DailyDirt: Crackpots Versus Real Scientists

from the urls-we-dig-up dept

Over a hundred years ago, Albert Einstein published what would become his theory of special relativity, and since then, there have been quite a few experiments that support Einstein's ideas. That's the way science usually works. A theory hypothesis is proposed, and if it's deemed worthy enough, other people will actually try to test out the theory hypothesis and see if its predictions can be verified (and every worthy theory hypothesis needs to be able to predict something that isn't already known). As non-traditional scientific publishing becomes easier and more popular, though, the signal-to-noise for interesting ideas can get a bit difficult to discern. Luckily, there are still some folks willing to bear the burden of debunking extraordinary claims from an endless stream of nearly-good ideas.

• Vinay Deolalikar posted his "proof" that P!=NP a few years ago, but it didn't quite stand up to the scrutiny of some mathematicians -- and you, too, can dismiss an extraordinary proof by watching out for a few telltale signs. It's hard to refute everyone who claims to have a P!=NP proof, but there's a roadmap for how to avoid wasting other mathematicians' valuable time. [url]
• A. Garrett Lisi has a grand unifying theory of the universe, but maybe he should stick to surfing. Lisi's TEDtalk is amazingly devoid of physics, but the Large Hadron Collider may have the final say about whether "E8" provides any unique insights on the universe. [url]
• In 2012, Japanese mathematician Shinichi Mochizuki posted 500+ pages (on the internet!) that "might" prove the ABC Conjecture. Mochizuki refuses to discuss his proof, and so far, no one else has really been able to tell him he's wrong. [url]

If you'd like to read more awesome and interesting stuff, check out this unrelated (but not entirely random!) Techdirt post via StumbleUpon.

Filed Under: abc conjecture, crowdsourcing, e8, grand unifying theory, gut, math, p=np, proof, science

Rethinking Peer Review As The World Peer Reviews Claimed Proof That P≠NP

from the there-are-a-lot-more-peers dept

We recently discussed how incredibly broken the traditional scientific journal system is, in terms of how they tend to lock up access to information. However, that left out a much bigger concern: the peer review system they use doesn't always work very well. There is, of course, the famous case of Hendrik Schön, who was the toast of the physics world, until it was discovered that his "breakthroughs" were frauds -- even though they were peer reviewed. But that, of course, is an extreme case. Even outside of that, though, peer review has always been somewhat questionable, and many have warned in the past that it's not particularly reliable or consistent in judging the quality of research.

This week, the world has been taken by storm by claims from Vinay Deolalikar, that he has proved P≠NP, one of (if not the) biggest problem in math and computer science which has potentially huge implications (pdf). However, what's interesting is that the paper started getting a ton of attention prior to any sort of peer review... but all of the attention around it has resulted in people (experts and non-experts alike) around the world beginning to take part in a self-organizing peer review on the fly.

This is leading some to point out that this seems to be a much better method of peer review and should be looked at more seriously (found via Glyn Moody). Apparently, people are realizing that a much more open post-publication peer review process, where anyone can take part, is a lot more effective:

We are starting to see examples of post-publication peer review and see it radically out-perform traditional pre-publication peer review. The rapid demolition [1, 2, 3] of the JACS hydride oxidation paper last year (not least pointing out that the result wasn't even novel) demonstrated the chemical blogosphere was more effective than peer review of one of the premiere chemistry journals. More recently 23andMe issued a detailed, and at least from an outside perspective devastating, peer review (with an attempt at replication!) of a widely reported Science paper describing the identification of genes associated with longevity. This followed detailed critiques from a number of online writers.

The post goes on to discuss some of the pros and cons of this kind of post-publication peer review, and to respond to some of the claimed challenges to it as well. Obviously, this particular paper is a bit different in that the fame around the problem, and the interest in the story itself has a lot more people willing to just go and dig into the proof, but that doesn't mean there aren't some useful lessons to be learned here about getting past the old and increasingly ineffective method of peer review used in many places today.

Filed Under: p=np, peer review, post publication