Timeline for Does this approach for the Poincaré conjecture work?
Current License: CC BY-SA 3.0
14 events
| when toggle format | what | by | license | comment | |
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| Dec 30, 2015 at 11:09 | history | edited | John B | CC BY-SA 3.0 |
minor adjustments
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| S May 15, 2010 at 21:36 | vote | accept | Dave Pritchard | ||
| May 15, 2010 at 21:36 | vote | accept | Dave Pritchard | ||
| S May 15, 2010 at 21:36 | |||||
| May 15, 2010 at 21:36 | vote | accept | Dave Pritchard | ||
| May 15, 2010 at 21:36 | |||||
| May 7, 2010 at 15:10 | comment | added | Andy Putman | Oh, I definitely think the paper doesn't pass the smell test (none of the experts I know have been talking about it, there is no obvious "big new idea", etc.). I'm just a bit uncomfortable touting a single religious sentence buried at the end of the introduction as evidence. It's not something I would put in my own papers, but I don't see how it's any different from thanking/dedicating your paper to your mother or dog or favorite train line (all things I've seen in good papers published in top journals!) But probably MO is not the place for a discussion of this, so I'll stop here. | |
| May 7, 2010 at 13:40 | comment | added | gowers | I should add that it is clear from a glance at the paper that he is not a crackpot: it looks like real mathematics that's wrong, rather than weird stuff that doesn't even count as mathematics. | |
| May 7, 2010 at 13:38 | comment | added | gowers | I agree that the God sentence is not evidence enough on its own. But there is another important piece of evidence: the paper is short and has been in the public domain since January. If it were correct, it would surely have been hailed as a spectacular twist in the story of the Poincaré conjecture. Given that it hasn't, I am predisposed not to believe the paper, and against that background the God sentence increases my scepticism. | |
| May 7, 2010 at 10:33 | answer | added | Thomas Kragh | timeline score: 15 | |
| May 6, 2010 at 22:29 | comment | added | Deane Yang | Actually, he appears to be retired. A colleague of mine points out that the author is quite well-known for his elegant solution to the shelling problem in the theory of polytopes. So he cannot be dismissed easily. | |
| May 6, 2010 at 21:15 | comment | added | Andy Putman | While I would bet a large sum of money that the paper has a fatal error, I'm not comfortable with criticizing the phrase "This essay is devoted to the meditation of God’s Word among the inhabitants of the earth". While I've certainly seen crackpots make dedications like this, there are plenty of serious papers with religious dedications. The author, btw, is definitely a real mathematician (he is a professor at Universitat Bern, and according to mathscinet he has published 34 papers since the late '60's, mostly in combinatorial topology and convex geometry). | |
| May 6, 2010 at 20:52 | answer | added | Ian Agol | timeline score: 21 | |
| May 6, 2010 at 17:45 | comment | added | Deane Yang | Did the author indicate what feedback he's gotten from experts who have read his paper? | |
| May 6, 2010 at 17:38 | comment | added | gowers | I'm not hugely encouraged by the final sentence of the introduction to the paper: "This essay is devoted to the meditation of God’s Word among the inhabitants of the earth." | |
| May 6, 2010 at 13:42 | history | asked | Dave Pritchard | CC BY-SA 2.5 |