Does anyone still bother to read papers by the giants of theoretical physics?

[Simfish]

Their most highly-cited papers (of people like Yang, Oppenheimer, Teller, Feynman, etc.) are surprisingly readable. And they're *really* deep. They're highly cited for both of those reasons, after all. But no one seems to touch them anymore.

http://prola.aps.org/abstract/PR/v73/i7/p801_1 - Teller's "On the Change of Physical Constants"

http://prola.aps.org/abstract/PR/v56/i4/p340_1 - Feynman's most highly cited paper

http://prola.aps.org/abstract/PR/v104/i1/p254_1 - the famous Yang-Lee paper

http://prola.aps.org/abstract/PR/v105/i4/p1413_1 - Parity Conservation in Beta Decay

http://www.jstor.org/stable/94981 - Dirac's Quantum Theory of the electron

 

[Bill_K]

I can only tell you what Feynman said about this, and this was a direct face-to-face quote. "Don't read the literature," he said. "If you read what the other guy did, you'll make the same mistake he made."

 

[Matterwave]

I would like to read Dirac's paper on his theory of the electron...but I don't have access! haha

 

[Vanadium 50]

But no one seems to touch them anymore.

Evidence, please?

 

[Simfish]

I can only tell you what Feynman said about this, and this was a direct face-to-face quote. "Don't read the literature," he said. "If you read what the other guy did, you'll make the same mistake he made."

Heh, interesting. But it might be useful to see those mistakes first-hand, since they're part of the process of doing science. Most students only read about the finished products of science - they're completely missing out on what the scientists screwed up on, and there's a lot of important information there.

Evidence, please?

Several physics grad students I know, a discussion in another science community (dominated by grad students), and my general impression having looked at the physics graduate school curriculum.

Regardless of whether there's evidence or not, I still think it's an interesting question - whether or not some people feel that research papers are better at explaining some things than the traditional textbooks.

 

[ZapperZ]

Regardless of whether there's evidence or not...

Ah, but this would negate your original premise that no one reads them anymore and thus, resulted in the impetus for you to post such links. It renders all of your subsequent actions as being dependent on the first premise as the cause of all your actions here.

Question: Have you done a citation search to see when was the last time these papers were cited? Have you been paying attention to the Physical Review Focus series on Landmark articles? That alone is one clear example that none of these papers are being ignore.

Zz.

 

[AntonL]

Their most highly-cited papers (of people like Yang, Oppenheimer, Teller, Feynman, etc.) are surprisingly readable. And they're *really* deep.

Yes I also enjoy reading the old greats, and as a physics reference I recently bought the new millennium edition of the Feynman lectures, enjoyable reading and a good reference work.

But coming to your point of "Surprising readable" well I have a theory regarding this and most probably I will get hammered for expressing this but anyway I will risk it

You see back at the early days of physics, university education was only for a select few who formed the "intellectual elite" and the academics of those times were held at high esteem. Today university degrees is already part of the mass education system and it is a norm and university graduates no longer can be classed as the "intellectual elite", those that go on with post graduate studies and authoring research papers now are forced into expressing themselves with the most complicated way and lengthy adjectives to raise themselves into a "postmodern intellectuals" class.

Alan Sokal beautifully demonstrated this by high-jacking fancy text, adding some glue and getting his hoax paper "Transgressing the Boundaries: Towards a Transformative Hermeneutics of Quantum Gravity" peer reviewed and published, needless to say a academic storm followed.

http://www.physics.nyu.edu/faculty/sokal/index.html
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sokal_affair

 

[vanhees71]

I love to read "old" textbooks too, not only "old" papers (the most readable, in my opinion, are by Pauli and Dirac; the most unreadable those of Heisenberg and Bohr).

Among the best textbooks ever written are Sommerfeld's Lectures on Theoretical Physics (6 volumes: Mechanics, Continuum Mechanics, Electrodynamics, Optics, Thermodynamics and Statistics, Partial Differential Equations). Vol. 6 is the masterpiece on the subject! All the others are surprisingly modern although written about 60 years ago. The only pity is that Sommerfeld uses the "i c t metrics" in relativity. This is the only thing, I'd call outdated in these books since nowadays special-relativistic space-time is written in the real form of the metric (either in east- or west-coast convention) as it should be.

