.” A Self-Replicating
Fraud When challenged, Emeagwali and his supporters can say he is merely
repeating and linking to what others call him and say about him and that he does
not call himself a father of the internet or a doctor or a professor. But the
fraud is a self-replicating one, perpetuating and proliferating itself across
both the print and virtual media worlds. Other publications that are searching
for black scientific achievers do an internet search and then rely on the
previous press descriptions of Emeagwali, which ultimately lead back to the
man’s fraudulent biographical claims on his own website. The lazy journalists
and Pan-African activists lift these published claims and references (which
emanated from the man himself), concluding that they must be established facts
if other media outlets had already published them. And on and on it goes. It is
a very sophisticated fraud that is aided by the virility of the Internet. This
is precisely how even the prestigious Law School Admission Test (LSAT) ended up
including a passage about Emeagwali in their test, a passage that is exactly the
same as what Emeagwali published on Emeagwali.com about himself!! The examiners
at the LSAT did not even bother to rewrite the passage. Nor did they bother to
check the veracity of the claims therein. It is clear that they were
simply interested including a passage about a "black achiever" to fulfill the
need for diversity of content and to deflect or avoid accusations from black
test takers and other minority groups that the test does not represent or
reflect the experiences of black people and is thus biased against
them. White liberal patronage of black people can be that shallow and sloppy
— and insulting to the very people it purports to promote. It is political
correctness and pandering marinated in a political agenda--that of ingratiating
white liberal politicians and figures to blacks for political support and
multicultural validation. The peak of this phenomenon is Black History Month in
February when white liberal organizations and black institutions alike pull out
all the stops to have self-promoting “black achievers” like Emeagwali speak to
them. That's when they get invited by white liberal and African American
organizations to showcase black achievement and innovation! White liberal
patronage is a big industry in America. It takes many forms; one of them is what
Pius Adesanmi calls the Mercy Industrial Complex (MIC). But the MIC is not as
offensive as the false flattery and the silly excuses and defenses that white
liberals advance for cuddling black failures and frauds. Hero-seeking black
organizations have not helped matters with their patronage of people like
Emeagwali. Emeagwali’s deception succeeds so well because of a multiracial
coalition of consumers and enablers. Emeagwali is a very clever,
self-conscious scam artist. That is however no excuse for the black community to
allow itself to be used to actively promote a fraud. Testimonies To Fraud And
Deception A participant in the USAfricadialogue discussion, Professor Pablo
Idahosa of York University, Toronto told of how, as the institution’s Director
of African Studies, he summarily dismissed the request of black students in the
institution who came to him seeking sponsorship for their proposal to bring Mr.
Emeagwali to the campus to speak to them. Professor Idahosa told of how a
cursory scrutiny of the biography that Emeagwali had supplied to the student
group convinced him that the man was a fraud and his claims false. Subsequently,
he declined to fund the proposed event, refusing to use the institutions name
and funds to validate a deception. Another member of the forum, Dr. Ola
Kassim revealed how he had been taken by Emeagwali’s claims when he stumbled on
them and how he, as the leader of a Nigerian group in Canada, had decided to
invite the self-proclaimed “computer genius” to speak to the group. In a
demand that fleshes out the pecuniary motivations for Emeagwali’s persistence in
perpetuating his fraud, he requested for an honorarium of $10,000, round the
clock limousine service, a five-star hotel accommodation, and first class plane
tickets for him and an assistant. Dr. Kassim promptly discontinued
correspondence with Mr. Emeagwali, seeing his demands as grossly unreasonable. A
few years later, he was glad that he did, as he became exposed to the mountain
of evidence proving that Emeagwali is not what — and who — he claims to be.
Other African organizations with deeper pockets have been paying up Emeagwali’s
ridiculous and undeserved fees, believing that they are paying an African
“internet pioneer” and “inventor” to inspire them. It is a classic case of
obtaining financial gratification through misrepresentations and false
pretenses, what is called 419 in Nigerian parlance. Some white liberal groups
also pay Emeagwali to talk about his “achievements” as a way to satisfy their
Afrophilic sensibilities and assuage their consciences. These gullible and
not-so-gullible deep-pocketed groups keep Emeagwali in business, enabling the
jobless Emeagwali to make a living off his deception. They have unwittingly
helped him solidify his fraud as he routinely posts videos and audios from these
events on his website to further cement his self-created legend. The irony of
paying Emeagwali to inspire and motivate black (and white liberal) audiences is
that, as one commentator remarked, in addition to being an intellectual fraud,
Mr. Emeagwali has no personal charisma, lacks the oratorical skills of a
motivational speaker, and, for a man who is fairly well educated with two
Masters degrees, has terrible English speaking skills as evident in his online
videos. Yet another member of the forum, Wassa Fatti, a Gambian resident in
London, narrated how he had been a fanatical believer in Emeagwali as an African
scientific hero and thanked members for providing the overwhelming evidence that
convinced him of Emeagwali’s monumental, sophisticated fraud. He was so enamored
of Emeagwali’s legend that he, along with like-minded Africans, wanted to write
a children’s inspiration book on the fraudulent self-promoter. In his own words,
the project was abandoned when even those who were most vocal in touting
Emeagwali’s claims and “achievements” could not find independent corroborations
for any of the claims and after they realized that every single claim about his
accomplishment, except the Gordon Bell Prize, led right back to Emeagwali.com.
