Ready.
Some well-known papers had published both the questions and the solutions before the UnPhD, which only has its a lot of errors, and its unreflecting attempt of merging the mutually-unfitting.
As a matter of fact, the ideas are close to each other, and when you understand no better, it may appear trivial to merge them, or to make one of them look as if another "but with some added features." However, when standing on a table, jumping up, has a probability of falling below the starting level, and damaging something. That is the case with the UnPhD.
The main simplifying truth is that the Unbelievable-PhD-text is not an original one. It has claims. But those are false (if not deliberately cheating). It does appear to have plagiarized (cheated) from some previously existing papers.
As a result, even without ever holding the Unbelievable-PhD-text in your hands, you can gather all the useful knowledge in it, by reading the original sources. And there are only two such source papers (published in the years 1973 and 1978).
Four of the papers are already in the references of the UnPhD (although not cited as a source for importing any of the ideas, where the idea is being expressed on the UnPhD's behalf. They are only in the literature overview sections.) The fifth paper that had been published in a well-known journal (IEEE Trans. on Comm., 1980), is not cited, at all, but in many ways, it is relevant in content, and can be a base for demonstrating what was available before the UnPhD was granted a Ph.D. degree in 1982.
There are basically two strategies. We employ both.
Compare and contrast the UnPhD with the individual papers. This helps to spot some similarities, and some times to a point that an error or redundancy that did not make sense in the UnPhD, starts to make sense when the relevant context/assumptions in the source paper is observed. We may also infer, how much work is done, if at all, beyond the already published, and well-known, literature.
Compare and contrast the source papers among themselves, and see how the UnPhD differs at the contrasting points. When not original, it may either take from one of them, or attempt a mix. When the source papers have different contexts/assumptions, the chunks of ideas imported from different papers can thrash each other.
A merge clash happens where the published literature is not taken one-to-one. Taking one-to-one, when referenced, is undertandable, but of course, that cannot be the major part of a Ph.D. work. The novel aspects should be underlined, and only those should be the claimed contributions.
When the foremost presented features are not original, and also not referenced, and when the seams of the merger are a source of faults, the plagiarism must be announced.
The UnPhD is essentially nothing, when the prior art is taken into account. And it is even a subset of even single papers, especially of the NoeNut73, and ValDia78. Furthermore, when the effectively redundant data-rectangles are evaluated as discardable, it is also a subset of even the Petri nets tutorial.
Placing the text of each [resolution-procedure, and] transition-procedure, into a rectangle that replaces the particular transition-bar, gives us the UnPhD's graph. Optionally, to correspond to the states of X-transition, and Y-transition of E-nets, (e.g: no resolution-token, or priority-first, priority-second, priority-none/random), there may also be operator signs between arcs, as if that were SARA (UCLA graphs) input/output logic. Even totally needless, and problematic, is the inclusion of some redundant rectangles for data-items, within the same graph, next to the rectangle/transition, corresponding to the resolution locations, but without any standardized index/value, to manage the token-flow. In fact, at the analysis, data is not taken into account.
Discusses the motivations behind, and the design/usage suggestions for the Macro E-nets. This is basically what the UnPhD has plagiarized from, The transition-start timing, single-graph, macro-ful representation is very similar to the UnPhD published ten years later (1982). (But the single-graph, in [NoeNut73] case, does not pretend to be "single", i.e: self-sufficient. It only standardizes the data-dependency interface, and let's the designers free in the implementation of the procedures. The UnPhD is both more crowded (as it expands those resolution locations, into a data-flow graph) overspecifying/restricting the data-representation (read and/or write), and also fails to provide any (visual) programmatic cue/standardization to represent the decision (to correspond to the index numbers in the resolution locations). You have to read the program fragment, anyway.
The data-rectangles are totally useless. At the upper levels, if to show the data-sharing within the internal levels, the Petri net places used for mutex'ing would suffice to show something being shared. At the point of usage, next to the program-fragment, that is totally redundant, and even in the UnPhD, the author(s) have not cared to be consistent/correct about it. At the lower levels, that is not supposed to be seen, any way. What's the use, then?
And all this, still, is about the uselessness of such. Such garbage is even disasterous, as the crowdedness-leading-to-carelessness, as in the examples of the very UnPhD itself, demonstrate the counter-indication of such useless interface elements. In its final example, where it uses some non-boolean variables (an arrary of booleans, and a semaphore), instead of representing a semaphore in Petri nets, it only shows a data item named "sv." That is a reversal of the indicated. Mutex-place is gone, something that will have no effect in Petri net verification, replaces that.
