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posted by Fnord666 on Tuesday August 07 2018, @09:22AM   Printer-friendly
from the pics-or-it-didn't-happen dept.

Submitted via IRC for Bytram

As he was brushing his teeth on the morning of July 17, 2014, Thomas Royen, a little-known retired German statistician, suddenly lit upon the proof of a famous conjecture at the intersection of geometry, probability theory, and statistics that had eluded top experts for decades.

Known as the Gaussian correlation inequality (GCI), the conjecture originated in the 1950s, was posed in its most elegant form in 1972 and has held mathematicians in its thrall ever since. "I know of people who worked on it for 40 years," said Donald Richards, a statistician at Pennsylvania State University. "I myself worked on it for 30 years."

[...] No one is quite sure how, in the 21st century, news of Royen's proof managed to travel so slowly. "It was clearly a lack of communication in an age where it's very easy to communicate," [Bo'az] Klartag said.

"But anyway, at least we found it," he added—and "it's beautiful."

[...] The "feeling of deep joy and gratitude" that comes from finding an important proof has been reward enough. "It is like a kind of grace," he said. "We can work for a long time on a problem and suddenly an angel—[which] stands here poetically for the mysteries of our neurons—brings a good idea."

Source: https://www.wired.com/2017/04/elusive-math-proof-found-almost-lost

Abstract

Paper


Original Submission

 
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  • (Score: 2) by c0lo on Tuesday August 07 2018, @02:13PM (5 children)

    by c0lo (156) Subscriber Badge on Tuesday August 07 2018, @02:13PM (#718250) Journal

    There's way too much crap posted to free online repositories, so the signal-to-noise ratio is problematic.

    This always was, even when the internet was "implemented" on parchment by cursives encoding. using monks as tty operators.
    And will always be.

    My point: "GOOD established journals" as a solution to the problem may be as utopic as... pick whatever utopia you fancy.
    On the long run, the failure is inevitable - "GOOD established journals" will mean "power" in academia and, as always, power corrupts.

    You either accept :
    - wider access and chances of noise; *or*
    - good signal to noise and increased chances of sounds ideas/good papers going rejected.
    I leaning towards the first: I see the ease of filtering noise (by GOOD established journals) as just a matter of personal convenience for the players. Tough luck, if you wanna play the game, well, deal with it.

    --
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
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  • (Score: 2) by AthanasiusKircher on Tuesday August 07 2018, @11:43PM (4 children)

    by AthanasiusKircher (5291) on Tuesday August 07 2018, @11:43PM (#718513) Journal

    Why can't you have both?

    I in no way was arguing against the existence of free online repositories for whatever random people want to post. However, they don't function as a filter at all.

    There will always be problems with journals too. But there's a better chance of major findings being noticed if there's a standard pipeline for dissemination that also holds to standards.

    Do you know the outcome if you don't have such things? It's actually worse than without blind-review journals in terms of your concerns about concentrating power. Because a blind-review journal can allow an unknown author a chance to get published on the merit of the research and thereby get noticed by those "in power."

    You don't have that, and guess what mainstream researchers fall back on to do the sorting? They ask colleagues they know and depend on them to tell them about good papers. So it reverts to an "old boys network" model, rather than one that allows an unknown researcher to get noticed through blind review.

    • (Score: 2) by c0lo on Wednesday August 08 2018, @12:05AM (3 children)

      by c0lo (156) Subscriber Badge on Wednesday August 08 2018, @12:05AM (#718524) Journal

      Why can't you have both?

      Both are needed and possible.

      --
      https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
      • (Score: 2) by AthanasiusKircher on Wednesday August 08 2018, @02:24AM (2 children)

        by AthanasiusKircher (5291) on Wednesday August 08 2018, @02:24AM (#718603) Journal

        Huh. And here I thought the "either" and the big highlighted *OR* in your previous post meant something.

        So what was the point of your post again, since I never advanced an argument saying open repositories shouldn't exist?

        • (Score: 2) by c0lo on Wednesday August 08 2018, @02:31AM (1 child)

          by c0lo (156) Subscriber Badge on Wednesday August 08 2018, @02:31AM (#718606) Journal

          Apologies. Posted that one in the middle of the night just as I was falling asleep.

          My position: if a black-n-white answer is required, I prefer the "open repositories with chances of noise" over "total access control and vetting with risks of good ideas falling between the cracks". Any "grey shade" solution is preferable.

          --
          https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
          • (Score: 2) by AthanasiusKircher on Wednesday August 08 2018, @12:19PM

            by AthanasiusKircher (5291) on Wednesday August 08 2018, @12:19PM (#718744) Journal

            Ah, okay. No need to apologize, and basically I agree that leaning toward open publication and open access is better. I was just a little confused at the seemingly conflicting posts.