@Harald - your story is the first time I've heard of a preprint (as opposed to a paper) being published without the author's permission. Was it published under your colleague's name?

Yes. It is the only such story I have heard, too. It was clearly an attempt by the journal to pad their pages with some good quality material, not an attempt at stealing credit for the result.

You are free to republish my work under my name, because my work is (almost completely) in the public domain.

+1 for practicing what you preach.

(Well, in Europe. America has no notion of "moral rights".)

Yeah, but in America, copyright lasts until something stupid, like a hundred years after your death.

Preprints need not be public domain, but published papes should be. Once you've obtained the "journal credit" you no longer should protect your work from being published without your consent. (And I certainly don't think that the inital publisher should control future use/publication of the work!)

This is more in line with what I was thinking. It just came out dumber because I've never spoken with anyone about the process of publishing a paper.

Your faith is touching...

By faith, I guess, you mean naïveté?

that is extremely naive and misguided. Re-publication of your written words can happen outside the academic community, by unscrupulous publishers and such.

Which raises the question, what kind of scrupulous publisher charges obscene amounts of money for access to work done by other people for free?

A paper being public domain does not mean that anyone can just plagiarize from it, simply because academia deals with plagiarism by other means.

Your faith is touching...

I don't think that copyright law is ever a real cause for concern to people who engage in academic dishonesty or other fraud in general.

Preprints are public domain

What a remarkably odd thing to say. I expect you mean to say anybody can access and read them, which is not at all the same thing.

The issue isn't this particular example and whether you were right or wrong. I think at this point, this thread is clearly about how we deal in general with discussing potential errors in papers on MO. I'm not sure we've hit an consensus yet, but it's turned to a general question about what happens next time around, not the merits of your case.

Ah, okay. I thought that was just a given. However, I didn't read Martin's question, so I don't know how he asked it. I have asked such questions on MO before, and I always presume that it is either my misunderstanding or a typo (the book I'm referencing has very terse proofs as well as a veritable multitude of typos (and by typo, I mean something more like "small (albeit confusing) error that is inconsequential to the conclusions of the proof")).

(The comment above has quadruply nested delimiters =X)

Diplomacy is part of it, but I think is more than this; it is a question of mind-set. I can tell you from being on the other side that having someone suggest that you have made a mistake, when in fact they are just misunderstanding, can be very frustrating. If you (by which I mean "one", not you in particular) think you have found a mistake in someone's work, it is just as likely (and probably more so, in my experience) that you are simply misunderstanding.

So I think such questions should be asked with a presumption that one is misunderstanding things, rather than that there is a mistake.

Regards,

Matt

Thanks for the good advice from those above, I am glad I will never have to make this mistake myself.

An important point to remember is that claiming a new result, especially a significant one, involves putting oneself right out on the edge, and there is always the danger of coming a cropper. One has to be respectful of this. On the one hand, if you made a mistake in a paper, you would presumably rather not have people trumpeting this all over MO, but would prefer to get the chance to quitely withdraw the claim; it's just professional courtesy to offer the same opportunity to others. On the other hand, if you are incorrect in your claim of a mistake, then you look somewhat foolish, and the author accused of making a mistake may well get annoyed. It's better to prevent such possibilities by not initiating them in the first place.

There is a reason that experienced mathematicians begin questions about another person's work (even if they have their doubts) with the expression "I don't understand [such-and-such in your argument]", putting the fault on themselves, not the person whose work it is. If there really is a mistake, it will come out with patient questioning, and if not, one avoids having egg on one's face.

P.S. I think Noah's suggest question, "I don't understand step X", is fine. This is the kind of question people ask all the time. It is very different to an accusation of a mistake.

I overlooked this in my last post because I was thinking of the situation at hand, which is quite far from this situation.

So now I revise my position to I don't know.

In response to the tone of the post. The first version was probably ok. The later iterations were a bit incendiary. I think it is better to be a bit less intense when suggesting there are issues. I think a good way of posting this sort of thing, is saying that you think there might be an error, rather than asserting that the result is incorrect. However, I am far from the politeness police. You can choose to be as aggressive as you wish, but I think the comments reflected a preference for politeness.

Regarding you emailing Rosenberg. I have spoken with him about this. Yes, he is busy right now and of the opinion that you can resolve your difficulties on your own with your advisor. He also told me that one of the issues is that you want a simpler proof in a specific setting. Since he has not thought about this simpler proof, it is not surprising that he not create one for you. As I told you in personal email, working through his machinery might be advantageous to you, even though it can appear daunting.

Please reopen the question for at least the reason that you can answer it after you understand Ofer Gabber's and Zoran Skoda's correspondence with you . Others(at least I) would be interested to hear these things.

DISCLAIMER: I do NOT speak for Rosenberg. I do NOT speak for the MO community. This is just my interpretation of the situation. I cannot answer the questions that you have asked, and unfortunately don't have time right now to attempt to.