If the "feature" of data-rectangles were to divert the attention from the plagiarism, it is obviously a very bad choice. The suggested, but then not-provided abstract-data-types, likewise. That also, only to overspecify the data side. The UnPhD gives no formal treatments, and not even any examples, that would appear like that Guttag tutorial, it points at.
Given that those i/o interface macros of the UnPhD, at points where they diverge from E-net primitives, become meaningless/erroneous, and the UnPhD provides no proofs for the inhibitor-arcful multi-level verifiability (it provides no proofs at all. [ValDia78] cite their proof for the ordinary Petri net case), then the UnPhD can be observed as an attempt to fuse the rest of the macro E-net ideas onto the Danthine (1980) case.
But do not assume a direct replacement. Because the UnPhD does not have an explicit management of time, only an E-net with no-time at enabled-phase may be modeled. The UnPhD starts "as soon as" enabled, unlike Petri nets, but like E-nets. But then, for an E-net, there is the option of waiting, before activity. Although the UnPhD claims to be modeling applications and operating systems layers, rather than lower layers in network hierarchy, that may be inapplicable for anything but the operating system dispatcher, if that. Whatever happened to the round robin, etc.? There is more to discuss about that "a bit from here," "a bit from there" assumption'ing, which also leads to its input operators being meaningless, unless already blocked (the side that holds a token, leads to a firing "as soon as" a token is deposited). And that leaves the double or more input transitions, practically starving if in conflict against one or more transitions that has/have a single input.
You may read further about the [NoNu73]'s content and relevance.
The Peterson (1977) tutorial was a regular reference for Petri-nets-based research papers, in the 1980s. The UnPhD also has it as a reference. [Pe77] is double-relevant, because even other than discussions of plagiarism, it is a rhinestone to evaluate the claimed contributions (or falures) of the UnPhD, with respect to the Petri net field. You may read further about the [Pe77]'s content and relevance
The Valette and Diaz (1978) paper is referred to, only in seven lines, among literature overview of modified Pettri nets (pp.35-36), and never cited again, but the UnPhD is very much like that. In fact, if we just take the i/o logic representation from SARA (which the UnPhD exactly duplicates), then they are identical, except for an unreflecting fusion of the two graphs into one, which is a bad choice as you may read further on the page discussing the [VaDi78]'s content and relevance.
By the time the [ValDia78] is merged into it, the E-net like assumptions have changed the behavior, and the contributions of the ValDia78 paper clash. Like a few extra appendages, that are advertised but the body rejects the grafted organs. The grafted includes the, multi-step verifiability (shrinking of subnets into a single transition) that NoeNut73 discuss only briefly, as an alternative to macros. (Macros get fully expanded, before verification. They are only for modeling.) NoeNut73 provide no proofs for that alternative suggestion, either. And, in fact, from my observation of the failings of the "xor-input" in the UnPhD, we know that it leads to blocking, if the inner code may have blocking states. Hence, with E-nets, if the inner transitions may have resolution locations with undetermined states, blocking passage, the resulting behavior would not correspond to a net without that shrinking. The UnPhD does not notice this. It plunges into E-nets, then grafts ValDia78 (or, takes the NoeNut73's suggestion, but ignores that it comes without further proofs, or explanations, which the UnPhD does not add, any way), and the result makes the Petri net verification not-applicable.
The Danthine (1980) paper is not referenced, at all, but it is also relevant. It combines Petri nets with the X-transition of E-nets, it also talks about using environment variables (data), to reduce verification (markings) complexity. It underlines the global versus local, and deals at length, with interfaces among processes/components, which is also very yrelevant. And it is in the field of communications, in a very well-know journal.
You may read further about the [Da80]'s content and relevance
The UnPhD, ather artificially, tries to keep itself apart from network-layers, and claims to be specializing at the application and the operating-systems layers, but the non-dealing with the issues, and the central concept of distributedness, as well as its immense number of errors in its attempts to give examples, leaves the UnPhD unfounded, in making such a distinction. The prior art in that field, therefore, is relevant. A distributed protocol study, is that, whatever the example - esp. when false.
read further on SARA relevance
I am not giving the explicit reference for the UnPhD on this page. Most of you would not be asking for that, anyway. A reprint of it had cost me more than US $ 50, through UMI (University Microfilms International, which provides such reprints for many dissertations, in a variety of formats).
