It's not just UML...

Ted Neward points to the UML Fever article - making a fine point:

Oh, how I remember former bosses and employers demanding UML models of code that was already written, "for documentation purposes", even though every developer on the project knew that the models would be (a) incorrect, (b) too high-level or too low-level to be useful, and (c) would almost immediately fall out of line with the code itself with the next feature request. (This was in the era of the very first two-way round-tripping tools, and they all--without exception--sucked.)

That pretty much sums up any technology fad - Java in the 90's being a particularly good example. For some reason, people in this industry continue to believe in silver bullets, regardless of how many werewolves pop up that are immune to them....