Fatti writes: “I abandoned [the] project….when others raised concerns that we
need evidence to support Emeagwali's claim. Those who were loudest among us to
produce such a booklet were also the least to provide evidence beyond Philip
Emeagwali's verbal claim.” Why Emeagwali Is Bad For Nigeria/Africa
Some people acknowledge
Emeagwali’s deception but suggest that it should be understood in the context of
America’s broader culture of self-promotion, deceptive enterprise,
profit-motivated lies, and self-misrepresentation. It is true that this culture
makes it easier for people like Emeagwali to thrive and inflict their fraud on
society. But ultimately, Emeagwali, like everyone else, has to be held
personally responsible for his transgressions.
Other Nigerians argue that
Emeagwali’s scam has not hurt anyone personally, that it is a victimless fraud.
By this logic, exposing Emeagwali’s fraud hurts the image of Nigerians and black
people more than it helps it. There is some technical veracity in that argument.
But the cost of non-exposure to Nigeria is much greater. There are now as many
web postings and videos clearly exposing the intellectual con artistry of Mr.
Emeagwali as there are websites and web postings celebrating him. Every time his
scam is highlighted, his Nigerian nationality is mentioned to reinforce the
stereotypical notion that Nigerians are shifty, lying frauds. His Africanness
and blackness also become factors that are invoked to explain his fraudulent
ways. So, image-wise, every hard working, honest, achieving Nigerian
(intellectual or otherwise, scientist or not) is sullied by Emeagwali’s scam.
Every discussion of Emeagwali’s fraudulent self-promotion casts a dark shadow on
Nigerians with hard-earned reputations; their genuine achievements are put on
trial with every discussion of Emeagwali’s serial dishonesty. They are victims
of Emeagwali’s fraudulent activities. His fraud taints Nigeria and
Nigerians.
Emeagwali’s quest for a short cut to fame and recognition and his
subsequent refusal to take responsibility for his misguided actions and
inactions has hurt black people everywhere. Experts on racism believe that every
false, frivolous racism allegation or lawsuit actually harms the struggle for
racial equality and justice because it makes future, genuine allegations of
racism less believable and less credible in the eyes of the dominant white power
and judicial structure. This is the damage that Emeagwali’s frivolous recourse
to the racism card in his Michigan travails has inflicted on the struggle of
black people for equality in America and elsewhere.
Some people argue that
Emeagwali should not be denigrated because of his failure to finish his PhD and
that many of the giants of the information revolution do not have PhDs. This is
true. Bill Gates, Paul Allen, Steve Jobs, Danny Hills, Vint Cerf, and the
founders of Google all do not have PhDs. Yet they have gone on to do great
things that have transformed the world, as we know it. But the difference
between these people and Philip Emeagwali is like night and day. Unlike
Emeagwali, these are actual pioneers of various technologies and protocols with
documented patents to truly pioneering and innovative technologies. These people
celebrate the fact that they do not have doctorate degrees, wearing it as a
badge of honor, thereby intensifying the inspirational effect of their life
stories and accomplishments. They don’t go around calling themselves “Dr.” and
“Professor” like Mr. Emeagwali. In fact, the most well known of these
information age pioneers, Bill Gates, proudly proclaims the fact that he dropped
out of college to pursue his dream. Unlike Emeagwali, these people do not go
around claiming to have patents that they do not have.
The fact is that one
does not need a PhD to contribute to scientific knowledge or to invent
technologies and techniques that improve human life. That is precisely why
Emeagwali’s false claim of being a PhD holder and a professor is so galling. He
has a Masters Degree in Engineering from a respected university and does not
need a PhD to pursue his intellectual or scientific dreams. He could get a job
with his qualification and earn a respectable, honest, decent living. Yet he
felt the need to misrepresent himself as a “doctor” and “Professor.” This shows
that his fraud is clearly not motivated by necessity, self-preservation, or
survival, but by greed and a desire to secure unearned gratifications.
