I was invited to a Nutrition conference. Why?

 
From  November of 2024 to March of 2025 I have gotten email inviting me to speak at conferences and/or submit to journals in the following topics:

NOT EVEN CLOSE TO MY FIELD:

Addiction Medicine, Behavioral Health and Psychiatry.

Looking forward to your involvement and your invaluable contributions. 

Possible reason for the invite: My name is Bill and I am a chocoholic.


Infections Diseases

Your exceptional expertise in the field of infections diseases aligns perfectly with our conference focus.

Possible reason for the invite: I had a mild case of COVID two years ago. (I suspect most of my readers did. Did you also get an invite?)

 Vaccines

We eagerly anticipate your participation and the invaluable perspective you will bring to the event. As a first step we kindly request the title of your presentation.

Clearly they want me to talk about using Schur's Theorem and FLT (n=3 case) to show that the primes are infinite. Why that one? All of my papers are tied for relevance to vaccines.

Possible reason for the invite: I have gotten both the flu vaccine and the COVID vaccine.

Nutrition 

We are excited to extend an invitation for you to join us as a distinguished speaker on your field since you have expertise in the field of nutrition.

Possible reason for the invite: I take a Vitamin D pill every morning. 


Pharmacy 

We are excited to extend an invitation for you to join us as a distinguished speaker on your field since you have expertise in the field of pharmacy.
(Identical wording to the Nutrition invite.) 

Possible reason for the invite: My wife's first degree was in Pharmacy and they got confused. They were very confused since she got the degree under her maiden name.

Drug R+D

We are pleased to offer two nights of accommodations at the venue hotel. (I am skeptical of that)

Possible reason for the invite: I watched Breaking Bad and blogged about it here and here.

Aquaculture and Fisheries

We are thrilled to invite you as a Speaker. Your exceptional expertise in the field of aquaculture aligns perfectly with our conference focus. (The wording is a mashup of the wordings in other invites.) 

Possible reason for the invite: I am a pescatarian.

Env and Earth, medical sciences, and immuotherapy

This email did one smart thing and one dumb thing. Smart: listing three areas so maybe they will get lucky. Dumb is the following sentence which proves they are a scam (not that proof is needed):

Your publication ``On the sizes of DPDAs, PDAs, LBAs" has caught our attention. We believe your expertise would greatly enrich our journal's focus on these rapidly evolving areas.

That is indeed a  paper I wrote, with Richard Beigel (I wonder if he also got an invite). Its here. I am very happy with that paper; however, its applications to Environmental Science, Earth Science, Medical Science, or Immunothearpy are .... limited. To be fair, it has been said that Math done for its own sake often has applications that the author did not foresee. So I look forward to lower bounds on the sizes of  DPDA's being  the key to solving global warming. 

Possible reason for the invite: I live on the Earth.

Linguistics

Your publication ``On the sizes of DPDAs, PDAs, LBAs" has caught our attention. We believe your expertise would greatly enrich our journal's focus on these rapidly evolving areas.

The astute reader may notice that this is identical to what the Env-Earth-Med-Imm people send and wonder if I made a mistake with cutting-and-pasting. A fair question, indeed it would be the null hypothesis, but no--the ``linguistics'' and the ``E-E-M'' people are using the same script. 

 Apparently  linguists are also impressed with my publication on the size of DPDAs, PDAs, LBAs. This makes more sense since CFGs and PDAs are equivalent. NO IT DOESN'T"T. I don't think linguists have cared about CFGs for a long time. 

Possible reason for the invite: Aside from my paper with Richard Beigel on lower bounds for whatnot, I also had at one time a paper with Lance about the size of CFGs for {w} that attracted some attention from an AI journal that would give us a discount on page costs (we declined their kind offer). See here

Modern Management

Impressed by your research On the size of DPDAs, PDA, LBAs I cordially invite you to share your new research findings for presentation at the INSERT NAME OF CONFERENCE  on Modern Management. 

How do I know this is a scam? Because the paper appeared in 2015 and they are calling it `new.'  Also, they forgot to cut and paste the actual name of the conference. 

Why has my PDA lower bounds paper gotten so much attention? I do not know. I assume someone pointed to it and others happen to find it. Or perhaps the paper has more applications than I thought. 

Possible reason for the invite (not including my brilliant work on the sizes of devices): The conference is on Modern Management. I have manged my REU-CAAR grant since 2013. That includes managing it through COVID and through Elon. 

Diabetes

We are excited to extend an invitation for you to join us as a distinguished Speaker at the INSERT NAME OF CONFERENCE  Your expertise in the field of Diabetes, making you an an excellent

(Very similar to Nutrition and Pharmacy. The last sentence IS as it was in the email- it is incomplete and does not have a period.) 

Both Modern Management and Diabetes need to up their game--leaving in `INSERT NAME' is just incompetent. 

Possible reason for the invite: My work on Muffin Mathematics (see here). 

LNG

 Greetings to you,

I hope this message finds you well.

I would like to explore the possibility of collaborating with you on an LNG project. Would you be available to discuss this opportunity further?

Looking forward to your response.

At first I thought it was LLM and it might be a HS student who wants to work with me in AI. Then I noticed it was LNG which is Liquid Natural Gas. 

Possible reason for the invite: Since Darling drives and I don't, I pump the gas.

Social Science and Business

A journal on these two topics together emailed me that they exist but wisely made no claim that I am an expert in the field. So they may be legit.

Possible reason for the invite: The royalties on my muffin book are less than the cost of buying muffins for the audience whenever I give a talk on it. This is either a counterexample of how to run a business or a clever way to avoid taxes. Either way, it could be an article in their fine journal. 