Also very good are Pauli's lectures (also 6 volumes, Electromagnetism, Optics, thermodynamics, QM, Statistical physics, QFT). These are quite complementary to the Sommerfeld texts (containing quantum mechanics and quantum field theory) and written in the same "no-nonsense spirit", which is no surprise, since Pauli has been one of Sommerfeld's most famous disciples.

Another real masterpiece is Dirac's famous book on the foundations of quantum mechanics.

As already has been said, of the newer famous textbook writers, Feynman is outstanding with his fresh approach to the "standard physics curriculum" with his "Feynman Lectures", but also with "Lectures on Gravitation" and the book on path integrals (with Hibbs).

I also like Weinberg's textbooks very much (3 Vols. Quantum Theory of Fields, Gravitation and Cosmology (from the 70ies), and Cosmology (2008)).

 

[ZapperZ]

Their most highly-cited papers (of people like Yang, Oppenheimer, Teller, Feynman, etc.) are surprisingly readable. And they're *really* deep. They're highly cited for both of those reasons, after all. But no one seems to touch them anymore.

Let's check the accuracy of that last statement. We can do this by looking at the citation made of these papers.

http://prola.aps.org/abstract/PR/v73/i7/p801_1 - Teller's "On the Change of Physical Constants"

1. Cosmological behavior of a parity and charge-parity violating varying alpha theory
Debaprasad Maity and Pisin Chen Phys. Rev. D 83, 083516 (2011)

2. TESTING GRAVITY USING THE GROWTH OF LARGE-SCALE STRUCTURE IN THE UNIVERSE
E. Jennings, C. M. Baugh, S. Pascoli The Astrophysical Journal 727, L9 (2011)

3. Redshift evolution of angular diameters and surface brightness: how rigid are galactic measuring rods? Roman Tomaschitz Astrophysics and Space Science , (2010)

4. Varying alpha J.D. Barrow Annalen der Physik , NA (2010)

5. Varying fine structure “constant” and charged black holes, Jacob D. Bekenstein and Marcelo Schiffer, Phys. Rev. D 80, 123508 (2009)

http://prola.aps.org/abstract/PR/v56/i4/p340_1 - Feynman's most highly cited paper

1. Determination of molecular hyperfine-structure constant using the second-order relativistic many-body perturbation theory, Malaya K. Nayak and Rajat K. Chaudhuri
Phys. Rev. A 83, 022504 (2011)

2. General comparison theorem for eigenvalues of a certain class of Hamiltonians, Claude Semay Phys. Rev. A 83, 024101 (2011)

3. Accurate ionic forces and geometry optimization in linear-scaling density-functional theory with local orbitals, Nicholas D. M. Hine, Mark Robinson, Peter D. Haynes, Chris-Kriton Skylaris, Mike C. Payne, and Arash A. Mostofi Phys. Rev. B 83, 195102 (2011)

4. BEC-BCS crossover and universal relations in unitary Fermi gases, S. Gandolfi, K. E. Schmidt, and J. Carlson Phys. Rev. A 83, 041601 (2011)

5. Legendre-transform structure derived from quantum theorems, S.P. Flego, A. Plastino, A.R. Plastino Physica A Statistical Mechanics and its Applications , (2011)

6. Does electron density in bond critical point reflect the formal charge distribution in H-bridges? The case of charge-assisted hydrogen bonds (CAHBs), Barbara Bankiewicz, Marcin Palusiak Computational and Theoretical Chemistry , (2011)

7. Complete topological analysis of electron density obtained by maximum entropy method and its comparison with the theoretical electron density: A case study of 2-aminopyridinium maleate, Rajul Ranjan Choudhury, R. Chitra, Frédéric Capet, Pascal Roussel Journal of Molecular Structure , (2011)

8. Describing the ground state of quantum systems through statistical mechanics, Andre M.C. Souza Physica A Statistical Mechanics and its Applications , (2011)

9.Conical intersections in 22E′ states of Na3 cluster, Amit Kumar Paul, Somrita Ray, Debasis Mukhopadhyay, Satrajit Adhikari Chemical Physics Letters , (2011)

10. Towards efficient refinement of molecular potential energy surfaces: Ammonia as a case study,Sergei N. Yurchenko, Robert J. Barber, Jonathan Tennyson, Walter Thiel, Per Jensen
Journal of Molecular Spectroscopy , (2011)

