Letters to the Editor

Letters to the Editor On “A Revolutionary Material” inherits the disciplinary culture of The Common Intellectual The history of the discovery of quasi- computer science, not of mathemat- Property of Humankind crystals is not stated correctly in ics—causes me to doubt the validity With respect to David A. Edwards’s Radin’s article [“A revolutionary ma- of this premise. article “Platonism is the law of the terial”, by Charles Radin, Notices, There are two reasons why the land” (Notices, April 2013), in which March 2013]. Actually the mathemati- computer science literature is more he advocates that mathematical re- cal theory came before the experi- prone to errors, including serious sults should be patentable: Can one mental discovery of quasicrystals. errors in important papers, than is really imagine a world in which some- The mathematical model for a mathematics. First, the tradition is one must obtain a license and pay 3-dimensional quasicrystal with ico- to publish mainly in conference pro- royalties every time (s)he uses the sahedral symmetry was first pub- ceedings, not in journals. Authors Fundamental Theorem of Calculus or, lished by my father, P. Kramer, and write under deadline pressure and for that matter, negative numbers? his student R. Neri in the article “On often submit their papers within periodic and nonperiodic space fill- hours (literally) of the deadline. Re- —Steven H. Weintraub m ings of E obtained by projection”, viewers are also hurried—they each Lehigh University Acta Cryst. Sect. A 40 (1984), no. 5, have to read and evaluate a couple [email protected] 580–587. This paper was submit- dozen papers in the course of a few ted on November 5, 1983, before (Received March 19, 2013) weeks. Shechtman’s experimental result, In the second place, in computer which earned him the Nobel Prize, Sustainability or Collapse? science and related fields it is ex- was published. It appears to many observers that pected that successful researchers In contrast, the paper by D. Levine humanity is already moving into write papers at a frenetic pace, au- and P. Steinhardt mentioned in the “ecological overshoot and collapse”. article was written and submitted thoring or (more often) coauthoring If they are right, then Simon Levin’s afterwards. The review by M. Senechal a large number of papers each year. nice overview in “The mathematics of (MR0768042) of the Kramer-Neri As I wrote in my article “The uneasy sustainability” (Notices, April 2013) paper states this very clearly. relationship between mathematics needs a much more ambitious, inter- I want to make two points here. and cryptography” (Notices, Septem- disciplinary agenda. Firstly, the mathematical theory of ber 2007), “Top researchers expect The most outstanding application quasicrystals predated the experi- that practically every conference of mathematics to the ecological tra- ment. Secondly, the paper by Levine should include one or more quickie jectory of modern civilization may and Steinhardt is not at all the “initial papers by them or their students.” still be the famous Limits-to-Growth report” on the theory of quasicrys- The heightened publish-or-perish study of the 1970s. This study (see tals. It is unfortunate that the official pressures, which are much worse Limits to Growth—The 30-Year Up- press release of the Nobel Prize Com- than in mathematics, contribute to date, 2004) uses nonlinear dynamical mittee contains the same historical quality control problems. Some ex- systems that encode critical feedback and scientific inaccuracies. amples of these problems can be and feedforward loops among a hand- found at http://anotherlook.ca. ful of global variables (population, —Linus Kramer Cryptography and computer sci- resources, food, industrial output, Universität Münster ence are not the only fields that pollution). It uses the methodology [email protected] seem to have more problems than of scenarios that has been applied to mathematics with major errors in great effect in climate modeling. The Limits-to-Growth business- important papers. Grcar states that (Received March 14, 2013) as-usual scenario, which has held up “biomedical and multidisciplinary remarkably well, suggests that not journals are recognized for exem- only are we well into ecological over- plary corrective policies.” This is Errors in Papers: Math vs. shoot but that some form of collapse questionable. The reader will find Computer Science could be imminent—starting within a In “Errors and corrections in math- a much less sanguine viewpoint in decade or two. If so, mathematicians ematics literature” (Notices, April the article “Lies, damned lies, and could make a major contribution by 2013), Joseph Grcar accepts as an medical science”, by David H. Freed- studying the chaotic aspects of these axiom that “There is no reason to man (The Atlantic, November 2010). nonlinear systems, especially how think…mathematicians make mis- they could be controlled to achieve a takes less often” in their published —Neal Koblitz