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Prominent Mathematicians Rebuke Recent Riemann Hypothesis Proof

Posted by ScuttleMonkey on from the here-is-your-peer-review dept.

Bryan writes "Xian-Jin Li's purported proof of the Riemann Hypothesis (reported on recently) has been rebuked by Fields Medalist Terence Tao. Fortunately, Dr. Li's proof fails alongside a respectable graveyard of previous attempts." Relatedly, jim.shilliday writes "The proof cites and appears to be based in part on the work of the leading French theorist Alain Connes. A few hours ago, Connes posted a comment on his blog stating that the purported proof is so badly flawed that he stopped reading it."

48 of 172 comments (clear)

  1. Why "fortunately"? by fgaliegue · · Score: 5, Interesting

    From the summary:

    Fortunately, Dr. Li's proof fails alongside a respectable graveyard of previous attempts

    Why? I'm probably missing something obvious, I'm not even a mathematician to start with, but...

    I mean, we (the world) do want to prove it right (or wrong) one day or another, don't we?

    1. Re:Why "fortunately"? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Informative

      I guess they mean that there's no shame in having failed, since many other respectable attempts also failed.

    2. Re:Why "fortunately"? by Chris+Pimlott · · Score: 4, Insightful

      They're just being polite by pointing out there's no shame in failing to prove the Riemann Hypothesis, since it has frustrated the attempts of many a prominent mathematician so far.

    3. Re:Why "fortunately"? by sohare · · Score: 3, Interesting

      I'm not so sure they're being polite. Mathematics has it's share of cranks, and high profile conjectures receive a lot of attention by these woomeisters. While a crackpot proof might appear mystical to the layperson due to the extreme use of technical jargon, a trained mathematician can usually spot a uninformed line of argument. To draw a more comprehensible analogy, I would liken many of the proofs of longstanding problems to the endless stream of perpetual motion machine patents. Except the latter device, is of course, impossible. Both, however, are sophomoric.

    4. Re:Why "fortunately"? by grizdog · · Score: 4, Insightful
      First of all, while you are right that there is no shame in failing to prove the RH, there is some shame involved in announcing in such a high-profile way that you have done it, and effectively requiring everyone to stop what they are doing to read your proof.

      Having said that, Li is no crank. I had not heard of him, but that's no surprise since I'm not a number theorist. But he has published several refereed papers in this area, has a position at BYU, and really ought to have known better than to explode on the scene like this.

      I've gotten communications from genuine crackpots, wanting my comments on their work. Early in my career, I wrote back, gently pointing out the mistake. To my horror, friends then received slightly modified but still absurd drafts, listing me as a collaborator! Li is a real mathematician, probably with poor social skills, and a bad proof.

    5. Re:Why "fortunately"? by FnH · · Score: 4, Informative

      I believe you're mixing this up with another hard problem that hasn't been proven yet. You're thinking about the NP = P problem. The difference is that here we don't know what will be the outcome, whereas for the RH most people assume it's true. Having a proof for this wouldn't really change anything (apart from validating large parts of mathematics that assume it is true)

    6. Re:Why "fortunately"? by Ardeaem · · Score: 2, Interesting

      No, I wasn't saying that the RH being true would cause problems with encryption (I am aware that most mathematicians assume it is true), but rather that the methods used to prove it would cause complications. See here: link

    7. Re:Why "fortunately"? by Rudolf · · Score: 5, Funny

      [..] lead to the undermining of current encryption methods, which depend on the difficulty of factoring large prime numbers.

      That's a trivial problem.

      All prime numbers have two factors: 1 and itself.

      Goodbye encryption :-)

    8. Re:Why "fortunately"? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Insightful

      For the record, most people don't know what P or NP is ;)

    9. Re:Why "fortunately"? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Informative

      I am a mathematician, and there's no reference for this claim, but RH is a problem in analytic number theory and none of the credible work on it (meaning not by random crackpots) uses anything involving factoring. Why would an algorithm to factor numbers have any use at all, especially since this isn't something that can be proven computationally anyway?

      The best we've done algorithmically by assuming the Riemann hypothesis is come up with faster algorithms to test primality (like an unconditional Miller-Rabin algorithm) or better bounds on runtime (as in "PRIMES is in P"), but these use properties of the primes that shed absolutely no light on how to factor composite numbers. Other consequences of the Riemann hypothesis tend to be things like tighter bounds on the prime counting function, and these are analytic estimates which again don't say anything useful about factoring. Determining discrete information like the prime factors of a given integer just doesn't ever seem to come out of it.

