I would normally sigh and move on seeing such a claim, but this guy is an established senior researcher at the University of Bonn. A career-ending disaster or instant and eternal fame, that's some serious cahunas.
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It shouldn't be career ending unless there's been malfeasance or some kind of sloppy work. The people who go down hard usually have some crime beyond audacity.
It could easily cause some painful embarrassment, but hopefully that would pass with time.
Maybe embarrassment similar to that faced by researchers who's results suggested FTL communication, but it turned out to be a bad fiber-optic cable. I didn't follow up but I assume that team is doing OK.
I wouldn't be surprised if they gained a bit of respect. If I recall correctly they did everything right - they had an apparently impossible result, they spent a lot of time trying to disprove it, and when they announced they made it clear that they doubted the result. Hiding it because they were sure it was false, but couldn't disprove would have been poor science. It had to be pretty scary to make that announcement knowing there was almost no chance it wasn't going to turn out to be a problem in their setup and I admire the guts it took to do it.
Sometimes the courage of your convictions means trusting the process to get it right when you're sure you're wrong.
Actually, there was a bunch of blow back and the main researchers behind the result stepped down.
https://www.newscientist.com/article/dn21656-leaders-of-cont...
Reading that, it seems more like they went back to doing research full time instead of being part time administrators -- and probably happier for it.
Agreed. Even in the event of the discovery of work which would qualify as minimally sloppy, I'd think his reputation (if not wanting of some polish) would still be intact after a quick retraction.
I mostly agree but there is a small effect: "Claims spectacular proofs with flawed arguments" might still be reason to doubt his future proofs more until verified. And mathematicians do use such criterions before reading unverified claimed proofs of hundreds of pages (not uncommon). And since some proofs target tens or hundreds of persons, that can be a problem. I've read such stories, though I don't have a reference at hand.
> serious cahunas
I think you mean "cojones" (which btw is a very rude word in Spanish). A kahuna is a kind of Hawai'ian shaman.
I stand corrected, thank you. I would normally have said "serious bollocks", but this forum is mostly left-ponders who would probably not have caught my drift.
North American here, we hear enough Brits speak to get the expression :)
"serious bollocks" means "very questionable statement" in the British English I'm familiar with. Perhaps GP's idiom is from elsewhere. If the reference is to bravery/daring one would use "balls" as in US English, I believe.
"Bollocks" in Britain and "Balls" in North America both refer to the Testes, as does "cojones". So all three statements are actually the exact same slang in regional dialects.
Bollocks, like many slang words, have multiple meanings in different contexts. It can be used as you stated as well, but "What you said is bollocks" and "You have bollocks for saying it" are very different statements.
I'm sitting here chuckling to myself about the "why not both?" possibilities.
It's a common mistake - http://itre.cis.upenn.edu/~myl/languagelog/archives/003526.h... - and you could imagine a big kahuna would have to have serious cojones.
> A career-ending disaster
Why? Why should posting a stab at a complicated problem should be considered career-killing?
Some people will hold it against him because some people are too stupid to see things in context. Rather than respecting him for taking a smart risk in pursuit of an important goal, they will just remember that he was once wrong about something and in a big way.
There are people who point at others' failures to bolster their own image by comparison. And there are people with fragile egos who are eager to see others in a negative way.
It shouldn't be that way, but it sometimes is, so I wouldn't say the career risk is zero. But I'm still glad he's doing it regardless of the outcome.
Is this really how the academic community is?
That's really how humanity is.
Goes to show that even the even the so called "experts" are humans after all.
It's career "damaging" (I wouldn't say killing) because so many crackpots have attempted this problem that making a wrong attempt makes you look a bit like a crackpot.
I think he means if the stab is not serious but a troll. Of course, if it's a genuine and serious attempt, I don't think it should be frowned upon at all.
Seriously, best way to ensure people stop trying is to persecute attempts.
What he said.
I don't think thats true. See Vinay Deolalikar.
https://en.wikinews.org/wiki/Researcher_claims_solution_to_P...
https://arxiv.org/find/all/1/all:+AND+Vinay+Deolalikar/0/1/0...
He is still publishing papers. Seems to be doing fine.
There's a third possibility: there's a flaw in the proof, but one that is hard to find, and the discovery of the flaw actually advances the field in interesting ways.
If I were a betting man that's actually where I'd put my money because the paper passes by bogometer test (but I am nowhere near qualified to assess whether it's actually correct).
Wasn't that the first possibility?
> A career-ending disaster
He is a tenured professor in Germany, there is very little that could end his career (essentially refusing to honour his teaching obligations or being convicted of a felony). At worst, this will be immensely embarrassing, but you can't kick professors out just because they make a fool of themselves.
And professors don't just make a fool of themselves because one of their papers had a flaw in it.
You have no idea...
If you think this is career ending you probably have no idea on how hiring and promoting decisions are made in German universities.
Please can you enlighten me?