by Claudia Dreifus, New York Times, January 23, 2001. "Dr. Shawn Carlson's biography reads like a mutant graft of Mr. Wizard meets Horatio Alger: an unhappy physicist working in a mainstream laboratory decides to quit his job and start a nonprofit organization aimed at encouraging the projects of backyard tinkerers and garage experimenters. As Dr. Carlson devotes himself to organizing his Society for Amateur Scientists, he drives his family to near-penury. Just as he is about to go broke, the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation comes to the rescue with a 'genius grant,' and nearly $300,000."

Richard Wallace, the artificial intelligence expert who has twice won the prestigious Loebner Prize in AI for his work on the ALICE chat robot, was served with a temporary restraining order, after the regents of the University of California alleged that he was "unstable" and had threatened Kenneth Goldberg, a UC Berkeley professor, with physical harm.