For many years (in the 1980s), the Bogdanoffs claimed (for instance, in the back covers of their popular science books) to be "authentic geniuses", with combine

For many years (in the 1980s), the Bogdanoffs claimed (for instance, in the back covers of their popular science books) to be "authentic geniuses", with combined IQs > 400 and two (2) PhD's each. This was, obviously now, not true, at least for the "PhD" part of the claim, so at one point they had to try to pass PhDs for real. It took them quite a bit of time and effort, and this effort, as I had been told at the time the "affair" was unraveling by mathematicians who had been involved in this process, was to call famous scientists of their time over the phone asking them questions about the subject of their thesis (after all they were some sort of journalists so at least they knew how to ask questions), and transcribe the answers. Unfortunately they only understood the words of these conversations but not their meanings, which explains why their thesis can look like some genuine science if you look at the sentence level, but doesn't make any sense when you try to find any meaning in it. Some recent discussion about the affair (in French): http://sciences.blogs.liberation.fr/2015/07/02/les-bogdanov-condamnes-au-profit-du-cnrs/ http://sciences.blogs.liberation.fr/2015/07/02/les-bogdanov-... What's doubling truly sad in this story, IMHO, is that: 1) While the are obviously not the scientific geniuses they claim to be, they are even not good science popularisers, they are actually really bad. 2) There are still people, and not only people attracted by pseudoscience or the bizarre aspects of their personality, that take them seriously. I remember, for instance, that that have been interviewed in recent years on France Info (national public french information radio) about the Higgs boson discovery or their recent books.