    10. Re:Why "fortunately"? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Informative

      Li did respectable work once and has made a large faux pas in his handling of this affair, but it is now over. Let's focus on something far more interesting if we're talking about the Riemann Hypothesis - a wonderful (translation of a) transcript of an interview with Atle Selberg, which makes fascinating reading.

    11. Re:Why "fortunately"? by Jerf · · Score: 3, Informative

      announcing in such a high-profile way

      Are you sure about that? Getting a paper onto arxiv.org doesn't seem to be that hard, and there's lots of ways to find out about it (RSS feed, etc.). He may not have had any reason to believe that he'd get this sort of attention, as he may have thought everyone involved would simply assume that it wasn't worth much, not having been peer reviewed.

      While I love the free and open flow of information that arxiv represents, this is hardly the first time that something has been posted on there and subsequently blown out of proportion. The Internet at large doesn't seem to really understand arxiv.org, that just because someone's got a fancy LaTeX paper up claiming some wild thing doesn't mean it's credible. A paper on arxiv.org shouldn't even be understood as being endorsed by the author, let alone "science". I always love when somebody backs up their argument about physics with a link to arxiv.org, it's like a red flag that it's time to just pack it in, you're not going to get through to this person, because they only understand the trappings of science, not the actual process.

    12. Re:Why "fortunately"? by gomoX · · Score: 4, Informative

      One possible explanation for your understanding (which in my understanding, is wrong), is the Miller-Rabin primality test algorithm.

      The primality problem (telling whether a number is prime), although hard, was never proved to be NP-complete.
      The Miller-Rabin primality test is a (actually, the 1st and possibly the only) polynomial deterministic algorithm that is based on the Riemann hypothesis (polinomial deterministic meaning "fast and accurate"). Proving RH would prove that Miller-Rabin is exact and therefore shown that primality testing is in P.

      http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Miller-Rabin_primality_test

      Unfortunately, algorithm freaks were faster than math freaks (well, the algorithm freaks involved were math freaks too) and a new algorithm called AKS was developed that did everything Miller-Rabin did without relying on the Riemann Hypothesis.

      http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AKS_primality_test

      So, to this day, we know primality testing is polynomial. The _real_ problem in cryptography is prime *factoring* (if it's not prime, then find 2 numbers that when multiplied produce the original number). Although it is not know whether that problem is P or NP-complete or both, it is believed to be outside NP because it is much harder than plain primality testing.

      http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Integer_factorization

      --
      My english is sow-sow. Sowhat?
    13. Re:Why "fortunately"? by delt0r · · Score: 3, Interesting

      ...with a link to arxiv.org, it's like a red flag...

      An even redder flag is a link to New Scientist as if its some peer reviewed source. NS references arxiv.org heavily no matter how stupid the claims (aka Zero Point Energy).

      --
      If information wants to be free, why does my internet connection cost so much?
  2. what does it all mean, Basil? by Coraon · · Score: 2, Funny

    I have to ask, I know for mathematicians this is a big deal and all, but what are the piratical applications for this?

    --
    -Ours is the wisdom of Solomon, the magic of Merlyn, the fall of Icaris.
    1. Re:what does it all mean, Basil? by HappySmileMan · · Score: 4, Funny

      Well it doesn't have any piratical applications, but the ninjas will definitely find a use for it

    2. Re:what does it all mean, Basil? by the+eric+conspiracy · · Score: 4, Informative

      There are a lot of results based on assuming the conjecture is true, including a variety of factoring and root finding algorithms that are computationally very useful.

      Until it is proven you really don't know if these algorithms are giving correct answers.

      This is why it is so important and has a big prize associated to it.

    3. Re:what does it all mean, Basil? by Strilanc · · Score: 2, Insightful

      Unless it says the number is prime (you have to trust there are no factors) or gives factors that aren't primes.

    4. Re:what does it all mean, Basil? by thermian · · Score: 3, Interesting

      Since the work based on the assumption that the hypothesis is true is in itself valuable, it will still be used.

      It's just that a proof, if found, will elevate who-ever finds it to the status of mathematical superstar.