Some
people say: “why expose Emeagwali when he is inspiring our people to embrace
computers?” The answer to that is that a fraudster should not be the one
inspiring “our” people, especially impressionable young black people, who will
eventually realize that Emeagwali is a fraud and be devastated. Others argue
that Emeagwali is a harmless, self-promoting charlatan who poses much less
threat to Nigeria than the thieving politicians in Abuja. There is some truth to
that, but the intellectual, activist, progressive, and media constituencies of
Nigeria have no moral right to rail against Salisu Buhari and Bola Tinubu’s
certificate and biographical deceptions if they cannot hold one of their own to
account for his multiple deceptions.
Ignoring Genuine Nigerian Scientific Achievers
The most important reason
why celebrating the likes of Mr. Emeagwali is ultimately detrimental to Nigeria
(and by extension Africa) is that it takes attention away from the genuine
black/Nigerian achievers that deserve to be celebrated and projected as models
of black/Nigerian ingenuity. It is an outrage that, as African intellectuals
were discussing Mr. Emeagwali’s multi-layered fraud on the USAfricadialogue
forum, the exploit of Professor John Dabiri, who recently won a McArthur Genius
Award, received barely a blip in the Nigerian and black press. Professor Dabiri
is a fluid dynamics expert at the California Institute of Technology (Caltech)
and was among a select few who received the highly prestigious prize that
carries a $500,000 cash award.
Another Nigerian, Dr. Joseph Igietseme, led a
team of scientists at the prestigious, Atlanta-based Center for Disease Control
(CDC) to win this year’s award for outstanding research. Yet another Nigerian,
Professor Sam Adeloju beat out 14 finalists to win the James Dyson International
Design Award with a device he calls Buoyancy Bazooka that can be shot to a
drowning person to save their life at sea. This innovative Nigerian scientist
and designer barely got any attention among Nigerians and black people.
In
literature, Professor Pius Adesanmi recently won the inaugural Penguin Prize for
African Writing, the latest in a long line of young Nigerian writers to win
prestigious awards in the last 15 years. One does not even have to mention the
Nobel-winning Wole Soyinka, or the multiple award winning Chinua Achebe, whose
Things Fall Apart is the most translated work of fiction in Africa and perhaps
the world. These two giants are not on Nigeria postage stamps, but intellectual
frauds like Emeagwali and Gabriel Oyibo (of GAGUT infamy) are!
Inviting And Enabling Intellectual Fraud
The degree to which Nigeria and
Nigeria celebrate people of fraudulent and inflated reputations lends credence
to the contention of Professor Pablo Idahosa that Philip Emeagwali was created
by "the embarrassing Pan-"Afrikan" infantile, therapeutic achievism that
afflicts so many black people [the] world over — the need to find heroes that
result in a cathartic sycophancy of anything achieved by black folks." Professor
Mobolaji Aluko, who teaches Chemical Engineering at Howard University, echoed a
similar sentiment, describing the tragedy of Emeagwali as an indictment of black
people’s gullibility and their unquestioning and naïve commitment to racial
solidarity on whatever premise. His words ring compellingly true:
The
tragedy is not just Emeagwali's - who may truly believe what he peddles on his
website and his world-wide motivational speeches within the Black circuit that
clutches for heroes, particularly in the technical fields apart from sports and
the humanities - but those spectators who insist of being conned, or else
indicate that Emeagwali serves a harmless, motivational purpose.
Racial therapy is a dangerous enterprise because it emotionalizes
what should belong to the realm of reasoned skepticism and intense
interrogation. It leads to the celebration of mediocre and phony members of a
racial community. Consequently, real black scientific heroes and achievers are
ignored.
Conclusion
Mr. Philip Emeagwali is entrenched in his fraud. Being
jobless, he earns a living off it. He will not come clean on his own, for that
would be economic suicide. It is therefore the duty of everyone invested in
black scientific achievement to educate himself on Mr. Emeagwali’s pyramid of
intellectual fraud. Mr. Emeagwali knows that there will always be gullible black
people and guilt-ridden white liberals to swindle with his false claims. We
recognize that there will always be Nigerians and black people who will not get
off the self-comforting bandwagon of Emeagwali’s fraud regardless of how much
evidence one puts out. Some of it is ego. Some of it is a naïve, misplaced
desire to find black heroism where none exists. This essay may not sway those
people. But there are many Nigerians, Africans, and black people the world over
who are honest, humble, and open-minded enough to recognize and accept that the
man they have been led to adore and lionize is a compulsive liar, intellectual
fraudster, and a shameless, self-promoting exaggerator. Those people deserve the
truth about Mr. Philip Emeagwali.
