Blum: “The proof is wrong. I shall elaborate precisely what the mistake is.”

[DrBazza]

And this what science is about. I'm wrong and I'll say so. I've been proved wrong, because I was wrong.

[dekhn]

math, not science

[exikyut]

For anyone dense like me:

- The author has uploaded a [v2] with file size 0 bytes (see bottom of page); this constitutes retraction of the publication

- [v2] has a comment, shown approximately partway down the page, which is what this post's subject cites

You can click the [v1] link to get a PDF link to the now-retracted information. I really like arXiv's versioned publishing.

[herodotus]

Is the comment that "the proof is wrong" from the author himself?

[Etheryte]

Yes, both the article ("A Solution of the P versus NP Problem") and the comment on it ("The proof is wrong") are written by Blum. It's both very nice and honorable that the author is pointing out his own errors publicly.

[sova]

What a fantastic person to point out such a subtlety once it has come to light. Easily steer your fellow scientists right!

[xrange]

Here's an utterly trivial question. Do most people working on computational problems like this consider themselves mathematicians or scientists?

[willvarfar]

The homepage Blum is referring to is presumably http://theory.cs.uni-bonn.de/blum/blum.var but I can't find an explanation of the flaw there yet.

[technofire]

The flaw is shown here:

https://cstheory.stackexchange.com/questions/38803/is-norber...

[y7]

In his comment from yesterday, he wrote that he needed some time. I guess it will be up somewhere next month.

[avs733]

Thank you for the title update.

I know there was a pool on how long till it was disproved. Who had 19days?

[technofire]

It was known long before 19 days, actually within a week of publication:

https://cstheory.stackexchange.com/questions/38803/is-norber...

[foota]

He sounds crushed, I hope he's doing okay. Must be hard to have something be wrong after working on it for what I imagine was a very long time.

[mastazi]

That's why when you share Arxiv links you should never ever share direct links to the pdf.

E.g. If someone shared v1 before the author retracted, by visiting that link (even today) you would know nothing about what happened.

[deepnotderp]

Awesome, this is science and math working as it should be, kudos to Blum!