      Consider this, we are still finding proof of various of Einstein's theories, but work based on his has been of real value for decades.

      Here's another example that makes me sound all clever because I know it.

      Newtons equations, and his entire body of work, completely failed to explain how it is that the moon can orbit the earth while the earth orbits the sun, and we *still* don't have the equation to explain that bugger.

      There are specific n-body solutions, I've written one myself, but a solution for the general case? Nope, never been done.

      Louis Pasteur spent most of his life on that particular problem, as have many other prominent scientists, all to no avail. We found a use for Newtons work regardless, and Einstein extended it successfully, even with that glaring hole.

      --
      A learning experience is one of those things that say, 'You know that thing you just did? Don't do that.' - D. Adams
    5. Re:what does it all mean, Basil? by thermian · · Score: 3, Informative

      Nope. We can do calculations that involve n-bodies, of which obviously 3-body is part, but they involve using the 2-body solution of Newton for all unique pairs in a simulation.

      A separate general three body solution probably does exist, but no-ones found it.

      If found, it would quite possibly revolutionise n-body modelling, and prove useful to space science (if, and only if, it sped up calculations), but I doubt astronomers would care much.

      --
      A learning experience is one of those things that say, 'You know that thing you just did? Don't do that.' - D. Adams
    6. Re:what does it all mean, Basil? by the+eric+conspiracy · · Score: 4, Insightful

      You are mixing the basic tenants of physics and mathematics, not a good thing to do. Science is a mix of inductive and deductive logic, math has a higher standard and doesn't admit inductive proofs.

      Three guys were vacationing in Scotland. One was an astronomer, one a physicist and one a mathematician.

      In their travels they chance on a black sheep grazing in a field.

      Astronomer: All sheep in Scotland are black
      Physicist: Some sheep in Scotland are black
      Mathematician: There is one sheep in a field in Scotland that is black on at least one side.

    7. Re:what does it all mean, Basil? by ZombieWomble · · Score: 2, Informative
      While what you say is somewhat correct, there is a glaring difference between "proof" as it corresponds to physics, and "proof" as it corresponds to mathematics, and indeed what constitutes a failure of a given theory.

      Addressing the latter first, Newton's equations describe to a very high degree of accuracy (perfectly, in the limit of ignoring relativistic and other high-order corrections) the interaction of any arbitrarily large number of bodies. The fact that we cannot solve these equations is in no way a failure of the models - the only possible failure is if we found them to be incorrect in some way. Provided they continue to produce correct results (as can be verified by two-body experiments and extended to n-body through numerical modelling, if nothing else) then the models are correct. That they are hard (or impossible) to solve in general has no bearing on the validity of the model - it tells us how they work, the fact it doesn't fit neatly into analytic mathematics is an irrelevance to how the universe proceeds.

      With regards to the nature of proof in physics as opposed to mathematics - it is not generally correct to say that a "proof" of a physical theory has been found, but rather that its predictions have been verified against experimental evidence. A (correct) mathematical proof is by definition irrefutable: proving the Riemann Hypothesis would mean it is true, with no dispute. On the other hand, every bit of evidence supporting Newtonian mechanics, relativity, or any other physical theory is only valid until an exception appears, and then the theories must be updated, leading to a series of increasingly exacting tests.

      The recent "proofs" of theories which have been around for decades are really only these more stringent tests - and as applications typically require orders of magnitude less precision than the level required to test a theory at a given time, it is unsurprising that theories can be easily be applied to these much less difficult test cases.

      Something like the Riemann hypothesis is quite interesting, as it falls somewhere between the two - there is a certain degree of "experimental mathematics", if you will, where people are valiantly trying to find the limits of the hypothesis, which thus far indicates that it holds for a very wide range of numbers, which is comparable to the tests physicists must perform to attempt to determine physical laws. These results are encouraging as they validate any proofs which only put similar requirements on the hypothesis, but there is a higher level of proof in mathematics which would verify it in all conditions, everywhere, which would in turn validate all theories based on the hypothesis completely, and close the loophole that they will break in some (obviously ill-defined) conditions.

      (Also, as an addendum, I assume you meant Poincaré spent a long time on the n-body problem, as opposed to Pasteur who was more of a biologist, as far as I recall)

    8. Re:what does it all mean, Basil? by pbhj · · Score: 2, Insightful

      Mathematician: There is one sheep in a field in Scotland that is black on at least one side.