On Tue, Oct 19, 2010 at 2:49 PM, Pascal john <pscl...@yahoo.com> wrote:
Maazi,
What do expect from onye ofe nmanu,Igbo
haters,last week here
one of them was writting that the up grading of
Enugu airport, to
international standard is a waste of money.Omo
carry go.
Maazi Emeagwali is our man OH HA.
JPASCAL.
--- On
Tue, 10/19/10, elombah daniel <elsd...@yahoo.com> wrote:
From:
elombah daniel <elsd...@yahoo.com>
Subject:
[IgboEvents:Live] How Philip Emeagwali Lied His Way To Fame - Sahara
Reporters
To: NIgerianW...@yahoogroups.com, NaijaP...@yahoogroups.com, igboe...@yahoogroups.com, igbowor...@yahoogroups.com, anambr...@yahoogroups.com, UmuAn...@yahoogroups.com, "Bring your
baseball bat" <NaijaO...@yahoogroups.com>, naijain...@googlegroups.com, usaafric...@googlegroups.com
Date:
Tuesday, October 19, 2010, 5:41 PM
A Citizen Investigative Essay On SaharaReporters, New
York Philip Emeagwali stirs up diverse emotions in
Nigerians, Africans, and black people around the world. His claim of
being a father of the Internet, of having invented the Connection
Machine, of possessing 41patented inventions, of winning “the Nobel
Prize of Computing” and of being a “doctor” and/or “professor” have
been conclusively debunked with widely documented evidence. Yet,
the figure of Emeagwali as a black scientific, engineering, and
information technology genius and pioneer continues to loom large over
discussions of black achievement. The legend of Philip Emeagwali’s
purported inventions, widely proven to emanate from the perverse
deceptive genius of the man himself, endures and proliferates among
Nigerian and black groups around the world. Only recently, the
USAfricadialogue googlegroups listserv managed by Professor Toyin
Falola of the University of Texas hosted a discussion on Philip
Emeagwali’s vast fraud. Participants in the discussion included
Nigerian and African intellectuals, scientists, engineers, and IT
professionals. Overall, the discussion reinforced and reiterated one
of the worst kept secrets in the Nigerian Diaspora, especially in its
online community: that none of Emeagwali’s highfalutin claims, on
whose strength he has curried and continues to curry favor and
recognition from gullible and hero-hungry black people, is true.
Yet, just a few days ago, one of Nigeria’s more visible dailies, The
Vanguard, included the academic and intellectual fraud in its list of
20 “most influential Nigerians.” Curiously, unlike previous Nigerian
publications and profiles on Mr. Emeagwali, the biographical write-up
accompanying the nomination does not repeat any of the well-known
claims and “achievements” that Emeagwali has aggressively and
fraudulently peddled about himself — claims that many of our people
regard as truth. Apparently, the journalists at The Vanguard have
become exposed to the widely available refutations of those claims and
now know that they are false. But that, precisely, is the outrage. If
they know that he is not a father of the internet, did not win “the
Nobel Prize” of Computing as he claims, has no invention patents, did
not invent the connection machine, does not have a single academic
publication, and is neither a “doctor” nor a “professor” by any
definition of those terms, why did they include him on the list? What
makes Mr. Emeagwali “influential,” his ability to deceive Nigerians
and line his pockets on the black speechmaking circuit? Nigerians
and black people deserve to know who the real Philip Emeagwali is.
This will save them from the embarrassment of continuing to celebrate
a fraud while real black scientific achievers and pioneers starve for
attention and recognition. To correct Nigeria’s scientific and
technological lag there is a need for investments — both financial and
motivational — in the sciences, engineering, and IT fields. Nigerian
youths need inspiration in the quantitative and scientific
disciplines, but they should get it from actual, not pretending, black
scientific, computing, and engineering heroes, not from phonies like
Mr. Emeagwali. Patented Inventions Or The Invention Of
Patents? Debunking the many myths of Mr. Emeagwali’s “achievements”
is one the easiest things to do on earth if you have a computer with
Internet access. Let us start with his claim of possessing 41 (32 by
some accounts on some hero-worshipping black websites) patents for
various inventions. A simple search at the website of the US Patent
and Trade Mark Office (here: http://tarr.uspto.gov/) reveals that Mr.