11. On the non-existence of parallel universes in chemistry,Richard F. W. Bader Foundations of Chemistry , (2011)

12. Molecular design for high-spin molecules in view of vibronic couplings,Naoya Iwahara, Tohru Sato, Kazuyoshi Tanaka, Polyhedron , (2011)

13. Size-dependent elastic properties of single-walled ZnO nanotubes: A first-principles study, Yu-Hua Wen, Yang Zhang, Shun-Qing Wu, Zi-Zhong Zhu Journal of Applied Physics 109, 084325 (2011)

14. Unit Cell Structure of Crystal Polytypes in InAs and InSb Nanowires,Dominik Kriegner, Christian Panse, Bernhard Mandl, Kimberly A. Dick, Mario Keplinger, Johan M. Persson, Philippe Caroff, Daniele Ercolani, Lucia Sorba, Friedhelm Bechstedt, Julian Stangl, Günther Bauer, Nano Letters 11, 1483 (2011)

15. Universal contact of strongly interacting fermions at finite temperatures
Hui Hu, Xia-Ji Liu, Peter D Drummond, New Journal of Physics 13, 035007 (2011)

16. Infrared spectroscopy of small protonated water clusters at room temperature: An effective modes analysis Federica Agostini, Rodolphe Vuilleumier, Giovanni Ciccotti
The Journal of Chemical Physics 134, 084302 (2011)

17. Efficient self-consistency for magnetic tight binding, Preetma Soin, A.P. Horsfield, D. Nguyen-Manh, Computer Physics Communications 182, 1350 (2011)

18. A predictive interatomic potential for He in Cu and Nb, A Kashinath, M J Demkowicz
Modelling and Simulation in Materials Science and Engineering 19, 035007 (2011)

19. Mean values of local operators in highly excited Bethe states, Balázs Pozsgay
Journal of Statistical Mechanics Theory and Experiment 2011, P01011 (2011)

20. Adsorption of water on TiN (100), (110) and (111) surfaces: A first-principles study, Suchismita Sanyal, Umesh V. Waghmare, James A. Ruud, Applied Surface Science 257, 6462 (2011)

21. Magnetism of surface alloys of the type MxN1−x/Rh(111), Mighfar Imam, Shobhana Narasimhan, Journal of Magnetism and Magnetic Materials 323, 1873 (2011)

22. Atomic and Electronic Structure of Germanium Clusters at Finite Temperature Using Finite Difference Methods, James R. Chelikowsky, Serdar ÖĞüt, X. Jingc, K. Wu, A. Stathopoulos, Y. Saad, MRS Proceedings 408, (2011)

23. Bonding and Vibrational Properties of CO-Adsorbed Copper, Steven P. Lewis, Andrew M. Rapp, MRS Proceedings 408, (2011)

24. Static structure, microscopic dynamics and electronic properties of the liquid Bi–Pb alloy. An ab initio molecular dynamics study, J. Souto, M.M.G. Alemany, L.J. Gallego, L.E. González, D.J. González, Journal of Nuclear Materials 411, 163 (2011)

25. A Comparison of Linear Scaling Tight Binding Methods, A. P. Horsfield, D. R. Bowler, C. M. Goringe, D. G. Pettifor, M. Aoki, MRS Proceedings 491, (2011)

http://prola.aps.org/abstract/PR/v104/i1/p254_1 - the famous Yang-Lee paper

1. Three Extra Mirror or Sequential Families: Case for a Heavy Higgs Boson and Inert Doublet, Homero Martínez, Alejandra Melfo, Fabrizio Nesti, and Goran Senjanović, Phys. Rev. Lett. 106, 191802 (2011)

2. Photon-photon polarization correlations as a tool for studying parity nonconservation in heliumlike uranium, Filippo Fratini, Sergiy Trotsenko, Stanislav Tashenov, Thomas Stöhlker, and Andrey Surzhykov, Phys. Rev. A 83, 052505 (2011)

3. Gravitational baryogenesis in anisotropic universe, Kh. Saaidi, H. Hossienkhani, Astrophysics and Space Science , (2011)

4. Detection of a dipole in the handedness of spiral galaxies with redshifts z∼0.04, Michael J. Longo, Physics Letters B , (2011)

