Sunday, December 28, 2008
JSH: Over a hundred years, wrong stuff
Academics in the mathematical field are refusing to acknowledge being informed of a massive error in their field which entered it over a hundred years ago despite the simplicity of the proof of the error.
It has been six years since I discovered the error while trying to prove Fermat's Last Theorem.
At one point I DID get a paper published in a journal called the Southwest Journal of Pure and Applied Mathematics or SWJPAM for short. The editors caved to social pressure from emails sent against the paper, and pulled it after publication:
See: http://www.emis.de/journals/SWJPAM/vol2-03.html
The listing for my paper has "Withdrawn" under it, but I didn't withdraw it; the editors did.
EMIS, a European agency, is hosting the archives of the journal as not only did the journal die a little while after that withdrawal, but all mention of it was wiped by its hosting university, so all the papers over 10 years would have been lost if not for the action of the Europeans, despite the journal being an American journal previously hosted by an American university.
The error that is being held on to so desperately allows mathematicians to appear to prove things that are not true.
So it allows faux research results.
Academic mathematicians who have had their entire careers under the error may be afraid that without it, they cannot appear to do mathematics at all, so for them, it may seem to be a survival issue.
As an intellectual issue it may be one of the biggest in human history.
Academics aware of it, have a duty to act for the betterment of the human species by outing the academic fraud, and forcing the mathematical community to acknowledge the error.
That is an ethical requirement.
It has been six years since I discovered the error while trying to prove Fermat's Last Theorem.
At one point I DID get a paper published in a journal called the Southwest Journal of Pure and Applied Mathematics or SWJPAM for short. The editors caved to social pressure from emails sent against the paper, and pulled it after publication:
See: http://www.emis.de/journals/SWJPAM/vol2-03.html
The listing for my paper has "Withdrawn" under it, but I didn't withdraw it; the editors did.
EMIS, a European agency, is hosting the archives of the journal as not only did the journal die a little while after that withdrawal, but all mention of it was wiped by its hosting university, so all the papers over 10 years would have been lost if not for the action of the Europeans, despite the journal being an American journal previously hosted by an American university.
The error that is being held on to so desperately allows mathematicians to appear to prove things that are not true.
So it allows faux research results.
Academic mathematicians who have had their entire careers under the error may be afraid that without it, they cannot appear to do mathematics at all, so for them, it may seem to be a survival issue.
As an intellectual issue it may be one of the biggest in human history.
Academics aware of it, have a duty to act for the betterment of the human species by outing the academic fraud, and forcing the mathematical community to acknowledge the error.
That is an ethical requirement.
# posted by James Harris @ 19:47 
