[southerndrift]

Hasn't Maxwell not mentioned Maxwell's equations when giving a speech about the state of the art of science? If a great scientist can be unsure about a theory, it's not surprising that an average reviewer can be, too.

[btilly]

My favorite variation was David Hilbert asking in a talk what "Hilbert Spaces" were.

In his defense, they were named after him by someone else. But it was still a funny irony.

[lonelappde]

From Hilbert's perspective, he did a lot of work that he cared about, but one random thing got his name on it out of proportion to his own sense of what his important about himself. That's disorienting.

Gauss avoided this problem by getting everything named after him.

[JoeAltmaier]

All true. But the unintended consequence might be, that journals become publishers only of incremental, safe minor papers?

[t_serpico]

you can think of every journal having some set 'perceived value' and 'safety' parameters (e.g some journals will tune down safety to allow flashier papers to enter while others will tune up safety at the expense of flashiness). there is basically a push and pull between value and safety.