Re: JSH: Mistakes happen

From: W. Dale Hall (mailtowd_hall_at_pacbell.net)
Date: 07/19/04 

Date: Mon, 19 Jul 2004 19:22:27 GMT

James Harris wrote:
> akolowski@hotmail.com (Andrzej Kolowski) wrote in message news:<a1fa83d9.0407181346.57ad8d81@posting.google.com>...
>
>>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.
>>
>
>
> I was told by Ioannis Argyros that the paper passed peer review.
>
> Here's a direct quote with the original grammar errors:
>
> "Our decision to accept the paper for publication in SWJPAM
> was based on positive opinions received by the reviewers.
>
> You can visit(sometime in May):
> http://rattler.cameron.edu/swjpam/swjpam.html
> to find it.
>
> Thanks for sending your nice paper to us."
>
> Now then, given *your* find of errors it is reasonable to consider the
> possibility that Ioannis Argyros lied, which may mean that NONE of the
> papers published in the journal along with mine were actually
> reviewed!!!
>

One interpretation, out of many possible, including that of clerical
error. It would take far more evidence than your particular case to
claim that nothing at SWJPAM is ever reviewed. On the other hand, the
evidence has always been fairly strong that your paper was not
competently reviewed.

> So the authors of other papers might need to be contacted if you
> people on sci.math actually care about such a thing, or you can just
> let it go.
>

Why should we be the ones to inspect papers that we have no particular
knowledge about, to verify whether the reviewing was adequate? It's one
thing to be aware of a specific error in a published paper, and then to
inform the journal's editors of the situation; it's quite another thing
to go into 9 years of publication and analyze each and every paper for
evidence that it was not reviewed.

> My guess is that no one will even bother to look into it as this
> newsgroup is not about substance. None of you really care if all the
> papers published actually were reviewed, so you won't push the issue.
>

I've explained why I have no interest in that job. Why are *you* not
delving into it?

> You don't care.
>

Hey, when I have first-hand knowledge, I act on it. I don't act on the
suspicions of someone whose axe always needs grinding, especially when
that someone is as ill-behaved and poorly-informed as you.

> But you *do* care if my paper was reviewed or not. So the problem for
> you isn't about correctness of the results or proper review, but with
> whether or not you can attack my paper.
>

Perhaps you didn't read what I've written on the topic: I acted in your
case because I had first-hand knowledge of an error, and an elementary
refutation of a false conclusion of your paper.

> Now my position that my paper was reviewed was based on the words of
> Argyros.
>
> Given that Argyros is the chief editor of SWJPAM, it seemed reasonable
> to believe him.
>

At the outset, that would have seemed to be the correct thing to have
done. However, I would be willing to wager that you did not inform the
editors of SWJPAM of the fact that no one else (i.e., other than you
yourself) who read your paper actually agreed that your arguments were
valid.

>
> James Harris

BTW, you seem to be hanging on to the delusion that my rebuttal of your
"Primary Argument" conclusion (in your paper "Advanced Polynomial
Factorization") was flawed. While you continue to stand on that point,
and embellish it with meaningless tripe regarding some assumption I
must have made regarding some rings of algebraic numbers, you also
continue to avoid any sort of response to my legitimate query:

I have asked you on several occasions to point out which of several key
statements is incorrect; the correctness of all of these is sufficient
to prove that none of the a_i is coprime to 5 in the ring of algebraic
integers, so for your argument to stand, at least one of the following
must fail.

Here is an outline of the argument; if you could just point out which
of the statements relies on the alleged false assumption then you will
assist in furthering this discussion.

In this outline, "a" refers to one of the coefficients that you claim
must be coprime to 5. P(x) refers to the polynomial x^3 - 12 x^2 + 65,
and I note that P(-a) = 0.

  1. The following formulas are true:

          q(x)r(x) = (64 x + 128)P(x) + 5
          r(x)s(x) = (32 x + 72)P(x) + x,

     where q,r,s are defined as follows:

   q(x) = 8 x^2 - 76 x - 185
   r(x) = 8 x^2 - 4 x - 45
   s(x) = 4 x^2 - 37 x - 104

  2. Since -a is a root of P(x), one has the following
     factorizations:

   q(-a)r(-a) = 5
   r(-a)s(-a) = -a

  3. The minimal polynomial of r(-a) is given as:

   MP_r = x^3 - 969 x^2 + 315 x + 5

     which is irreducible over Q. This shows that
     r(-a) is an algebraic integer, but not a unit
     in that ring.

  4. From 2 and 3 above, the common factor r(-a)
     shared by a and 5 is not a unit in the ring
     of algebraic integers.

  5. a and 5 are not coprime in the ring of algebraic
     integers, since they share a non-unit factor in
     common.

I claim that not one of these individual points depends on the
assumption you say I've made. The above constitutes the entire
argument and all commentary should be restricted to the argument,
so let's see where your objection lies.

Dale