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    Certainly we don't want explicit "research announcements" on MO. A recent answer which was flagged for moderator attention seems somewhat borderline in the regard, and I wanted to solicit opinions here.

    My instinct is that, while the cited papers are perhaps curious, this answer isn't inappropriate and no intervention is required.

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    I was thinking the same thing, but hadn't gotten around to making the meta post yet. I think that there is an important distinction between linking to the arXiv, and trying to use MO as a place for exposition of new results. The former is fine, the latter not. I think the appropriate action on that post is ignore, (or maybe downvote it if you feel sure it's wrong), but deleting or marking as spam would be going too far.

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    @Scott: I completely agree. I was about to flag for moderator attention myself, but then thought better of it. The tone is borderline argumentative: I'm not quite sure why Wadim's name was singled out, but it does not contain any thing blatantly offensive. Users who think the answer is bad can always just down-vote.

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    I think that it's fine to answer specific mathematical questions with links to your papers. If I see a question that's answered in a paper of mine (which has happened a couple of times), then it would be perverse for me not to mention it.

    However, a line has to be drawn somewhere. If a crackpot posts a paper proving the Riemann hypothesis to math.GM, then we certainly don't want them posting links to it on MO, even if it is an answer to a specific mathematical question.

    One hard and fast rule should be that the paper should be absolutely on-topic. I also think that this kind of thing should be discouraged on "big-list" or "soft" questions, though I can easily think of exceptions.

    I guess the question I ask myself when I see things like this is "is this a real paper or not"?
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    I wonder if there are any professional mathematicians who do respectable work but also do completely cranky nonsense on the side.

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    I guess I do not completely understand whether some of this applies to me. In a few answers I have certainly mentioned recent results of mine for which the preprint is not yet publicly available. I assume that's fine, right?
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    @andrescaicedo: I don't see a problem with that. And I would like request that, once a pre-print is available, you edit the answer to link to that pre-print.

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    @Harry, have you heard of the late Alexander Abian?
    • CommentAuthorWill Jagy
    • CommentTimeDec 8th 2010
     
    I think Wadim was singled out because his best known material is on odd zeta values. He doesn't really look at MO any more, I do not think I will call his attention the the posted articles, he will see them in time if anyone thinks they are legitimate.

    Harry, the one story I do know is of a senior mathematician who turned out some gibberish after a stroke. Nobody would turn down publication, so it appeared. I was asked (informally, by a friend) for an opinion on a follow-up paper by a youngster, the material contained was correct but went back to Eisenstein. The thing was embarrassing all around, the young author was, I think, informed of acceptance of the paper before it was finally turned down.

    So now whenever I see something fishy written by anyone famous and older than I am I worry about their health.
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    Andres- That was not what I had in mind; I'm not saying that we should have a Wikipediesque culture of "no original research" but rather that we've had some people in the past who were trying to use MO to promote results in a way that seemed inappropriate. The most important issue is whether the person is actually asking a specific and appropriate question, or giving an on-topic answer to such a question. In those contexts, I don't think anyone has a problem with discussing one's own work.

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    Harry- Some would put that spin on the career of the late great Serge Lang.

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    @Ben: Aside from the whole AIDS denialism thing, I think that the rest of his political stuff is pretty on-the-level. I actually read the section of his book on the SP Huntington affair, and I think that he was completely right to raise all of that hubbub.

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    Yeah, well, the AIDS denialism thing is pretty big.

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    My (not very informed understanding) of Serge Lang's writings on HIV/AIDS is that he was not denying either one but pointing out holes in certain arguments of the form "HIV ==> AIDS". This is not crankish per se, although I'm certainly not claiming that this is a valuable pursuit or a good use of a person's time. (I myself have no reason to question the very well accepted views on the relation between HIV and AIDS.) Anyway, this entire topic seems rather remote from MO.

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    I think Serge's position on HIV/AIDS started out more reasonable (as you say, only that the original science was sloppily done) but I think he ended up pretty crankish on the matter.
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    @Noah: Yeah, I think I read something like that in the notices.

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    What Noah said. I personally heard Serge Lang assert that the HIV virus is harmless, and that injecting oneself with it was perfectly safe. (He then got extremely angry when someone asked him why he hadn't done this).

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    @Noah, Ben: Oh, I didn't know anything about that. I have such a high regard for Serge Lang mathematically that it was natural for me to want to defend him, but in this case I am clearly out of my depth. Please disregard my comments.

    • CommentAuthorHJRW
    • CommentTimeDec 8th 2010
     

    Harry,

    I wonder if there are any professional mathematicians who do respectable work but also do completely cranky nonsense on the side.

    You might be interested in the career of Eliyahu Rips, one of the founding fathers of geometric group theory.

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    Does anyone mind at all that I close this thread? I don't think we need to continue down this path, but if I'm being heavy handed by stifling all the fun on meta, please let me know by email.

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