      I thought he was going to say all sheep in Scotland are grey?

      Anyhow, what's with there's no inductive proof in Mathematics? There are many many inductive proofs, even at high-school you write "proof by induction" quite a lot. Google it, all the top hits are mathematical.

      http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mathematical_induction

    9. Re:what does it all mean, Basil? by DavidShor · · Score: 2, Informative

      Inductive is a philosophical term, the inference of new facts based on previously known ones. In Physics, this means using experimental data in order to make general assumptions about the universe.

      In mathematics, we use the term tongue-in-cheek, to refer to a particular and useful consequence of the least-element axiom. It resembles inductive reasoning, but it is indeed quite more rigorous.

  3. I don't know about you all... by pongo000 · · Score: 5, Funny

    The "proof" is that of Theorem 7.3 page 29 in Li's paper, but I stopped reading it when I saw that he is extending the test function h from ideles to adeles by 0 outside ideles and then using Fourier transform (see page 31). This cannot work and ideles form a set of measure 0 inside adeles (unlike what happens when one only deals with finitely many places).

    ...but this certainly cleared things up for me!

    1. Re:I don't know about you all... by Beardo+the+Bearded · · Score: 5, Insightful

      It's called "Proof by Intimidation":

      using the formula:

      [ some formula ]

      it is trivial to see that:

      [ some other formula out of nowhere ]

      therefore, combining the above, we can arrive at the easily obtained answer:

      [ some MATLAB result ]

      Don't forget, it works both ways; the people marking your assignment don't want to admit that they can't see the so-called "trivial" derivation.

      --

      ---
      ECHELON is a government program to find words like bomb, jihad, plutonium, assassinate, and anarchy.
    2. Re:I don't know about you all... by Beardo+the+Bearded · · Score: 4, Insightful

      Use the "Star Trek" filter:

      he is extending the test function h from [ tech ] to [ tech2 ] by [ tech 3 ] and then using Fourier transform ... This cannot work and [ tech ] form a set of measure 0 [ tech 4 ] (unlike what happens when one only deals with finitely many places).

      When he moved from one set to another and did the Fourier transform, he forgot that he ended up with an empty set instead of a finite number of points because that's apparently a property of whatever the hell he was talking about.

      --

      ---
      ECHELON is a government program to find words like bomb, jihad, plutonium, assassinate, and anarchy.
    3. Re:I don't know about you all... by Larsrc · · Score: 2, Insightful

      No shit. I took a minor in math, really loved and grokked things, up to a certain level. Beyond that I suddenly have no fscking clue what they're even talking about. When looking at similar levels of, say, biology, I at least have a faint idea of what it's about. High-level math is weird.

    4. Re:I don't know about you all... by Neil+Strickland · · Score: 3, Interesting

      This is not all that bad.

      Probably many slashdotters are familiar with the discrete Fourier transform (used in JPEG encoding, incidentally). The DFT for sequences of length n fits together nicely with the DFT for longer sequences whose length is a multiple of n. If you try to put all these DFTs for sequences of different length together in a certain way and combine them with the continuous Fourier transform, you end up with something called the adelic Fourier transform. (That's a little bit different from how it is described in the usual books, but it is essentially equivalent.)

      Next, if n has many factors then most integers will share a common factor with n; the proportion of integers that do not have a common factor will be small. Connes's statement that 'ideles form a set of measure zero' is what you get from this by taking the limit for large n.

      Suppose you have a sequence a_1,...,a_n, where a_k is zero whenever k has a common factor with n. If n has many factors then a_k is usually zero and so the DFT of the sequence will be small. The limiting version of this fact is that if a function is supported on the ideles, then its adelic Fourier transform is zero. Thus, adelic Fourier theory is useless for studying such functions.

      Connes is probably right that this is a showstopper.

    5. Re:I don't know about you all... by deblau · · Score: 3, Informative

      Not quite. A set of measure zero is not necessarily empty. For example, the set of rational numbers is measure zero inside the reals. See here. Also, 'place' is a technical term. See here for a definition.

      --
      This post expresses my opinion, not that of my employer. And yes, IAAL.
  4. Ow my head by Jailbrekr · · Score: 4, Funny

    The proof, and the rebuke, only proved my theory that there is a distinct surge in advil usage when something like this is posted on /. or digged.

