Re: Not complicated, weird situation

From: W. Dale Hall (mailtodhall_at_farir.com)
Date: 04/06/05 

Date: Wed, 06 Apr 2005 19:04:05 GMT

jstevh@msn.com wrote:

        ... stuff deleted ...
>
> Actually, a small electronic math journal which claimed to have two
> referees look at every paper, published my paper after having it for
> nine months.
>

We all know this. We also know that the paper could not possibly
have been reviewed by someone who had the least understanding of
algebra. We also know that you were well aware of the rebuttals
of your claims that had appeared in the preceding months on sci.math.

You submitted a paper that no one here accepted as being correct.
What you're whining about is that the paper was yanked; that much
is worth complaining about. You lay the blame on the very people
who told you it was incorrect, who proved to you (well, who provided
correct proofs to you) that it was in error, and that is misguided.

You should have no expectation that I, for one, should sit by while
a patently false result is published without comment. The fact that
you have found this behavior objectionable speaks volumes to your
willingness to lie and to cheat to get what you want.

> I was in contact with that journal over that period and received
> assurances from the editors that despite my being an amateur, they
> would act fairly.
>
> The chief editor emails me to congratulate me on publication and tells
> me the reviewers liked it and it's a nice paper. Another editor in
> reply to my effusive thanks says that what is mathematically correct is
> what's important, without regard to the person making the discovery.
>

So, what is important *is* what's mathematically correct. What you wrote
was *not* mathematically correct, as it is easily refuted by ordinary
arithmetic. It doesn't matter whether you couch it in terms that make
the point invisible to the careless or incompetent reader, what matters
is that the arguments *and* the results of the paper be correct.

I showed your paper to be incorrect. I showed it explicitly, and with
an argument that is so elementary that the editors and/or reviewers
should be ashamed that they passed the paper. If you agree with the
sentiment that the editor expressed, then you should agree also that
your paper should not have been accepted.

> Then someone posts on sci.math about the paper being published.
>
> Several posters berate the journal and its editors, and some decide to
> send emails claiming the argument is wrong and that they refuted it on
> the newsgroup.
>
> They convince the chief editor overnight, he yanks my paper, and
> doesn't even allow me to defend.
>
> Literally overnight, nine months of waiting, down the toilet.
>
> It turns out that the emailers have mislead him, as I explained in
> detailed postings after I got over being truly pissed, and I just wrote
> another paper covering that areas and more, which the Annals of
> Mathematics accepted for formal peer review last year.
>

You have never done this. In fact, you have admitted that the conclusion
of your "Primary Argument" is in error, after I showed you explicitly
that the numbers you claimed to be coprime in the ring of algebraic
integers were in fact *not* coprime in that ring. I showed explicit
formulas that gave common factors, and provided enough arithmetic
detail that anyone with access to a computer algebra system (or with
sufficient pen, paper, and persistence) could verify.

Show us where my letter, located as a quote in this message here:

http://groups-beta.google.com/group/sci.math/msg/2a44d6e009359842

which was posted to sci.math (and not yanked from Google, unlike most
of your older articles), "misleads" anyone. It contains the explicit
arithmetic that refutes the conclusion of your paper. Do you now take
the position that arithmetic itself constitutes a misleading discipline,
that when one does arithmetic calculations, one is actually engaged in
leading the reader away from the truth?

This letter was sent on the 6th or 7th of May of last year. The above-
referenced article points out that I had provided the refutation late
in June of 2003, here's the reference:

http://groups-beta.google.com/group/alt.math.undergrad/msg/e51294a4edcffeca

nearly a year prior to this note, and just about 6 months before
your article was published by SWJPAM. You should realize that if the
editors had seen the June 2003 article, your paper would not have been
accepted (since the editors *did* decide it was unacceptable upon
reading the identical argument in my above-cited note to them).

If you had been at all honest, you could have pointed the editors to
the discussions on sci.math. After all, your position was that the
people who were talking about this were all bone-headed ignoramuses,
and that anyone who had the least sense would accept your argument
immediately. Surely the editors of SWJPAM weren't bone-headed, nor
were they ignoramuses, and they would take your side and quickly
accept your article, or so you must have thought, right? Just think:
you'd be doing them a favor by helping them get the gist of the
article, and you'd immediately get the alliance of non-bone-headed
cognoscenti, a big deal.

No, I think you wanted sci.math to be your little secret, and wanted
the editors to be kept in the dark, so your article would get "a fair
shake", meaning "no actual review".

> Now that you dismiss that entire story in a couple of sentences tells
> the real story.
>
> People like you don't even try to be rational, or to give the full
> story, but instead work to mislead other people by giving tidbits of
> information.
>

Oh, so "the whole story" is that your paper was correct, in spite of
being refuted by the facts of arithmetic? People like you don't even
try to be rational, or to give the full story, but instead work to
mislead other people by giving tidbits of information.

>
> James Harris
>

Dale

P.S. I'm making vacation plans for this summer, and it would be
      helpful to find out when it is you're expecting the hordes
      of reporters and mobs of irate townsfolk to begin all that
      storming of the gates to all the universities and the other
      employers of mathematicians, that you've so fondly alluded
      to. I wouldn't want to be away and miss all the fun.