Emeagwali has only one registered patent, for Emeagwali.com, his
website. He has no other patent listed against his name. It is the
same patent that most owners of independent websites apply for to
legally protect their proprietary rights over the website and its
contents. We can state conclusively then that Mr. Emeagwali has no
patented invention of any kind, contrary to his and his supporters’
claim. Specifically, Mr. Emeagwali claims to have invented the
Connection Machine (CM-2). This false claim is displayed boldly and
shamelessly on Emeagwali.com in the section on “inventions” and
“discoveries.” Some black websites like this onehttp:// inventors.about.com/od/blackinventors/a/black_historyE.htm
credit Emeagwali with inventing the Hyberball Machine Networks (or the
supercomputer). Both claims are demonstrably false. The connection
Machine, which is capable of conducting simultaneous calculations
using 65,000-processors, was conceived by Daniel Hills and built by
Thinking Machine Corporation, which Mr. Hills, along with Sheryl
Handler, founded in 1982. This information is widely available on the
web. The so-called supercomputer is therefore clearly not the child of
Mr. Emeagwali by even the most generous stretch of the
imagination. Internet Pioneer? Mr. Emeagwali claims to have used
the CM-2 Machine to carry out billions of calculations by connecting
over 65,000 processors (computers) around the world. He claims that
this was the rudimentary foundation of the Internet. It is on this
ground that he has aggrandized to himself the title of “father of the
internet.” But this is a barefaced lie at worst and an egregious
exaggeration at best. And it is so absurd in its circular logic that
it is hilarious. First, as stated earlier, Emeagwali did not invent
the Connection Machine on which his “experiment” relied. Second,
Emeagwali used more than 65,000 independent processors "around the
world" (meaning on the Internet) to do his calculation. This means
that the Internet already existed and that he RELIED ON it for his
calculations. Unless the Internet he claims to have fathered is
different from the Internet that already existed at the time of his
experiment (and which we all know as the existing internet today), he
COULD NOT have invented the Internet or fathered it. He could not have
been using an internet that, by his claim, did not exist until he
invented it. As this website http://www.boutell.com/newfaq/history/emeagwali.html
makes very clear, Emeagwali’s research did not contribute to or help
invent any of the known components of what we now know as the
internet: Philip Emeagwali did work in supercomputing in the [late]
eighties……. But supercomputing and the Internet are very different
areas. And Emeagwali did not contribute to even one of the hundreds of
Internet standards, or RFCs (Requests For Comments), that were created
in the early decades of the Internet—an open process that anyone could
participate in. His supercomputing research was completely unrelated
to the Internet. Emeagwali’s research was thus irrelevant to the
evolution of the internet. Emeagwali did his supercomputing experiment
in the late 1980s. By then, the “core standards” and protocols for
information and data flow on the Internet already existed. And
although, improvements have been made to the template since then,
Emeagwali did not make any of those improvements and cannot therefore
claim credit for them. Emeagwali's tenuous—and fraudulent—claim to
internet fatherhood rests on his assertion that "the Supercomputer is
the father of the Internet,” “because both are networks of computers
working together.” This, experts agree, is not true, as supercomputing
is just one component of the Internet and in fact RELIES ON the
rudiments of what we know as the internet to work. So, if anything,
the internet concept is the father of supercomputing, not vice versa.
But even if we accept Emeagwali’s wrong logic, the fact that he did
not invent or pioneer supercomputing means that even on this flawed
premise and logic he cannot be considered a father of the
internet. Authentic histories of the internet are accessible all
over the web. One can be found here: http://www.isoc.org/internet/history/brief.shtml#SC69.
Many people played leading roles in inventing, improving, and
constituting the vast technologies, protocols, and ideas that gave
birth to and perfected the Internet. It is interesting that none of
them is nearly as vocal in claiming that he is a father of the
internet as Mr. Emeagwali, who did not contribute to the invention of
the internet in any shape or form and in fact relied on the already
existing internet to conduct his research. One of the most significant
contributors to and pioneers of the internet is Vinton Cerf, who is
today a Vice President and Chief Internet Evangelist at Google Inc.
Other important figures in the development of the Internet include JCR
Licklider, Bob Taylor, Paul Baran, Donald Davies, and Lawrence
Roberts. If anyone deserves the title of father of the Internet, it is
these people. Yet, none of them craves or has appropriated the title.
When interviewed about their contribution to the Internet, they often
humbly outline their actual contribution, crediting others with other
components and shunning the title or insinuation of having fathered
the Internet. The only “history of the internet” source to even
recognize Emeagwali as a legitimate computer scientist to be mentioned
when chronicling the history of the internet is the book History of
the Internet: A Chronology, 1843 to the Present by Christos J. P.
