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Nobody knows how to cite 4chan mathematicians who solved an interesting problem

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Re: Nobody knows how to cite 4chan mathematicians who solved an interesting problem

#31

Post by ahjones »

kop316 wrote: post #27
_mtkq wrote: post #7

An "academically correct" solution (i.e., not to taint the prestige of a scholar who cites the solution) would be to cite a real, proxy scholar who checks the solution, but gives all credit to the anonymous 4chan user. Scientists often abhor citing from blogs, forums, and Wikipedia, as those publications "are not peer-reviewed by trustworthy professionals".

I actually feel that the response here is a great one: "I feel like you should be able (forced even!) to cite things that aren't journal articles- even blog posts- if they contributed to your body of work. But citing things that aren't prestigious reduces the perceived prestige of your own, which is a perverse incentive not to cite." EDIT: I can't seem to figure out how to link to specific tweets, so this is the guy…

Click the date/time on a tweet to get the permalink.

Here's the tweet you referenced: https://twitter.com/_delta_zero/status/1054820799473836032

Re: Nobody knows how to cite 4chan mathematicians who solved an interesting problem

#32

Post by Certhas »

qubax wrote: post #24
_mtkq wrote: post #7

An "academically correct" solution (i.e., not to taint the prestige of a scholar who cites the solution) would be to cite a real, proxy scholar who checks the solution, but gives all credit to the anonymous 4chan user. Scientists often abhor citing from blogs, forums, and Wikipedia, as those publications "are not peer-reviewed by trustworthy professionals".

> Scientists often abhor citing from blogs, forums, and Wikipedia, as those publications "are not peer-reviewed by trustworthy professionals". Which is sad because most peer-reviewed material are not trustworthy either. https://bigthink.com/neurobonkers/believe-it-or-not-most-pub... https://journals.plos.org/plosmedicine/article?id=10.1371/jo... It's worrying that academia is slowly turning into a rigid "appeal to au…

Peer review is a base level quality check, not a correctness check in most disciplines.

It provides value, indeed most of my papers have been improved by going through peer review. But it's good to be conscious of what it can and can not do.

One thing that it does do is signal intent. It signals that you are willing to engage with the expert community, and specifically their feedback and criticism.

Finally, there is of course a fallacy in saying "not trustworthy either". If 99% of random blog posts are wrong, but 60% of published papers are wrong, then a random paper is 40 times more likely to be correct than a random blog post and it's perfectly sensible to be hesitant about citing the latter.

Finally, scientists have always cited outside of traditional sources and continue to do so [1]. I see no evidence for your assertion that "appeal to authority" has become more prevalent or important than it used to be. With all the ongoing open science initiatives it's rather the opposite.

[1] Personal communication with various scientists, 2018

Re: Nobody knows how to cite 4chan mathematicians who solved an interesting problem

#33

Post by thatcat »

kop316 wrote: post #27
_mtkq wrote: post #7

An "academically correct" solution (i.e., not to taint the prestige of a scholar who cites the solution) would be to cite a real, proxy scholar who checks the solution, but gives all credit to the anonymous 4chan user. Scientists often abhor citing from blogs, forums, and Wikipedia, as those publications "are not peer-reviewed by trustworthy professionals".

I actually feel that the response here is a great one: "I feel like you should be able (forced even!) to cite things that aren't journal articles- even blog posts- if they contributed to your body of work. But citing things that aren't prestigious reduces the perceived prestige of your own, which is a perverse incentive not to cite." EDIT: I can't seem to figure out how to link to specific tweets, so this is the guy…

Exactly: a correct source is a correct source. No need to reserve legitimacy exclusively for paid journals. Maybe the source could be cited through internet archive or other so that the document is definitely the same version as the one seen at the time of citation.

Re: Nobody knows how to cite 4chan mathematicians who solved an interesting problem

#34

Post by ghaff »

_mtkq wrote: post #7

An "academically correct" solution (i.e., not to taint the prestige of a scholar who cites the solution) would be to cite a real, proxy scholar who checks the solution, but gives all credit to the anonymous 4chan user. Scientists often abhor citing from blogs, forums, and Wikipedia, as those publications "are not peer-reviewed by trustworthy professionals".

It feels like there is, or should be, a distinction between "I'm basing my analysis on this other data/analysis/etc. that I'm working from the assumption it's correct" vs. "This idea/analysis/etc. gave me a good starting point. I'm not depending on it but I want to credit it."

Thinking about what I do. There's a difference between me depending on the results of a survey and hearing a novel take on a market or whatever. In the former case, I'm dependent of the survey methodology being sound (and I'm going to trust some sources far more than others). In the latter case it's more "I never thought of things that way" but I'm going to do my own analysis.

Re: Nobody knows how to cite 4chan mathematicians who solved an interesting problem

#35

Post by RowBoat6123 »

montenegrohugo wrote: post #2

This is fantastic. Imagine having to cite "Anonymous user on 4chan" on your paper. I'd probably just do it for the novelty (who else can say they have a more unusual source??)

Bill Thurston cited personal communication with himself, which is a pretty unusual source.

Re: Nobody knows how to cite 4chan mathematicians who solved an interesting problem

#36

Post by RowBoat6123 »

_mtkq wrote: post #7

An "academically correct" solution (i.e., not to taint the prestige of a scholar who cites the solution) would be to cite a real, proxy scholar who checks the solution, but gives all credit to the anonymous 4chan user. Scientists often abhor citing from blogs, forums, and Wikipedia, as those publications "are not peer-reviewed by trustworthy professionals".

Realistically, the proof would probably just be rewritten in a paper in standard notation, with an indication that the original proof (or the idea) was due to an anonymous author.

You see very similar things happen from time to time where there are "folklore" theorems in mathematics that someone eventually writes down 20 years later. Sometimes they're able to give an attribution, and sometimes not. But always they give a formal proof using modern notation and credit the idea with whatever fidelity they can.

Re: Nobody knows how to cite 4chan mathematicians who solved an interesting problem

#40

Post by mietek »

RowBoat6123 wrote: post #35
montenegrohugo wrote: post #2

This is fantastic. Imagine having to cite "Anonymous user on 4chan" on your paper. I'd probably just do it for the novelty (who else can say they have a more unusual source??)

Bill Thurston cited personal communication with himself, which is a pretty unusual source.

Inevitably, I’m going to have to ask for a reference.
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