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David147 | 5 years ago

It seems like Calegari is chasing after PR and may be angry at computer scientists getting into his field.

His criticism was discussed and found incorrect by the peer review process:

https://static-content.springer.com/esm/art%3A10.1038%2Fs415...

discuss

This is an incredibly strange slate of reviewers. Only the first seems to really understand the mathematical context. It's odd to appeal to the peer review process when the "peers" are not suited to complete the review.

I assure you that Calegari knows more about number theory than any of those referees, and the reasons why the paper is bad are well-explained on his blog (cf. the two links above) and by referee #1. Speaking of "peer review," look at how all the excellent mathematicians commenting on that blog agree with him!

timkam|5 years ago

I agree. Without being an expert in the field, the 2nd and 3rd reviews "smell funny"; they clearly lack depth, are very enthusiastic, and don't seem to make a good and comprehensive point as to _why_ this paper is supposed to be as great as they claim it is. In a strong community, any editor should consider these reviews disappointing, and any author should at least have mixed feelings about them.

scihive|5 years ago

Calegari gets to cherry-pick comments he approves or rejects on his blog, so calling it "peer review" is taking the concept out of context =).

alisonkisk|5 years ago

The authors tweeted at Elon Musk and Yuri Milner, so it's obvious who is chasing PR (and "dumb money")

Meanwhile, the blog author congratulated Mathematica for being for being good at solving continued fractions

I'd ask you where the criticism was "found to be incorrect", but I know that's absurd (aka, not even wrong), as peer review comments are not in the business of "finding criticism to be incorrect".

wefaewofj|5 years ago

Assuming that it's the PI/senior author doing all of this shameless promotional work, I feel really REALLY bad for the grad student(s) on this paper... what a way to start your academic career :(

The paper is actually really nice work, but holy jesus someone on that author list is making a complete ass out of themselves.

Academia isn't startup world. The community is small, people have long memories, and I've rarely seen the strategy being deployed here work out. It does work sometimes, but more often it backfires. Especially for folks who aren't yet on a tenure track.