Moschovitis, Hilary Poole, Tami Schuyler, Theresa M. Senft. The book
was published in 2001. Although Mr. Emeagwali proudly displays the
book’s reference to him on his website and claims that the “father of
the internet” moniker (which has since been lazily picked up by
several media platforms) originated in the book, there is absolutely
no such reference in the book. The book’s reference to Emeagwali only
states how Emeagwali’s research “effectively stimulate[d] petroleum
reserves” by “harnessing the power of parallel computing.” And it is
clear from a cursory analysis of the linguistic properties of this
specific reference to Emeagwali that Emeagwali himself supplied the
material and the claims articulated in it. It is also clear from the
reference that it has nothing to do with the internet but is about
improving the modeling of oilfields or oil reservoirs. The content and
prose are eerily identical to the autobiographical write-ups and
claims on Emeagwali.com and on black websites that simply lift and
republish Emeagwali’s claims and self-written biography. The Nobel
Prize Of Computing? Emeagwali’s other claim is that of winning the
“Nobel Prize of Computing.” He is, of course, referring to the Gordon
Bell Prize, which he won in 1989. Many uninformed observers have since
picked up this fraudulent reference, which emanated from
Emeagwali.com, and given it wings. The truth is that the Gordon Bell
Prize does not come close to the Nobel in status, recognition or prize
money and to compare the two prizes is to insult the prestige of the
Nobel and grossly exaggerate the Gordon Bell’s importance. The Gordon
Bell Prize is, properly speaking, an annual competition that young,
driven, engineering upstarts — mostly graduate students — enter.
Winners are usually those whose research are innovative and on the
cutting edge of new processes in the field. So, on that score, winning
the Gordon Bell Prize is a reward for doing research work that is
important and solves an application problem at the time that the award
is given. But let us put the award in perspective and recognize
that it is actually a very minor award in the narrow field of
supercomputing and in the larger computing and scientific community.
Here is why the Gordon Bell Prize, Emeagwali’s only legitimate
achievement, is much less than what he has portrayed it
as: • The cash award for the
prize is a mere $1000. Often, the amount of an award is a good
guide to its prestige and significance in the field.
• Consider the fact that the most prestigious prize
in the field of computing (and yet it cannot even be called the Nobel
of Computing without insulting the real Nobel) is the Turing Prize,
which carries a cash prize of $100,000.
• The Gordon Bell is awarded in the narrow subfield
of supercomputing, thereby further thinning the applicant pool and
reducing the intensity of the competition.
• The prize is further subdivided into several
categories. Emeagwali won in one of those categories, the
price/performance category. The more prestigious overall Peak
Performance category was won by the entry submitted by a team from
Mobil and TMC. • It is interesting
that apart from Emeagwali no other winner(s) of the Gordon Bell annual
prize makes noise about winning it or claims to have won “the Nobel
Prize of Computing.” They usually go on to do bigger and better
research in the field, the Gordon Bell being just a launch pad for
future significant work. The public does not even know the other
winners because it is a minor prize even in the field of
computing. • Finally, and most
importantly, Philip Emeagwali only won the prize in the
price/performance category by default. His calculation of 3.1 Gflops
was the second fastest speed. The fastest speed belonged to the
Mobil/TMC team’s entry, whose calculation, according to the official
record of the IEEE, which administers the prize (IEEE Software, May
1990, p. 101), bested Emeagwali’s speed. The speed of the Mobil/TMC
Team’s solution to the seismic data processing problem was almost
twice that of Emeagwali’s at almost 6Gflops. Similarly, and of more
relevance for our purpose here, the Mobil/TMC team’s entry achieved
the best speed/cost ratio (price-performance) at 500 Mflops per $1
Million, beating out Emeagwali’s entry, whose speed/cost ration was
less than 400 Mflops per $1 Million. In fact the prize in the
price/performance category was actually awarded to the Mobil/TMC
initially. However, because the Mobil TMC team won also won in the
overall Peak Performance category and the IEEE’s prize rule does not
allow more than one prize per entry, the Mobil/TMC team forfeited
their prize in the price/performance category, sticking with the prize
for overall Peak Performance, a more significant category. As a
result, Emeagwali’s entry, the second placed entry with the second
highest speed/cost ratio, was automatically bumped to first
place. For all these reasons, it is the height of self-promotion
and delusional exaggeration for Mr. Emeagwali to claim that he won the
Nobel Prize of Computing or that the Gordon Bell is regarded as the
Nobel of Computing. Nobody except Mr. Emeagwali regards the prize as
such. It is noteworthy that both Emeagwali and the Mobile/TMC Team
relied on the CM-2 Machine (the Connection Machine) for their
calculations, the same machine that Emeagwali falsely claims to have
invented! A final point to note here is that the research for which
he won the Gordon Bell Prize (by default) has application and
relevance only in the narrow area of oil flow reservoir modeling and
oil prospecting. His entry for the competition utilized and optimized
the capacity of parallel computing, that is, relied on an already
existing Internet. Emeagwali’s own website states that he “accessed
the supercomputers over the Internet from local workstations.” Neither
the research nor the prize had anything to do with the Internet. The
Internet was already invented and fairly perfected by then; otherwise
he would not be, in his own words, “accessing the supercomputers over
the Internet.” This clarification is necessary and important because
some of Emeagwali’s supporters and victims tend to assume wrongly that
his purported fatherhood of the internet derives from the research for
which he won the Gordon Bell Prize. All these facts can be easily
accessed here: http://www33.brinkster.com/iiiii/inventions/emeag.html “Dr.”
