Garfunkel's Syndrome, Part I

You can't possibly have the right experience with the paper I will refer to below without reading it yourself first. So go here (PDF), do the Google searches, and come back.

The paper, titled "The Faffufnik-Chaim Yankel Effect: A Cautionary Tale," was meant to address the "evolution of theoretical frameworks in mathematics education" and was submitted for a conference for the International Commission on Mathematical Instruction (ICMI) in March of 2008. The paper's author is Solomon Garfunkel, who is listed as the executive director of an organization called COMAP, the Consortium for Mathematics and Its Applications.

The main idea of the paper seems to be that, although the process by which math education projects were approved in the past was certainly flawed, the process that exists today--one which leads to what the author calls the Faffufnik-Chaim Yankel Effect (FCE)--is much worse:

Years ago a typical review of a COMAP proposal would read, "This is an excellent idea with an excellent staff with an excellent track record, we recommend this project for funding." The FCE refers to more typical current reviews that read, "This is an excellent idea with an excellent staff with an excellent track record. However, we have to recommend against funding because they don't make any reference to the seminal research papers of Faffufnik, nor do they plan to use the statistical protocols of Chaim Yankel." The reviewers may very well be students of Faffufnik and/or Chaim Yankel.

Now, I assume I'm like most people in that (a) I would think it a pitiable state of affairs that mathematics education funding would be so tightly tethered to one researcher's line(s) of inquiry, and (b) I would find it extremely difficult, if not impossible, to pick out the fake names in a list of names of alleged mathematics education researchers (unless they were Madonna or Jon Bon Jovi, or something like that), and (c) sometimes things go right over my head that I later think should not have gone right over my head.

So, after reading Garfunkel's paper, I looked up Faffufnik and Chaim Yankel. For the former, the search results simply led me back to the paper in question. And the top result for the latter was this definition from a "Yiddish dictionary":

Chaim Yankel (khai-yam Yonk-l) a country bumpkin; the guy who just fell off the turnip truck; an ineffectual nobody; a fool. Also, Mr. Anyone; the man on the street; any Tom, Dick or Heshie.

Only then did I fully realize that Faffufnik and Chaim Yankel were made-up names.

Of course, this realization unfortunately could not change (b) and (c) above. But it did change (a). That is, upon realizing that Faffufnik and Chaim Yankel were merely placeholder names, I also realized that I was not being asked anymore to despair alongside the author--and, I assume, alongside most others--that mathematics education funding might be held hostage by the work of one researcher, but rather to despair that it might be held hostage by any research. All research.

And that's a completely different question. One that I'll take up in the next post.