Timeline for How to substantiate the claim that something is not known?
Current License: CC BY-SA 3.0
11 events
| when toggle format | what | by | license | comment | |
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| May 22, 2015 at 7:26 | comment | added | Mark Meckes | @ChrisWhite: I see two reasons you caught more flak than Pete did: 1) your comment was in the middle of an already-contentious debate, and 2) your comment claimed to speak for others and Pete's did not. That said, I agree with you both. | |
| May 22, 2015 at 5:50 | comment | added | Pete L. Clark | ...The term "science" is not only not a precise term but is stretched so widely as to become almost meaningless: when I am in a cruel mood I remind social scientists that there is something called Christian science. Anyway, as I should have said above, a binary answer to the question "Is mathematics a science?" is not very useful or even meaningful; the point is that there are deep similarities between math and the natural sciences but also significant differences, to the extent that lumping them together will cause one to make "cultural mistakes", as sometimes happens on this site. | |
| May 22, 2015 at 5:43 | comment | added | Pete L. Clark | @Chris White: No good reason that I can think of. In that you have undergraduate degrees in both mathematics and physics, you would know at least as well as I, I would think. | |
| May 22, 2015 at 4:52 | comment | added | user4512 | @PeteL.Clark How come when you say math isn't a science, you get upvotes, but when I do, all I get is flak? | |
| May 21, 2015 at 19:41 | comment | added | Pete L. Clark | ...Nevertheless I agree that "To the best of my knowledge" can cover up a situation in which you made no effort at all to check what is known, and I certainly agree that one should make such an effort. This is a tough one! | |
| May 21, 2015 at 19:40 | comment | added | Pete L. Clark | ....In general the discipline of mathematics tends to view such text as "wasted space". It is much more common to answer any question about extensions to your work by a vague reference to "work in progress". If you are lucky enough to find a "This is not known pronouncement" in the literature, then you should cite it to justify your case but there is a bit of a paradox here: my saying "This is not known" in year X+Y has to be a stronger statement than "This is not known" appearing in the literature in year X, unless further evidence is presented (which you could also present).... | |
| May 21, 2015 at 19:35 | comment | added | Pete L. Clark | You write about "Scientists" but the question concerns mathematics. There are cultural similarities and cultural differences between mathematics and the sciences (in particular, with apologies to the NSF, mathematics is not a science). In my experience, "calling attention to what is not known" is something that scientists do significantly better than mathematicians. At the beginning of my career, most of my papers ended with a section on open questions and/or further work. Frequent negative comments by referees clued me in to the fact that this is actually rarely done.... | |
| May 21, 2015 at 19:01 | comment | added | henning no longer feeds AI | This is also a great answer to a related question: "How do I identify knowledge gaps and research topics?" | |
| May 21, 2015 at 18:17 | comment | added | rumtscho | @Kimball generally you are right. But the most interesting information we don't know (the one many people need) is frequently recorded as not being known. There is a reason why I started my suggestion list with reviews: they are a very good way for somebody to get a feel for an area, and will point out the most important gaps in current knowledge, beside containing more useful information. Of course, a student is not expected to read dozens of papers in the area only to find a "we don't know that" citation, but looking in the most likely places is a good strategy. | |
| May 21, 2015 at 17:20 | comment | added | Kimball | Yes, one should search the literature, but the amount of things not known is much greater than the number of things we have recorded we don't know. In this case, what I would recommend is using MathSciNet and Google Scholar to check the papers that cite Schmidt's paper, and see if they prove anything related. | |
| May 21, 2015 at 14:50 | history | answered | rumtscho | CC BY-SA 3.0 |