Emeagwali Or Doctored Emeagwali? Emeagwali’s final fraudulent claim
is that of being a “doctor” and “professor.” Several years ago, before
eagle-eyed Nigerians and Africans decided to scrutinize his
eye-popping claims, his website audaciously referred to him as
“doctor” and “Professor.” Because of recent exposures of his scam, he
no longer refers to himself on his website as “Dr. Emeagwali” or
“Professor Emeagwali.” However, in what is typical of the Emeagwali
scam, his website is still littered with many media references to “Dr
Emeagwali” and “Professor Emeagwali.” These stealthily promoted
references then get picked up by unsuspecting black media people who
are eager to promote black achievement and excellence. Sometimes, he
approaches black websites and organizations, asking them to link to or
publish his false claims. In the course of the discussion on the
USAfricadialogue forum, Ms. Funmi Okelola , the owner and webmaster of
cafeafricana.com, revealed that Mr. Emeagwali
approached her a few years ago, asking her to help propagate the lie
that he is “a father of the internet.” Ms. Okelola, herself an Adjunct
Professor of IT, flatly turned down his request, refusing to
participate vicariously in his fraud. For good measure, she advised
him to seek help for his delusions of grandeur. But many
proprietors of black websites and publications have not been as alert
to Emeagwali’s antics as Ms. Okelola and have been falling for his
scam. In their eagerness to embrace what they believe to be the proud
achievements of a “brother,” they have inadvertently donated space and
platform to Emeagwali to consolidate and spread his false claims.
Because of the virility of the internet, even some non-black websites
have picked up these ubiquitous references that are patently false.
Here, on this website http://www.answers.com/topic/philip-emeagwali
for instance you will find a clear reference not only to “Dr
Emeagwali” but also the following reference in their documentation of
his education: “Ph.D., Scientific Computing, University of Michigan,
1993.” He will not correct what is clearly a false reference,
preferring to take cover in the deniability of being able to say that
it is others, not him, who use these false, unearned titles to refer
to him. The reason he will not correct this falsehood is that it
emanated from him in the first place; most of the references were
picked up from his website in the days before scrutiny spooked him
into avoiding such direct self-referencing. The clearest evidence yet
of his complicity and culpability in this misrepresentation is that he
sits through interviews where the clueless, awed interviewers refer to
him as “Doctor Emeagwali” and “Professor Emeagwali” and he does not
correct them. There is a particularly revolting video on youtube ( http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=8244498418903739405#)
in which the female interview repeatedly calls him Dr. Emeagwali,
obviously assuming and/or reading from her script that he has a PhD.