    --
    Feed the need: Digitaladdiction.net
    1. Re:Ow my head by Austerity+Empowers · · Score: 2, Funny

      I stopped reading when I saw that he is using Advil, this cannot work when it is well established that Excedrin is the preferred migraine reliever.

  5. Preprint, not a reviewed paper by the+eric+conspiracy · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Well duh this is what we have been saying - this is a preprint and is likely to have errors. Whether or not they can be repaired is open to question.

    Wiles' proof of Fermat's last theorem took a long time to go through the review and repair process. And there was at least one pretty hard problem that had to be fixed.

    Slashdot's "journalistic" process really suxors when it comes to this sort of stuff.

    1. Re:Preprint, not a reviewed paper by proverbialcow · · Score: 4, Funny

      Slashdot's "journalistic" process really suxors when it comes to this sort of stuff.

      Wel of course it does. Slashdot is journalology, not journalonomy.

      --
      The only surefire protection against Microsoft infections is abstinence. - The Onion
    2. Re:Preprint, not a reviewed paper by Lamil+Lerran · · Score: 3, Interesting

      The comments made by Tao and Connes are the sort of comments one would make if the paper was irrevocably flawed. For instance, Tao notes that "the decomposition claimed in equation (6.9) ... is, in fact, impossible; it would endow the function h ... with an extremely strong dilation symmetry which it does not actually obey. It seems that the author was relying on this symmetry ..."

      In more simple terms: Partway into the paper the author proved something that is definitely false; he then relied on this false theorem to complete the proof.

      It's possible that Tao is wrong in his analysis or that the rest of the proof is actually independent of the false theorem that it appears to depend on. However, it's reasonably likely that this proof cannot be repaired.

  6. Lazy title selection by ActusReus · · Score: 5, Funny

    Oh come on, you were almost there! How about:

    "Renowned Researchers Rebuke Recent Riemann Reasoning"

  7. Re:Not Making Yourself Look Good Here by allanw · · Score: 5, Insightful

    The submitter used stronger language to describe the comment than the comment itself. Connes just said "The 'proof' is that of Theorem 7.3 page 29 in Li's paper, but I stopped reading it when I saw that he is extending the test function h from ideles to adeles by 0 outside ideles and then using Fourier transform (see page 31). This cannot work... "

  8. What a shock... by porcupine8 · · Score: 4, Interesting

    My husband is a mathematician, and he gets emails weekly from crackpots claiming to have disproved the proof of Fermat's Last Theorem or having proven the Riemann hypothesis or whatever. You can submit anything to the ArXiv, this shouldn't have even been news in the first place until it was confirmed.

    --
    Warning: Apple/Nintendo fangirl. Likes her electronics cute & cuddly. May be rabid.
    1. Re:What a shock... by onkelonkel · · Score: 2, Funny

      [Sir Bedivere] How do you know she is a girl? [/Sir Bedivere]

      --
      None of them can see the clouds; The polished wings don't care.
    2. Re:What a shock... by njj · · Score: 5, Interesting

      I work part-time for a couple of mathematics research journals and we do get the occasional crank submission. There's one guy who's been sending us, on average, a 'paper' every week or so for the past few years: typically a single, badly-written page of gibberish (we're talking Time Cube standard lunacy here) which is clearly not the work of someone who's ever seen a real mathematics paper. We've never responded to him, or even acknowledged any of his submissions (helpfully he prints his return address on the back of the envelope, so these days they go straight in the bin, unopened and unread) and yet he still keeps sending them in.

      The arXiv also tends to get its fair share of crank submissions, usually elementary attempted (but trivially broken) proofs of things like the Goldbach Conjecture, Fermat's Last Theorem and the like - I'm assuming that the really mad stuff is filtered out by the moderators.

      In contrast, at a quick glance to my nonspecialist eyes (I'm a knot theorist) Xian-Jin Li's preprint looks like a genuine (if flawed) attempt by a serious, qualified mathematician who specialises in the relevant area. Fair play to him for trying, though. I'm also not sure I'd characterise Terence Tao or Alain Connes' refutations as 'rebukes' - they looked more like dispassionate analyses of the paper's flaws to me, the sort of discussion you'd expect from the peer-refereeing process.

