Timeline for Published papers with incorrect solutions of famous problems: how to raise concerns with editors?
Current License: CC BY-SA 3.0
26 events
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| Oct 4, 2022 at 2:19 | answer | added | Matt | timeline score: 4 | |
| Sep 18, 2020 at 23:29 | comment | added | PatrickT | Paul Bruckner also solved the Riemann hypothesis. That was a lot easier than the twine prime conjecture. See: pme-math.org/journal/bruckmaninterview.html | |
| Jun 10, 2020 at 14:12 | history | edited | CommunityBot |
Commonmark migration
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| May 24, 2020 at 7:44 | comment | added | J Fabian Meier | It is interesting to see that these articles are indeed retracted now. | |
| Apr 13, 2017 at 12:49 | history | edited | CommunityBot |
replaced http://academia.stackexchange.com/ with https://academia.stackexchange.com/
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| Sep 13, 2016 at 7:02 | comment | added | Wildcard | @TobiasKildetoft, I would phrase it as an inquiry: "I was surprised to see your publication of the proof of ...etc., etc. As I have never heard this famous conjecture to be otherwise than an open problem, I delved further and found a retraction published ___ date. I am interested what sort of expert review process papers undergo before publication in your journal. Was there a note about the historical/disproven aspect of these papers that was mistakenly not published? Were they for curiosity only? I fear other readers may have been misled into thinking them accurate proofs. Signed, Name" | |
| Sep 13, 2016 at 6:56 | comment | added | Tobias Kildetoft | @Wildcard The issue here is that whatever is communicated to the editor, the message will be "you were grossly negligent in allowing these papers to be published in your journal". It is hard to imagine anyone being happy about that message. | |
| Sep 13, 2016 at 1:32 | comment | added | Wildcard | My experience from the I.T. world suggests that no matter how condescending you think it would be to explain something in clear language, the number of people who will greatly appreciates it far outweighs the few snobby people who will feel they are insulted. Actually, clearly explaining something doesn't have to mean "talking down" to your audience, but simply ensures your communication is fully understood--always a good idea. (I have found that the "snobby few" are usually imaginary and rarely materialize in actual practice, you only worry that they will.) | |
| Sep 12, 2016 at 18:47 | comment | added | tomasz | @NateEldredge: I thought as much, hence the disclaimer about nitpicking. | |
| Sep 12, 2016 at 18:46 | comment | added | Nate Eldredge | @tomasz I did have in mind what Pete said - that the paper should not have been published unless it had withstood extremely close scrutiny. I agree that in this case a much lower level of scrutiny would have sufficed to reject it. | |
| Sep 12, 2016 at 18:41 | comment | added | tomasz | @PeteL.Clark: I never meant to say that finding errors in mathematical work is easy in general, even for a specialist. What I'm saying is that someone claiming to solve a particularly notorious problem is very likely to either be a) a crackpot, in which case finding mistakes could very well be a routine exercise for an undergraduate student, or b) a non-specialist way out of his depth, most likely trying to pursue a line of proof which just doesn't seem right or is a known dead end, and in either case, a specialist should be able to spot the error without scrutinizing the whole paper. | |
| Sep 12, 2016 at 17:57 | comment | added | Konstantinos Gaitanas | I believe it is a waste of your time. When you see such a claim "solution of Goldbach" etc. and the paper is not published in the Annals (or something close to it) then the author knows that there is a flaw somewhere in the paper,the editor and the referees know there is a flaw in the paper and you also know that something is wrong. Just ignore it. | |
| Sep 12, 2016 at 15:25 | comment | added | Dave L Renfro | For what it's worth, this journal used to publish an occasional article of mathematical interest to me (mostly in the 1980s and 1990s; some of these are cited here, for instance), but in the past 10-15 years it seems to have devolved into something that I've not been particularly motivated to look through the table of contents very often anymore. | |
| Sep 12, 2016 at 15:04 | comment | added | Pete L. Clark | @Dirk: I just looked at Lagarias's article and Bruckman's erratum. The situation is as Nate says, not as Lagarias says: the erratum points out misprints only. It doesn't withdraw anything. (An interesting maneuver on Lagarias's part!) Of course, after many more words, I came to the same conclusion as you: "[I]t seems like no action should be taken." | |
| Sep 12, 2016 at 14:56 | history | edited | Dirk | CC BY-SA 3.0 |
Doi links have been the other way round…
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| Sep 12, 2016 at 14:54 | comment | added | Dirk | This case seems kind of special. Considering that Jeff Lagarias cites the Bruckmann paper on Collatz in his 2006 review "The 3x+1 Problem: An Annotated Bibliography, II (2000-2009)" as "This paper asserts a proof of the Collatz conjecture. However the argument given has a gap which leaves the proof incomplete. The erratum points out this gap and withdraws the proof." it seems like no action should be taken… | |
| S Sep 12, 2016 at 13:47 | history | suggested | Martin | CC BY-SA 3.0 |
added doi + link (I guess some people might be curious. I did not see a copy of the paper which is not behind paywall.)
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| Sep 12, 2016 at 13:21 | review | Suggested edits | |||
| S Sep 12, 2016 at 13:47 | |||||
| Sep 11, 2016 at 21:49 | history | tweeted | twitter.com/StackAcademia/status/775088885298761728 | ||
| Sep 11, 2016 at 21:04 | comment | added | Pete L. Clark | Having said that, I read the MathSciNet review for the Goldbach Conjecture, and the author uses an identity in which a sum of values of an analytic (on (2,infinity)) function f over all primes p > 2 is exactly equal to the integral of f/(log x) from 3 to infinity, provided both sides converge. That just doesn't sound good, and as the reviewer points out, the first function f one might choose gives a counterexample. | |
| Sep 11, 2016 at 20:54 | comment | added | Pete L. Clark | @tomasz: I don't really agree with that. Finding errors in mathematical work can be very difficult. If the paper is written clearly in a standard way by an experienced mathematician, then the right person will probably be led "by smell" to the trouble spot, but it may still take some work to identify the error. If it is written in an eccentric, non-standard or obscure way, then what any sentence means can be up for grabs. Anyway, I think what Nate means is "extremely close scrutiny if they want to publish it". | |
| Sep 11, 2016 at 20:52 | answer | added | Pete L. Clark | timeline score: 43 | |
| Sep 11, 2016 at 19:50 | comment | added | tomasz | Some nitpicking: "(...) the titles alone should have subjected them to extremely close scrutiny (...)" -- I am not a number theorist, but I suspect a proper referee would be able to spot a (major) mistake without need for extremely close scrutiny. I don't imagine every paper claiming to solve a famous problem is very closely scrutinized -- I would imagine most of them get summarily rejected. | |
| Sep 11, 2016 at 19:27 | answer | added | jakebeal | timeline score: 14 | |
| Sep 11, 2016 at 18:12 | answer | added | Corvus | timeline score: 3 | |
| Sep 11, 2016 at 18:02 | history | asked | Nate Eldredge | CC BY-SA 3.0 |