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Activists get math paper rescinded


rukawa

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https://quillette.com/2018/09/07/academic-activists-send-a-published-paper-down-the-memory-hole/

 

Paper rescinded and NSF acknowledgement removed. I don't recall there ever being censorship like this based on politics except for Lysenkoism in the USSR and Galileo during the Inquisition. I'm not sure this has ever happened in a modern democracy. We are living in very strange times.

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https://quillette.com/2018/09/07/academic-activists-send-a-published-paper-down-the-memory-hole/

 

Paper rescinded and NSF acknowledgement removed. I don't recall there ever being censorship like this based on politics except for Lysenkoism in the USSR and Galileo during the Inquisition. I'm not sure this has ever happened in a modern democracy. We are living in very strange times.

 

It doesn't matter what is true or false if the left doesn't like it.

 

This is a great interview with Nadine Strossen who is dismayed at even the ACLU's abandonment of the freedom of speech.

 

http://www.thaddeusrussell.com/podcast/50

 

 

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I shouldn't have said activists. Make that very well-respected accomplished scientists get paper rescinded for political reasons. Its not really the Left. Its the establishment. In the past we had the brilliant accomplished people fighting against censorship. Now they are fighting for it. Amy Wilkinson is no slouch:

https://scholar.google.com/citations?user=eUwz338AAAAJ&hl=en&oi=ao

 

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I shouldn't have said activists. Make that very well-respected accomplished scientists get paper rescinded for political reasons. Its not really the Left. Its the establishment. In the past we had the brilliant accomplished people fighting against censorship. Now they are fighting for it. Amy Wilkinson is no slouch:

https://scholar.google.com/citations?user=eUwz338AAAAJ&hl=en&oi=ao

 

 

The important part isn't scientist vs. activist, it is "for political reasons".

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Opinion: Free speech should take precedence over uncomfortable opinions and the author appears reasonable (but only his side has been submitted).

 

Humble perspective: paper publication can be a relatively messy procedure and this kind of focused "political" interference, if true as described, IMO is more an exception rather than a rule or an "institutionalized" and "rotten to the core" process.

 

Before concluding about this specific case and widespread generalization, it would have been helpful to hear opposing arguments.

Maybe, the situation is not so clear cut.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17949241

 

Like in investing, comparing different perspectives can help narrow the "true" value of an investment.

 

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FWIW the math in the paper is very basic and it's beyond weird that it was ever accepted for NYJM.  Definitely something strange going on there. 

 

Also, some brief rebuttals from central characters in Hill's drama:

 

https://math.uchicago.edu/~wilkinso/Statement.html

https://www.math.uchicago.edu/~farb/statement

 

I know little about this story.  Hill strikes me as a guy who likes attention and thinks highly of himself (see his webpage http://people.math.gatech.edu/~hill/About2018.php). 

 

There are some huge egos in academics and I think a large part of this is a few such egos colliding, with political motivations on all sides. 

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