How to refer to a theorem that you have shown to be wrong

I am writing a paper about a flaw that I found in a published paper. There, the statement is called “Theorem 2”. In my paper, I am reproducing the other paper’s definitions, and steps leading towards that statement, and now I’d like to reproduce the statement, immediately followed by the counter example that I found.

I am tempted to reproduce the statement labelled and styled as a theorem in my paper as well, so that the reader can easily find and recognize it, and so that I can continue to refer to it as “Theorem 2”. But is that really valid, given that only correctly proven statements are, by definition of theorem, theorems? Or can there be such things as “false theorems“?

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The assertion formerly known as Theorem 2? With some LaTeX work, you could then use the Prince symbol to refer to it in the paper. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/… –  Michael Joyce Apr 5 '13 at 12:53
I would go with a neutral term. I suggest "claim". –  arsmath Apr 5 '13 at 12:58
There is a practical matter, which is how to refer to the result in an unambiguous matter. The reproduction you have in mind solves that problem in one way. But another solution is: first state the problem as a question, then say "Paper X states in Theorem 2 that the answer is 'Yes'. We prove here that the answer is 'No' by giving an explicit counterexample." –  Lee Mosher Apr 5 '13 at 14:24
I don't know the exact context and Joachim is probably already doing this, but I want to mention that it is customary to indicate how to patch the claimed "theorem". After all, a purported "proof" that has been published is unlikely to be completely wrong, the authors probably missed a hypothesis or failed to verify one part of the conclusion or something like that. Indicating how to fix that and proposing a counterexample to indicate how the patch is necessary is the proper thing to do. –  François G. Dorais Apr 5 '13 at 14:52
how about "conjecture"? –  Toink Apr 6 '13 at 16:30

You can have a look to the paper "A counterexample to a 1961 “theorem” in homological algebra" by Neeman and use his style. By the way, I think that the paper is very very good.

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I once saw a mathematician giving a talk about a theorem that he thought he had proved, for which a counterexample had later been found. He stated the "result" as follows:

Theorem (1983–1987): Let $A$ be $\dots$

(I made up the dates of birth and death)

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This might be confusing to someone stumbling across it in a paper (it might be read as "this theorem was proved between 1983 and 1987 but published later"), but I love it. –  Henry Cohn Apr 5 '13 at 17:05
Dear Henry, I did not mean this to be a serious suggestion; but I found this unbelievably funny. –  Angelo Apr 5 '13 at 17:19
Looks like it's theorem number $-4$. –  Noam D. Elkies Apr 5 '13 at 19:17
To Noam: ok, I replaced the $-$ with a long dash. They look identical to me. –  Angelo Apr 6 '13 at 0:59
Nice idea for a talk, but I doubt that it is a suitable style for a journal. –  Joachim Breitner Apr 8 '13 at 10:46

In my opinion, it would be a bad idea to label statements known to be false as theorems. If you really want to do this, maybe you could put inverted commas around the word "theorem", to indicate you explicitly cast doubt on its following from axioms by applying rules of deduction. Or you could call it an Assertion, followed by a bold declaration that the assertion is false and the demonstration of such.

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I vote for inverted commas. We label things to make them easy for the reader to find. Inverted commas preserve the exact reference while also making it crystal clear that the result is not to be trusted. –  Nik Weaver Apr 5 '13 at 14:27
Ironically the original sense of "theorem" allows for a theorem to be false, since it just meant "assertion". So Euler could say that a theorem must be true even though he cannot prove it. But yes, modern usage doesn't allow for this. –  Noam D. Elkies Apr 5 '13 at 19:21

Another example is the paper "Affine semigroups and Cohen-Macaulay rings" by Hoa and Trung (Trans. AMS 298, 1986) in which they give a counterexample to a result of Goto and Watanabe. Rumor has it that the counterexample was known before their paper, but in any case, they use "counterexample to the result".

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