soft landing (= sustainability). work than researchers in other University of Washington Mathematicians, especially those branches of science. My experience in [email protected] with expertise in complexity and my own field, cryptography—which, scientific computing, could be part although it involves a lot of math, (Received March 29, 2013) of interdisciplinary teams, similar to AUGUST 2013 NOTICES OF THE AMS 839 Letters to the Editor those assembled to model climate American territories of the dissolved Flim-Flam in the Name of change. Unfortunately, though one Moscow Tartary. Science might expect economists to be taking And now we ask the question: when Concerning the Notices article “Math- the lead when it comes to growth, and how did the United States come ematical methods in the study of his- they seem to be missing in action. into existence? Let us pay special torical chronology,” by Florin Diacu, However, Europe is starting to see attention to the time of formation of April 2013 issue: conferences on “de-growth” as it the USA. The Encyclopedic Dictionary The Notices has disgraced itself by deals with high fuel costs and one tells us that “in the process of the wars allowing its good name to be used in debt crisis after another. for independence in North America connection with the crackpot histori- in 1775–1783…an independent state cal theories of Anatoly Fomenko. The —Richard H. Burkhart, Ph.D. was created, the USA (1776).” And fact that Fomenko is a mathematician Mathematics independent now we realize unexpectedly that does not in any way lend credibility researcher, Seattle, WA formation of the USA surprisingly to his pseudoscientific publications, [email protected] EXACTLY COINCIDES WITH THE END which should interest the scientific OF THE WAR WITH “PUGACHEV” IN community only insofar as they pro- (Received April 2, 2013) RUSSIA. Let us recall that “Pugachev” vide a cautionary illustration of the was defeated in 1775. Now everything manner in which membership in a “New Chronology’’ of Nosovskii is in its place. Apparently, the “Inde- national scientific academy can be and Fomenko in the Notices pendence war” in North America was misused to promulgate pure non- The April 2013 issue of the No- a war with the weakening American sense. Suffice it to point out that tices contains an article by Florin Russian Horde. The Romanovs at- Fomenko asserts that the entirety Diacu, “Mathematical methods in tacked the Horde from the East, and of Chinese history is a fabrication of the study of historical chronology”. Americans “struggling for indepen- eighteenth-century Jesuits, that all Most of this article is an exposition dence” attacked it from the West. ancient Roman and Greek artifacts of the “research” of A. Fomenko and Now they teach us that Americans are actually forgeries produced dur- G. Nosovskii on mathematical meth- were fighting for “independence from ing the Renaissance, and that the ods in chronology. According to England”. In reality this was a war for New Testament was written before F. Diacu, this research is “published the partition of enormous American the Old. Needless to say, such asser- in a mathematical journal that has lands of the Moscow Tartary, which tions are so thoroughly incompatible reasonably good ranking.” F. Diacu found themselves without the central with vast troves of historical and laments that “So far, historians have Russian-Horde governance.… It is archaeological evidence that they are ignored these studies…” and “So clear that the very fact of the war with not taken seriously by any competent far, biblical scholars seem to have the “Mongolian” Horde in America experts in the relevant fields. ignored Fomenko’s conclusions ….” was carefully erased from the pages Of course, Fomenko has every The reason scholars ignore this of textbooks of American history. As right to pursue his bizarre hobbies Photo Courtesy of University of Hawaii research is simple: it is the same rea- well as the very fact of the existence and is free to make a public fool of Mathematics Department. son physicists would ignore research of the huge Moscow Tartary.” himself to his heart’s content. But concluding that the earth is flat. (Translated from G. V. Nosovskii the Notices of the AMS is not an ap- We assume that most Western and A. T. Fomenko, “Reconstruction propriate forum for such pseudosci- readers are not familiar with the “re- of world history (New chronology)”, entific tomfoolery. The danger is that search” of Fomenko and Nosovskii on Business Express, Moscow, 2001, publication here could lend an air of chronology, since most of the enor- p. 451 of 726 pp.) legitimacy to work which would never mous output of these authors is pub- In our opinion, the above quota- be published in a scholarly journal lished in Russian. So let us explain. tion gives an adequate impression refereed by competent experts in the Since the 1970s Fomenko has applied of the methods and conclusions of fields in question.

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