Harristotelian Logic

Here's a what if, as what if the mathematical community figured out it didn't have to have results that actually worked in "pure math" areas as all that is necessary is to have other mathematicians AGREE that a result worked.

Then mathematicians could just keep each other working in those areas without ever bothering with having real results, and who could stop them?

What if? Any idea how that scenario could be blocked?

How would a person go about proving that the field was corrupted if every top mathematician was just going to say no, and only mathematicians would chime in to protect, where the money aspect is HUGE with grants and prizes considered, and human nature being what it is, why couldn't unsavory individual infiltrate the discipline, get a critical mass together, and then just take over?

It'd be a con's dream—a perfect situation with hard to understand information, a cowed world in awe of the field, and no need to ever produce results that actually worked as hey, they could just call them pure!!!

How could anyone break through if such a scenario were true?

[A reply to someone who wanted to know if all grad students obey like zombies, and James is the first person in history to speak out.]

Well, going from the hypothetical—remember the start of the post is to imagine a what if…what if the math field were corrupted in "pure math" areas, how would you prove it—to my experiences I had a math grad student from Cornell contact me by email himself.

Seems he had noticed the arguing on Usenet and offered to help out, asking me to explain my non-polynomial factorization argument to him, so I did, and as I gave him pieces, he re-worked them in his own words.

For some reason (hmmm) it took him MONTHS to go through an entire argument, until he is at the end and I am thinking, hey, maybe a math grad will do the right thing, and he claims that he can see how it is true with INTEGERS but is not sure about algebraic integers and he needs to go study up on them.

Needless to say, nothing else substantive from that guy, and really why would any rational adult who understands the real world think that grad students would speak out, potentially trash their careers, when being quiet they can just go with the status quo, and get their degree?

As an analogy, consider again what happened in America with the run-up to war with Iraq and there LIVES were on the line. Americans were either totally swalloing the party line of George Bush and company or were TERRIFIED to speak out, and they had examples of people who faced retribution when they tried to exercise their freedom of speech. Where the Dixie Chicks were just one of the more famous examples.

Here in the "land of the free and the home of the brave" the brave got the crap kicked out of them when they spoke out against what most American wanted to believe, and people said that was just about patriotism.

Gee, who would a thunk that trashing American values, making us look sick and stupid around the world, so we could go kill some people in some weaker country was really patriotic?

Groups are notorious for making the wrong decisions and people part of groups are typical in NOT going against the group opinion. So no, math grads are not a defense against the scenario I painted.