Re: JSH: Mistakes happen

From: Andrzej Kolowski (akolowski_at_hotmail.com)
Date: 07/18/04 

Date: 18 Jul 2004 14:46:52 -0700

jstevh@msn.com (James Harris) wrote in message news:<3c65f87.0407180806.6191474f@posting.google.com>...
>Now a poster has found a minor series of mistakes in my APF paper, and
>I admit some chagrin. But mistakes happen. As an author you can
>write something and for a lot of psychological reasons (and just plain
>carelessness) miss mistakes.
>

  ... And overlook them for over a year, even during extended arguments
about exactly that part of a very short paper!

>I don't know why I wasn't notified of that mistake by Ioannis Argyros,
>but given what I've seen from editors at Southwest Journal of
>Mathematics, I'm not surprised.
>

  Simple. No one ever looked at it. Your claims that it passed
peer review are bogus, probably the result of inexcusable
carelessness by the editor.

>There are now questions for all the papers published by that journal,
>and it might be time for me to notify the other authors given this
>latest issue.
>

  Go for it. The journal deserves it.

>Now, even if the mistake had been noticed--as it should have been--and
>someone informed me, the fix is easy,

  The "fix" you have proposed in another thread is totally incorrect.
See my response there.

so it wouldn't have been a big
>deal, but there's an important point here: even in a VERY short paper,
>apparently mathematicians can overlook mistakes.
>

  This is not the only mistake in this paper. Your main result in
the paper is also wrong. It contradicts Galois theory. You have
been told this over and over again. You have been told exactly
where in the paper you are making your most important mistake.
The only difference between the 'minor' mistake that I have pointed
out and your other larger mistakes is this:

  THIS ONE IS AT SUCH A LOW LEVEL THAT YOU CAN UNDERSTAND IT AND
  YOU CANNOT EVADE IT OR REFUTE IT BY PRETENDING THERE IS SOME
  ERROR IN DEFINITIONS. YOU CAN'T FOOL YOURSELF OR ANYONE ELSE
  INTO THINKING THIS IS NOT AN ERROR.

  THE OTHER, MAJOR ERRORS, THOUGH ELEMENTARY, ARE TOO ABSTRACT FOR
  YOU TO UNDERSTAND WITHOUT MAKING AN EFFORT. YOUR PREFERRED
  APPROACH: DENIAL, BLUSTER, EVASION.

  [I should note that the major errors are directly related to the
   extended arguments you had this year with Rick Decker, Keith
   Ramsay, Nora Baron, and *** Winter: arguments which you abandoned
   in late February.]

>Yet, there are people with supposed proofs that are hundreds of pages
>long.
>
>How many people looked over my VERY SHORT paper and failed to notice
>the minor error? Sure it doesn't change the conclusion of the paper,
>but it does give pause.
>
>The reality is that human beings make mistakes.
>
>As long as mathematicians rely on human eyes to look over "proofs"
>then it's possible that errors remain, and they may not be minor.
>
>Now I'm a supposed "crank" with a lot of people hostile to me, who
>have a strong motivation to find errors in my work, and make a big
>stink about it, and you can see that with the poster currently making
>a big stink about this error that he found. I say kudos to him for
>finding the mistakes.
>
>I've acknowledged what are basically typos and given the fix.
>

  I note you are *not* saying that you have withdrawn the paper
or sent a correction to the editor of the new journal to which
you have submitted it. Until you do, in my opinion, YOU ARE
STILL COMMITTING FRAUD.

  And the "fix" is incorrect: the error is compounded. You have fired
from the hip again and shot yourself in the foot.

>But Andrew Wiles is apparently a beloved member of a community that
>wants to believe, and *does* believe, in him.
>
>What makes any of you believe that a paper that's hundreds of pages
>long could really be just checked by human eyes and definitely not
>have a critical error?
>

  His paper, unlike yours, WAS peer reviewed. An error was caught.
That is what peer review is supposed to do!

>I say, groupthink. You want to believe.
>

  I say, Harristhink. You want to get in the math history books
at any price, *including fraud*.

>Computers need to check long math "proofs". There's just no objective
>way around that conclusion.
>

  You know perfectly well the difficulties of doing this. It would
be far easier for you to computer-check your own short 'proofs'. You
would have everything to gain, nothing to lose, by doing so,
unless your 'proofs' are wrong. Why haven't you done it?

>Mistakes happen. And people can overlook them, for many reasons.
>

  Fraud happens too. In this case it will not be overlooked.
Withdraw the paper!

  Andrzej

P.S. You owe an apology to Dale Hall.

>
>James Harris