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(=_=) (Apr 20 2020 at 00:50):Barbara Fantechi dropping some wisdom here:
We* all know examples. And Inventiones is just one case, there's plenty everywhere. I'm all for rigorous refereeing, but let's please apply it all around, not just in this one case. /end *Seniors.
- Scoffing Mathematician 🏳️🌈🇪🇺 (@BarbaraFantechi) (=_=) (Apr 20 2020 at 00:50):If you think referees for top level journals require clear exposition (including complete proofs, or at least making them available somewhere, or upon request; crystal clear definitions) than I've got a Leaning Tower to sell you.
That ship sailed LONG ago. 1/
(=_=) (Apr 20 2020 at 00:51):I'm not speaking about such once in a lifetime papers; I assume (hope?) those get checked seriously. rather, I'm talking about your average Inventiones-level paper, by your average "clever" author(s), who are allowed, if they so please, incredible levels of carelessness. /2
(=_=) (Apr 20 2020 at 00:51):We* all know examples. And Inventiones is just one case, there's plenty everywhere. I'm all for rigorous refereeing, but let's please apply it all around, not just in this one case. /end
*Seniors.
Morgan Rogers (he/him) (Apr 20 2020 at 09:10):What particular blunders in Inventiones is she referring to here? I don't know if I'm aware of the background story here
Jules Hedges (Apr 20 2020 at 09:18):I think this is a bit more pessimistic than necessary. Just because the ship sailed long ago doesn't stop us from continually demanding better. Or better than demanding, thinking carefully about the system of incentives in publishing and trying to adjust it
(=_=) (Apr 20 2020 at 13:29):Morgan Rogers said:
What particular blunders in Inventiones is she referring to here? I don't know if I'm aware of the background story here
I had a vague memory that there was something, but I couldn't find anything while searching. This Nautilus article claimed that Wiles submitted his proof the first time round to Inventiones, but that was successfully resolved.
Perhaps she brought up Inventiones as a journal of relatively high quality, but not quite Annals or Crelle's, c.f. "your average Inventiones-level paper".
Also, gotta love alluding to things without citation, though the 140 char limit on Twitter is probably a problem.
(=_=) (Apr 20 2020 at 13:37):Jules Hedges said:
I think this is a bit more pessimistic than necessary.
Realism is often mistaken for pessimism when the situation is far from optimal. This opinion is a realistic one, given the current situation.
Just because the ship sailed long ago doesn't stop us from continually demanding better.
Yes, we should demand better. However, as she's said:
I'm all for rigorous refereeing, but let's please apply it all around, not just in this one case.
The issue here is with the moral hazard of the uneven application of standards.
Or better than demanding, thinking carefully about the system of incentives in publishing and trying to adjust it.
Which we should, but this goes into a lot of systemic issues.
Gershom (Apr 20 2020 at 17:06):Morgan Rogers said:
What particular blunders in Inventiones is she referring to here? I don't know if I'm aware of the background story here
one of the more notorious would be the strange case of Daniel Biss: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Daniel_Biss#Mathematics_career
Jules Hedges (Apr 20 2020 at 17:09):Huh.
(=_=) (Apr 21 2020 at 04:50):Gershom said:
one of the more notorious would be the strange case of Daniel Biss: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Daniel_Biss#Mathematics_career
Interesting. Annals of Mathematics, Advances in Mathematics, Inventiones Mathematicae and Topology and its Applications: that's quite a list.
David Michael Roberts (Apr 21 2020 at 22:16):Fantechi's comments were in response to discussions about demanding that Mochizuki should rewrite his paper to be more readable (this was the minimum desideratum for one person who turned down the chance to referee the IUT papers). She was essentially saying that it was like 'the pot calling the kettle black', since there are many people who get stuff published in top journals that just write really badly and unclearly and skip explanations of things and they get away with it. I don't think it was so much about errors in papers that get published.
Gershom (Apr 21 2020 at 22:51):But if things are written unclearly and skip explanations then that makes them harder to check, and makes it more likely that there are errors. Which is part of the discussion over IUT as well -- if the papers were more clear, then it would simplify the debate over correctness.
(=_=) (Apr 22 2020 at 02:53):David Michael Roberts said:
She was essentially saying that it was like 'the pot calling the kettle black', since there are many people who get stuff published in top journals that just write really badly and unclearly and skip explanations of things and they get away with it. I don't think it was so much about errors in papers that get published.
They're different aspects of the same issue, as Gershom's pointed out. As I've said to Jules here, Fantechi is talking about the moral hazard of uneven standards, i.e. "the pot calling the kettle black".
(=_=) (Apr 22 2020 at 02:59):Gershom said:
Which is part of the discussion over IUT as well -- if the papers were more clear, then it would simplify the debate over correctness.
Or if we could simply "run" proofs on our computers, and Mochizuki's work keeps producing the same compiler errors, and these compiler errors were written for humans.