Re: Fri Mar 7 1986 Guardian article by Ian Stewart announcing a proof of the Poincare Conjecture

On May 1, 6:52 pm, Tonico <Tonic...@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:
On May 1, 1:13 pm, pauldepst...@xxxxxxx wrote:





On May 1, 12:53 pm, Tonico <Tonic...@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:

On May 1, 7:10 am, Gerry Myerson <ge...@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
wrote:

In article
<8321f48c-debb-452f-8928-78ce561da...@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>,

 pauldepst...@xxxxxxx wrote:
On Apr 29, 4:18 am, Gerry Myerson <ge...@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
wrote:
In article
<99ddf3ea-6a6e-4967-8837-0b807f652...@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>,

 pauldepst...@xxxxxxx wrote:
Several years ago, Rego and Rourke claimed (falsely, it turns out) to
have proved the Poincare conjecture.  Before the result had been
published or confirmed by the experts in the field, an article
appeared in a well-respected UK newspaper "The Guardian" under the
byline of the mathematician, Ian Stewart, claiming unequivocally that
the conjecture had now been proven by Rego and Rourke.  No scepticism
was expressed in this article.

So you say, and I'm not sufficiently familiar with the situation to say
that you're wrong, but I'd like to see the article myself before I
accept your assertion about the lack of scepticism.

....

Fair enough.  Here is the full text of the Guardian article as
requested.  It appeared on page 19 of The Guardian on Mar 7, 1986.  I
use  caps to indicate the title of the article.

Good. Let me isolate this paragraph:

The proof was subjected to detailed scrutiny by experts in a marathon
eight-hour session at a meeting on low-dimensional topology held at
Warwick last weekend.

Now unless Stewart was just making this up, it looks to me
like this is ample justification for Stewart to claim unequivocally
that the conjecture was toast, and to express no scepticism. Heck,
if experts looked at it for 8 hours & didn't find anything wrong,
what justification would Stewart have for expressing any scepticism?

If there really was a meeting,
and there really were experts,
and they really did study the work for 8 hours,
and they ended up happy with it,
then I'm not going to say that Stewart did anything wrong,
and that being the case I don't see where he has anything
to apologize for.

****************************************************************

I think that even in that case one must be cautious: every
mathematician knows that such a claim must be checked and
double checked by at least 3-4 independent teams around the globe.
What a team of experts can check and decide in just 8 hours seems to
be
pretty insufficient to make such a claim of such a magnitude, and
Stewart as a mathematician should have known this, imho.
He still has to apologize, and big time, IF it is really true that he
wrote that article and unequivocally claimed what they say he did.

Anyway, I think we still are wandering in the dark until we can get
our
hands at that already slightly-famous article...

Tonio, I'm puzzled by that last sentence.  I posted the article in
this thread and changed the subject header to reflect that.  Are you
somehow unable to read it with your newsreader?  If so, you can get it
via groups.google.com

Paul Epstein-

*************************************************************

I indeed missed, somehow, that post, and now that I read it I really
can't find anything too terrible in it to accuse Ian Stewart of.
Certainly the title of the article may be misleading and exaggerate,
but
in the body of the article I can't find anything like Ian Stewart
making
an unequivocal affirmation that the conjecture has been solved.
He certainly isn't cautious enough, and his claim that a group of
specialists dealt with the purposed proof for 8 hours seems like
giving
a rather weak piece of evidence for something that'd require way more
than that, and he as mathematician should have known better.

I think he may have wanted to write as soon as possible about that
"proof"
so that nobody would steal his thunder from him.

He apparently wanted some fame for himself, but nothing so bad so as
to
ask from him an apology or something like that, imo.

Regards
Tonio- Hide quoted text -

- Show quoted text -

I don't think Stewart is at all responsible for the title because I
don't think it's normal practice for writers to choose the titles of
their own pieces. However, the title is excellent IMO and accurately
reflects the content of Stewart's piece.

Stewart did say "The topological grapevine is now buzzing with the
dramatic news that two European topologists have finally cracked the
Conjecture." To me, that says unequivocally that the Conjecture has
been proven.

Paul Epstein
.

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