[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.