    3. Re:What a shock... by colinrichardday · · Score: 2, Funny

      See if she weighs the same as a duck?

  9. Re:So many errors by porcupine8 · · Score: 2, Funny

    Yeah, the AC is a member of a previously uncontacted Amazon tribe, you insensitive clod!

    --
    Warning: Apple/Nintendo fangirl. Likes her electronics cute & cuddly. May be rabid.
  10. Re:Not Making Yourself Look Good Here by retchdog · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Yes, why don't you tell the Fields medalist how to make himself look good? I'm sure he needs your help desperately. Jeebus, you know that a Fields medal is objectively harder to get than a damned Nobel prize, right?

    He did critique the 'proof' objectively. The claim was that by looking at the function on a certain domain ("ideles" whatever those are), one could look out from there and see how it would have to behave elsewhere ("adeles"). However, the "ideles" aren't big enough to give a good viewpoint of what's going on (i.e. the function at the ideles is not necessarily representative of the rest of the function). If you only look at multiples of 2pi, you could "prove" that sin(x)==0. Just because you or I couldn't notice the obvious problem in the RH proof, doesn't mean that it doesn't merit quick dismissal. Sometimes obvious mistakes are made in math (some would say that only obvious mistakes are made - but they are only obvious once they are pointed out).

    --
    "They were pure niggers." – Noam Chomsky
  11. Re:Not Making Yourself Look Good Here by kjs3 · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Why? Li is stating "I base my proof on X". Connes says "I see you've based your proof on X. I'm quite content that X doesn't work." Game over. If the fundamental assumption is wrong, what is gained from going on? If you read a paper that started "assume the square root of 9 was 3.1", do you *really* need to read all of it before you decide "this fellow might be off track."?

  12. Prof Connes also a Fields medalist by HuguesT · · Score: 4, Informative

    Just wanted to point out that Professor Connes is also a Fields medalist (1982).

    I guess it is a testament to Xian-Jin Li excellent reputation and the importance of the topic that these two mathematical superstars took the time to look at his proof.

  13. there was no rebuke by phr1 · · Score: 5, Insightful
    And the slashdot post I think miscasts Connes's remark. It's not like Connes quit reading the proof because it so full of crap that Connes got disgusted. Proofs are chains of reasoning that don't hold together if there is a single link that's flawed. So as soon as Connes found an error that he didn't see how to fix, there wasn't any point to continuing, everything that relied on the erroneous step simply couldn't be supported. Like if I tell you my plan for making a 1000 mpg car, and it turns out to depend fundamentally on steel being lighter than air. This dependence might be subtle enough that neither of us realized it at first, so I'm not necessarily a crackpot for coming up with such a plan. But as soon as the problem is noticed, the rest of the details become irrelevant.

    The proof was a legitimate effort by a non-crackpot, but the ideas in it were well known to specialists in the field and were generally understood to not be powerful enough to crack the problem. So the errors were found fairly quickly. Scott Aaronson's post Ten Signs that a claimed mathematical breakthrough is wrong item #10 may be helpful in understanding what happened.

    1. Re:there was no rebuke by khallow · · Score: 2, Interesting

      A failed proof can still be worth reading, if it has interesting proof techniques or novel math structures in it. For example, ring theory, algebraic geometry, and moduli spaces were (as I understand it) due in part to failed proof attempts for Fermat's Last Theorem.

  14. Preprints are not ideal. by pavon · · Score: 2, Insightful

    Yeah, this is becoming a real problem with the preprint journals. Media groups like New Scientist will run a hyped-up story on some "ground-breaking new development" which will have propagated through the blog echo-chamber before other scientists have even had a chance to review it. It's not enough for the media to completely butcher the science they do present, now they have to present results which haven't even had cursory review. It's no wonder the public doesn't trust science considering what is is being presented to them.

    It also creates unnecessary drama within the science community by means of the Leonardo DiCaprio affect - the more people hype a star the more everyone else hates them. The author of these papers are usually legitimate scientists who just made an honest mistake, whose only crime was submitting their preprint to ArXiv just like thousands of other scientists. But now they are suddenly being framed as "genius underdog" / "cocky attention whore" by the media and scientists.

    The only reason that the preprint journals exist is as a loophole to get around normal journals posting rules. I'm really hoping that preprint journals will fade away as more reviewed papers are published for free X months after their journal publication date.