On Elin Oxenhielm’s Response to Criticism and the Latest News Reports
First a few things regarding her response to the criticism. At the beginning of this story, Oxenhielm always said that she expected criticism and that she could meet it, but as Aftenposten reported a few days ago, she now refers to Nonlinear Analysis, saying that “They have evaluated the paper, they accepted it for publication and they have the copyright of its contents – and thus they are responsible for its correctness.” She repeats this on her website, and continues to mention that the article now is being re-evaluated by the journal, which is news to me.
On her website, she also has posted screenshots of the two emails she forwarded to me last Friday, along with another longer email from Yishao Zhou, advisor for her master’s thesis. Oxenhielm’s conclusion is that these three emails prove that what Zhou said in her open letter isn’t true. Although I don’t want to speculate about who is right and who is wrong, I want to say a few things about this.
First, let’s see what Oxenhielm says:
I have evidence that supports the fact that she makes her role in this story to look better than it actually is. […] Yishao Zhou said to me that the method of describing functions could be used to solve the second part of Hilbert’s 16th problem. […] I started to work more serious with this since Yishao Zhou supported me and gave me advices on how to proceed. I would not have kept on working as I did, if she had not supported me.
I think that it is quite obvious that Yishao Zhou supported me in getting the solution published. This is the simple reason why I mentioned her name in the acknowledgement; I wanted to thank her for help and support.
Now let’s look at what Zhou says in her open letter:
In my opinion the paper is incomplete and includes serious mistakes, which I think any educated mathematician can easily see. I pointed out some related ones in her first draft that was part of the one in press. Unfortunately, I did not actively try to stop her from submitting the manuscript, since I did not want to become involved at that point, because I was (and am) not the advisor for this article, and I believed that the referee system would prevent the publication of an obviously erroneous proof (here I was wrong). It is most unfortunate that the journal accepted the manuscript, and that media broadcasted the news the way thay did without consulting, or in some cases taking the advice seriously, of senior mathematicians.
Now, what can be told by reading Zhou’s emails is that she had seen an earlier version of the article than that which was submitted to Nonlinear Analysis. In the open letter, Zhou says that she has given Oxenhielm feedback on her first draft, so there’s no inconsistency on that point. Further, Zhou says in the email that this article will be subject to more thorough examination given the nature of the problem, and that more time therefore is needed to defend the weaknesses in the article.
It is clear from reading the longer email that Zhou thought that Oxenhielm’s article needed more work. She suggested that it should be shown third party (“a senior mathematician,” Oxenhielm says) and that this person should be carefully selected, as the wrong one could cause problems for Oxenhielm’s publication. Oxenhielm takes this as meaning that Zhou didn’t want there to “be any trouble with the publication of [her] paper.” That might be true, but it’s hard to tell for an outsider. Another interpretation might be that Oxenhielm by showing the article to a senior mathematician perhaps could get opinions that would convince her against submitting it, or at least that it needed much more work to become something worth submitting.
In the discussion on unstruct.org someone who use uses the name “hsprudel” said that “Zhou is an enthusiastic and encouraging teacher, whoom sic! had the pleasure of having for several courses years ago, so [he/she] can actually see how the student might have mistaken encouragement for approval.”
Also in that discussion, professor Grigori Rozenblioum says that Zhou has told him that Oxenhielm made corrections and submitted the paper before showing them to Zhou. In an email to me, Zhou said that Oxenhielm didn’t even want to show her the article after it was submitted, before it appeared online at the website of Nonlinear Analysis. So by itself, Zhou’s email doesn’t prove that she has seen the final version, and thought it fit for submission. She indeed is encouraging in the email, and it might seem that she had a stronger belief in Oxenhielm’s article than her open letter gives the impression of. But it’s really impossible to tell.
The above is a bit farther than I had intended to go concerning the Oxenhielm vs. Zhou aspect of this story. That really is a matter for Oxenhielm, Zhou, and the Department of Mathematics to deal with, but I wanted to advise caution when reading Oxenhielm’s response. The above should not be seen as taking a stand for or against either party.
Another more interesting aspect of the story is how the article could pass the peer-review process at Nonlinear Analysis. This is covered in a news article distributed tonight by Swedish news agency TT, which so far has been published in Aftonbladet and Göteborgs-Posten. The article says that due to pressure from mathematicians and the scientific journal Nature, editor-in-chief of Nonlinear Analysis, V. Lakshmikantham has decided to postpone the publication until the re-evaluation has been conducted.
A spokesperson for the publisher, Marike Westra, said to the news agency that although it has occurred, it’s uncommon for an article to be withdrawn from publication at such a late stage. I don’t know if this indicates that it’s likely that it will be published even after the re-evaluation. (I have read that the re-evaluation will take a month, but I can’t remember where.)
Regarding the aspect that I’m interested in, the gap between traditional and new media on this issue, that gap is now beginning to close. As late as yesterday, however, a long article without any mention of the criticism was published in Göteborgs-Posten. According to Grigori Rozenblioum, Elin Fredrikson who wrote that article has contacted him and intends to write another article, but he was unsure that this would happen given the news now distributed by TT.
Rozenblioum also says that his interview with Nature Science Update will be published online on Thursday, and that he’s also been contacted by New Scientist which will publish an article on this, also on Thursday.
What I find particularly interesting is that New Scientist said to him that they have read unstruct.org and my weblog, and that they will use them as sources for the article. In the
The above was posted to my personal weblog on December 8, 2003. My name is
Peter Lindberg and I am a thirtysomething software developer and dad living in
Stockholm, Sweden. Here, you’ll find posts in English and Swedish about
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