After reading my articles, once you convince yourself that the described dissertation does not deserve to be granted a Ph.D. title, it is up to you to try to find out the UnPhD text, and to verify the accuracy of my observations. To help you, against vagueness, I have provided very precise discussions, page-by-page, that may help against being illusioned by the vagueness of the UnPhD. I make direct statements that you may easily verify yourself.
On my part, I am so convinced of the accuracy of my observations that, if you are someone already relevant in the field (e.g: A computer-science academician, or someone positioned in a board that could revoke undeserving and/or plagiarizing PhDs), I may readily tell you the name of the author through e-mail.
Others may do the search themselves. That may take some effort. Yet, once you locate the UnPhD, co-witnessing what I describe is the only thing natural. And you may keep asking yourself "How on earth could this have been granted a PhD? Is that magic?"
The UnPhD person, and his advisor (an IEEE fellow) have published the UnPaper. Up until 1994-1995 season when I did my studies about this case, more than a decade after the PhD was granted, UnPaper was still the only SCI (Science Citation Index) listed paper with the name of the PhD grantee. It corresponds basically to the chapter three of the UnPhD (the make-up applied). That is, the re-publishing a translation of (mostly, if not totally, the similar looking featuress of), macro E-nets, and/or ValDia78 papers, but without citing them as such. That is, it also has the mark of plagiaism, and a variety of errors. At the seams, the nature is clearer as trivial-examples-promoted-as-novelty-and-then-leading-to-massive-unhandled-gotchas.
The UnPaper may be a middle ground, for those who would not like to check the case with the length of UnPhD, or would not care to order a copy of it. That may motivate those academicians, and board members who would like to verify my claims to some important extent, before ordering a reprint of the UnPhD, an Unbelievable-PhD-text through UMI.
The UnPaper has been published in november 1983 issue of a journal, the year after the UnPhD's publication. The footnote reads: "Manuscript received November 6 1981; revised March 21, 1983. This work was supported by the U.S. Army Research Office under Contract DAA-C29-80-K-0092." I hope the U.S. army people read this site, too.
The explicit reference for the UnPaper, as with the UnPhD, will not be given here. But, if you are someone relevant, the name of the paper is also available through e-mail.
The UnPhD is only a few inferior choices made from among the previously published literature. And they clash.
It attempts to include features from the papers on this page. But it fails. When we, of necessity, discard such haphazard and/or missing features, then a few of the papers, each by oneself, also turns out to be a superset of the UnPhD. The linked pages point to some of the reasons of concluding such merge-attempts a failure, and point to the (unreflecting) plagiarism as a source of such a failure.
The UnPhD does not cite these papers, except in the literature overview parts. When reading the UnPhD, at any point of discussion, or feature presentation, you would not be able to tell that these papers had published the ideas/features before the UnPhD. After identifying the sources of plagiarism nothing else is left - except some false claims, and a lot of errors in the examples, very much unsuggestive of a Ph.D. work.
And worse! Some of what is already implemented in the previous literature, and even explained to be the reason of including those features, have not been put to use, not integrated, and the end result is an act of cut-and-paste but for the sake of nothing. The feature is missing. Hence, some of the discussion in it already undoes itself, even without comparing with the references.
All in all, what the Unbelievable-PhD-text contains can be listed as: A merger of two preceding research papers (NoeNut73 and ValDia78), and a make-up. The "data-relevant" aspect of the make-up itself is a merger of ValDia78 paper's two graphs into a crowded whole (also very similar to NoeNut73, especially with respect to input-data) yet not providing any method to deal with the resulting combined graph - unlike what ValDia78 (and NoeNut73) do. That is, although it is ValDia78 preference to keep the two graphs separate, it is the UnPhD preference to merge them, yet keep irrelevant, when it is verification time. The input/output transfer specifications turn out to be only a faultful, undiscussed/unjustified translation (with little modification, when any) from NoeNut73 (and being faulty and vague, exactly at those points of differences); and the idea of using macros for design and verification ease are from NoeNut73 and ValDia78, respectively, anyway.
Research is for some contribution. The UnPhD did NOT invent Petri nets, and did NOT develop either the Petri net analysis, or the modeling techniques that are associated with Petri nets. What was the basis of its novelty claims, if nothing is new? The unciting of the references, at those points where it is due? Or else, may only a redrawing of the figures, and making everything into rectangles, be taken as a novelty? (Think of, visual non-discrimination, in context of design errors, too.)
A point-by-point listing of sources, and questioning the arbitrary changes, and noticing the faults... The conclusion is an unreflecting plagiarism.