 

CLOSE BUT NO CIGAR (That's an old phrase. Younger readers- have you heard that expression before? I was curious so I decided to run it up the flagpole and see who salutes.) 

Numerical Analysis

 It is a great pleasure to invite you to organize a Symposiums on your research subject.

Possible reason for the invite: I took a course on Numerical Analysis  in 1978 and got an A.

Fuzzy Systems 

We bring together global experts. (Am I one of them?)

Possible reason for the invite: I teach Freshman Discrete Math so I have seen many fuzzy proofs. 

Nanotechnology 

We are thrilled to invite you to be part of our prestigious event.

Possible reason for the invite: They got vaccinated for COVID and the nanotech in their vaccine, put there by the other Bill G, made them invite this Bill G. 

Optics

We are thrilled to invite you to be part of our prestigious event
(Identical wording to the invite for Nanotechnology.) 

Possible reason for the invite: I wear glasses.

Systemics, Cybernetics, and Informatics

We invite you to  submit a paper and/or organize a workshop in Systemics, Cybernetic, or Informatics [ Wow! I didn't know I was a big shot in Systemics. I don't even know what that is.]

Possible reason for the invite: I use email.

Quantum

Based on your research interests we would like to invite you to consider NAME OF JOURNAL OMITTED  for the publication of your next article if accepted after peer review.

I have one article that has the word quantum in the title, see here. I am working on a slide-packet with a colleague on quantum entanglement and the CHSH game (ah- my wife had conjectured that math games are not fun games, see here, here, here, perhaps her conjecture should be extended to Physics). I've also had some blog posts about quantum computing. 

The paper is public. The slide-packet is not, though its hard to know whats public nowadays (see here). However I really doubt my paper or my slide packet is why I got the invite. And I doubt my quantum computing posts indicate that I know any quantum computing (this is not self-deprecating- my posts are more about non-tech aspects, for example see here).

Might be legit: They didn't praise my work in quantum. 

Might not be legit: The quote from the email I have above is so generic that I could easily have gotten (and probably have) an email with the exact same wording asking me to submit to a journal on (say) Fluid Mechanics. Also, as noted, I don't work in quantum. 

Possible reason for the invite: Uncertain. 

Fabrication, circuits, etc. 

We are hiring tenure-track faculty in device and fabrication, circuits, architecture, and systems, and EDA areas with highly competitive salaries in the world and cutting-edge research facilities. I'd appreciates you recommending your students to us. [They then gave two links to check out, which I of course did not do.] 

Not my area (what does EDA stand for?)  but it is plausible that I have students in my classes who would be interested. Even so, I won't be passing this on. 

Possible reason for the invite: I got an A in a hardware course in 1977.

Mobile Applications

We have gone through your prior article entitled ''Finding Large Sets Without Arithmetic Progressions of Length three: An Empirical View and Survey II" [Really? You may be the first ones to read it.] We thought it was extremely well written [Really?]. It with excellent pleasure [is that really a phrase `excellent pleasure'?] that we extend an invitation In connection with your to contribute any article of  your choosing to our esteemed journal. Your involvement would undoubtedly enhance the value of our publication.

You may be thinking `Bill left out a period between `invitation' and `I' . - Actually, they left it out. 

Only the heading of the email says `Mobile Applications' 

Later they refer to Journal of International Journal of ...

for their esteemed  journal. 

Possible reason for the invite: This was send to me my mistake. It was meant to be send to a puzzle column where the reader is asked to spot 10 things wrong with the paragraph. 

Not Sure What The Field Is

I am the editor at [Insert Name of Journal]. We are currently seeking high-qualify manuscript for our upcoming issue, and would like to invite you to submit your work for consideration. [The word `qualify' is not a typo on my part, its what they had. It is probably a typo on their part.]

The email actually had in it the wording [insert name of journal]. This indicates that this is a generic email where they forgot to put in the name. The only reason it might not be a scam is that they didn't call me an expert or anything of the sort. 

Possible reason for the invite: [Insert Reason]

Not Sure WTF 

Since your published paper ``Review of  `What Can Be Computed?' '' has been widely recognized,  [really?] we welcome your submission of original research on hot topics [Is Ramsey Theory on Ordered Sets a Hot Topic?] in your specialized of interested fields [does that last part make sense in English?].

Possible reason for the invite: They were impressed with a book review. Some people are easy to impress. Are you? The review is in this column here so you can judge for yourself. 

WHY ALL THE INVITES?

1) I suspect that most (all?) of them are some sort of scam. I end up paying a conference fee or page costs or something. But is that really a scam? If I know exactly what I am getting--- a line on my resume--- and I know its a no-quality conference or journal, then its not a not a scam. On the other hand, I don't think an article in Pharmacy will help my resume.

2) Perhaps it is easier to email Everyone than trying to figure out whose a Math person, whose a Nutrition person, etc.

3) The UPSIDE of emailing EVERYONE is that they cast a wide net and might get someone who they didn't think of.

4) The DOWNSIDE of emailing EVERYONE is... THERE IS NO DOWNSIDE. Email is free, and its not as though emailing ME will make me respect the conference on optics any less -- or more accurate to say that my negative opinion of these venues will not harm them.

5) There is a harm to society. I delete so many emails without looking at them carefully that I might delete something I do care about. Has this happened? Not that I know of-- but I wouldn't know.

6) I normally delete all such emails; however, I kept all those that came in November 2024, Dec 2024, and Jan 2025,  and wrote the post. Then I got a few more in Feb and added to the post. Then one in March so I added that one to the post.  I thought it best to post this before I get even more. I could do a statistical study of all of these emails and write a really bad article. Maybe a Nutrition Journal will publish it.