He sits there and nods and smiles through those references without
correcting her. Having planted the false biographical information
about himself in the first instance, he understandably makes no effort
to discourage people from using it or to correct them. The false
references to him as “doctor” and “professor” are not the only
falsehoods that Emeagwali coyly and deftly promotes; he routinely lets
interlocutors repeat the many false claims that are based on his own
prolific misrepresentations. On this websitehttp:// inventors.about.com/library/weekly/aa111097a.htm,
for instance, the misinformed interviewer, a black woman who is
proudly interviewing “a black inventor” for a book she was writing on
black inventors, asks him the following question: “You have submitted
41 inventions to the U.S Patent and Trademark Office concerning seven
technologies. Can you give us expanded details?” Clearly, the
interviewer was repeatedly the false claim on Emeagwali’s website and
in his self-written biographical profiles, without realizing that, as
we showed at the beginning of this essay, he has no patent for any
technology or invention. Here is Mr. Emeagwali’s response to her
question: “Inventors are reluctant to provided expanded details of
their inventions until they receive full patent protection. The reason
is that the Patent and Trademark Office can deny patents to inventors
that publicly provided details of their invention.” But the truth is
that he has neither registered patents for his non-existent inventions
nor a patent-pending status. He has no inventions or technologies to
patent! The response itself contains a lie. Contrary to Emeagwali’s
insinuation that inventors cannot publicly discuss their work until
they are patented or that doing so would jeopardize their patent
application with the US Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO),
inventions and products with “Patent Pending” status are routinely
discussed, advertized, and marketed on American television. In fact
these public discussions of unpatented inventions always carry the
disclaimer that patents are pending, meaning that applications have
been made. If public discussion of inventions and technologies were
detrimental to patent applications, none of these unpatented and
“patent pending” technologies and inventions would be on the American
market or be advertized on television. This was Emeagwali seeking to
perpetuate the myth that he has several technological inventions that
are patented or awaiting patents but avoiding having to mention or
discussion the specific fictitious inventions for which he claims to
have patents in order to have deniability when checks are made at the
USPTO and he is confronted with the truth of his
falsehood. Racism Or Laziness? The case of Philip
Emeagwali is a cautionary tale on the pitfalls of self-delusion,
laziness, and a sense of entitlement. Mr. Emeagwali enrolled in a
doctoral program in Civil Engineering at the University of Michigan in
1987. His coursework over, he took the comprehensive examination that
qualifies one for candidacy. He failed the exam twice and did not take
it a third time. In the meantime, he conducted the research that would
later win him the Gordon Bell Prize, a research he began as a class
project for one of his graduate courses. In 1991, two years after
winning the Gordon Bell by default, he petitioned the Dean of the
School of Engineering to be allowed to submit a dissertation (despite
not having passed his candidacy exam and therefore not being a
doctoral candidate) in a different department — the Department of
Electrical and Electronic Engineering. His request was curiously
granted in what was clearly a sidestepping of standard procedure.
Emeagwali submitted the dissertation, basically a rework of his entry
for the Gordon Bell competition, on July 24, 1992. A team of internal
and external evaluators examined it and found it unworthy of a
doctorate and turned it down. Emeagwali then sued the University of
Michigan for racial discrimination. The lawsuit was dismissed for
lacking merit and also failed on appeal in 1999. The details of
Emeagwali’s graduate school records and of the dueling contentions in
the lawsuit are all documented here http://www.michbar.org/opinions/appeals/1999/102999/5473.htmlin
the court record of the Michigan Court of Appeals. A dispassionate
analysis of the details, affidavits, and arguments submitted in the
lawsuit and in the appeals process reveals the
following: • Emeagwali was a
fairly brilliant student but he was lazy and would not put in the work
necessary to earn his degree.
• He had a sense of entitlement, feeling that since
he was black and had made it into the University of Michigan, he was
entitled to a special treatment and academic
favors. • This sense of
entitlement escalated after he won the Gordon Bell Prize. He thought
that he was entitled to a PhD on the strength of the Gordon Bell
competition entry when in fact he was not even a doctoral candidate,
having failed his comprehensive examination
twice. • Emeagwali was more
concerned with parlaying his newfound default Gordon Bell fame into
profitable self-promotion than with the serious academic effort
required to complete the PhD.
• He petitioned to be allowed to submit a
dissertation only after he realized that he would not be taken
seriously as a researcher and may not be able to find a secure job in
research or teaching if he did not possess a
PhD. This is a story of how a promising,
modestly brilliant graduate student was destroyed by his own hubris,
entitlement mentality, and laziness. What Emeagwali failed to earn
through hard work and diligence, he has since appropriated to himself
by calling himself and getting others to call him “doctor” and
“professor.” Emeagwali is not a doctor of whatever kind. He is not
a professor. He has not held any research or teaching job in any
educational or research institution since he failed to get a doctorate
degree at Michigan. He has also not done any new research. Emeagwali
has no single publication in any scientific journal. A search of the
most comprehensive scientific publication database (which can be done
online) yields only a reference to his Masters Degree
dissertation. Here we have a man who is unemployed, has no serious
standing in the scientific, engineering, or computing communities. Yet
he is widely referred to as “a father of the internet,” “an internet
pioneer,” “the greatest black scientist that ever lived,” “Bill Gates
of Africa,” among other over-the-top and unearned titles. The question
to pose is: how did the world get so deceived and why did many
reputable people and organizations buy into Emeagwali’s con job?
Emeagwali is a very industrious, persistent, and successful scam
artist; you have to give him that. Very few intellectual frauds have
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