[leiroigh]

Skim the preprint https://arxiv.org/abs/1703.04184 , especially section 7.

The article is not fit for publication in a mathematical journal, it is cosplaying as math.

To cite:

> The following simple proposition may be well known, but since no reference is known to the author, a proof is included for completeness.

>Proposition 7.1. N(µ, σ1) is more variable than N(µ, σ2) if and only if σ1 > σ2.

>Proof: [lots of lines]

In a real mathematical paper, this claim would not be glorified into a numbered proposition, and it would not merit a proof; this amount of mathematical work is the distance between one line and the next. I would not even expect students to provide a proof for such utter trivialities in a homework assignment.

Author should have submitted to PNAS instead, or written a blogpost.

[tbrownaw]

The article is not fit for publication in a mathematical journal

And yet actual real some mathematical journal editors apparently thought otherwise before they got pushed into a purely political retraction.

[DominikPeters]

Interestingly, this has changed over the various versions. In v1 on arXiv, this statement is presented without proof (as Example 2.2). In v3, it is Example 3.3 and has received an extra sentence with a proof hint. In v5 (and still in v7 which is current) it has turned into a Proposition. So it seems likely to me that reviewers complained that there wasn't a proof in previous versions.

[v1] https://arxiv.org/pdf/1703.04184v1.pdf

[v3] https://arxiv.org/pdf/1703.04184v3.pdf

[v5] https://arxiv.org/pdf/1703.04184v5.pdf

[quilletteThrow]

There are different notions of variability used in the paper, and he is showing one is equivalent to the other. It doesn't seem ridiculous to me to include the proof, even though it is simple. Lots of simple proofs are included in papers and books.

[js8]

"The article is not fit for publication in a mathematical journal, it is cosplaying as math."

It's not up to you to decide, but up to the reviewers and editors of the journal where it was sent for publication. And according to what we know, it was accepted.

I downvoted you, for this reason.

[thraway180306]

Sorry, but it is for everybody to decide. Reviewers don't have a sacred sanction and exclusive right to judge. Many a time in cases of plagiarism I worked through I've met with this argument from the accused authors. It boils down to that I have no right to question basic decency because only reviewers are entitled to pass judgement on that and they already did.

Also from the description, which is not impartial being by the author, it is admitted it was snuck into an online journal by one of its editors. We don't know anything about the nature of peer review in this case other than when the wider board of editors got a know of that, majority of them allegedly threatened to resign.

It is however a very bad form by the managing editor to publish another article in the place of the other, even if that one was decided to be published erroneously. NYJM journal page says he's on leave and ceded his duties to an interim replacement.

[alexandercrohde]

Can we separate the discussion of whether this paper has a superfluous proof in it from whether its conclusion is true?

Additionally, the main point of the article is that that Mr. Hill feels his paper was pushed out of publication because of a political agenda. Let's also acknowledge the claim of political motivations corrupting academics is independent of the "superfluous proof" claim.

[quilletteThrow]

The paper doesn't have a conclusion, really. It describes a model and is supposedly intended to spur greater discussion. This is probably part of the reason the paper is written as it is: meant to be simple and easily accessible to people in other fields. The parent will need to work harder to dismiss the author...

[thraway180306]

What the parent charitably didn't stress is that this proof is the totality of mathematical work in this paper.

The rest is a stream of words.

As such it is a work of social science. It might even have been respectable in social science journal. Economists input a lot of assumptions into calculus 101 level equations and call that a "mathematical proof" of an economic theory.

If the author wanted this to be a interdisciplinary discussion, why drag it into a mathematical journal where actual mathematical truths are published?

Author says himself he was unable to formulate actual mathematical idea and recruited help. Why ask Tabachnikov, who is a geometer specializing in classical mechanics, instead of someone with like a clue about statistical modeling? He then compares his experience to one he had fighting in Vietnam... which only makes me wonder if that wasn't the point: to either succeed with a flag-planting diversion or be able to make that comparison and hero of himself anyways.

[leiroigh]

I am not trying to dispute the paper's (implied) greater point: Larger variability of reproductive success favors larger variability of phenotype (in so far as phenotype is related to reproductive success); this can obviously apply to different sexes of the same species [1]; and it is trivial to cook up a toy model for this.

I am just saying that (1) this paper does not belong into a mathematical journal, and (2) the point looks almost too trivial to state.

I am a mathematician; I cannot say whether the paper belongs into a bio journal and whether its points are common knowledge in the bio community. I can only say that, had the arxiv-paper landed on my desk for peer review, I'd have recommended to reject it.

[1] By the conservation law that each offspring has one male and one female parent, differing "effective selectivity" and differing variability of reproductive success are kinda equivalent in the model; casting it in terms of "desirability" looks like a weird choice to me.

[jaccarmac]

arXiv contains more recent versions of the paper, it's probably a good idea to check the versions closer to the publication date. In my uneducated opinion they are even less mathy than v9.

In addition, the NYJM version of the paper is also still available: http://nyjm.albany.edu/j/2017/23-72v-orig.pdf