5. A new muon g-2 experiment at Fermilab: why, when and how, David W. Hertzog, Hyperfine Interactions , (2011)

6. Hadronic parity violation, Barry R. Holstein, Hyperfine Interactions , (2011)

7. An alternative route to detect parity violating energy differences through Bose–Einstein condensation of chiral molecules, Pedro Bargueño, Ricardo Pérez de Tudela, Salvador Miret-Artés, Isabel Gonzalo, Physical Chemistry Chemical Physics 13, 806 (2011)

8. Quantum stochastic resonance in parity violating chiral molecules, Pedro Bargueño, Salvador Miret-Artés, Isabel Gonzalo, Physical Chemistry Chemical Physics 13, 850 (2011)

9. Analysis of parity violation in chiral molecules, Radovan Bast, Anton Koers, André Severo Pereira Gomes, Miroslav Iliaš, Lucas Visscher, Peter Schwerdtfeger, Trond Saue, Physical Chemistry Chemical Physics 13, 864 (2011)

10. Dynamical CP violation of the generalized Yang-Mills model, Dian-Fu Wang, Xiao-Yu Sun, Xiao-Jing Chang, Chinese Physics C 35, 130 (2011)

11. Theory and phenomenology of spin-1 chiral particles, M. V. Chizhov, Physics of Particles and Nuclei 42, 93 (2011)

12. Production of a Fully Spin-Polarized Ensemble of Positronium Atoms, D. B. Cassidy, V. E. Meligne, and A. P. Mills, Jr., Phys. Rev. Lett. 104, 173401 (2010)

13. Left-right symmetry at LHC, Alessio Maiezza, Miha Nemevšek, Fabrizio Nesti, and Goran Senjanović, Phys. Rev. D 82, 055022 (2010)

14. Precision measurements of the 60Co β-asymmetry parameter in search for tensor currents in weak interactions, F. Wauters, I. Kraev, D. Zákoucký, M. Beck, M. Breitenfeldt, V. De Leebeeck, V. V. Golovko, V. Yu. Kozlov, T. Phalet, S. Roccia, G. Soti, M. Tandecki, I. S. Towner, E. Traykov, S. Van Gorp, and N. Severijns, Phys. Rev. C 82, 055502 (2010)

15. Model dependence of the 2H electric dipole moment,I. R. Afnan and B. F. Gibson, Phys. Rev. C 82, 064002 (2010)

16. Arginine in the salt-induced peptide formation reaction: enantioselectivity facilitated by glycine, l- and d-histidine, Feng Li, Daniel Fitz, Donald G. Fraser, Bernd M. Rode, Amino Acids , (2010)

http://prola.aps.org/abstract/PR/v105/i4/p1413_1 - Parity Conservation in Beta Decay

1. Precision polarization measurements of atoms in a far-off-resonance optical dipole trap, F. Fang, D. J. Vieira, and X. Zhao, Phys. Rev. A 83, 013416 (2011)

2. Photon-photon polarization correlations as a tool for studying parity nonconservation in heliumlike uranium, Filippo Fratini, Sergiy Trotsenko, Stanislav Tashenov, Thomas Stöhlker, and Andrey Surzhykov, Phys. Rev. A 83, 052505 (2011)

3. Gravitational baryogenesis in anisotropic universe, Kh. Saaidi, H. Hossienkhani, Astrophysics and Space Science , (2011)

4. Hadronic parity violation, Barry R. Holstein, Hyperfine Interactions , (2011)

5.An alternative route to detect parity violating energy differences through Bose–Einstein condensation of chiral molecules, Pedro Bargueño, Ricardo Pérez de Tudela, Salvador Miret-Artés, Isabel Gonzalo, Physical Chemistry Chemical Physics 13, 806 (2011)

6.Quantum stochastic resonance in parity violating chiral molecules, Pedro Bargueño, Salvador Miret-Artés, Isabel Gonzalo, Physical Chemistry Chemical Physics 13, 850 (2011)

7.Analysis of parity violation in chiral molecules, Radovan Bast, Anton Koers, André Severo Pereira Gomes, Miroslav Iliaš, Lucas Visscher, Peter Schwerdtfeger, Trond Saue, Physical Chemistry Chemical Physics 13, 864 (2011)

8.The neutrino's elusive helicity reversal, Alfred Scharff Goldhaber, Maurice Goldhaber, Physics Today 64, 40 (2011)

9. Precision measurements of the 60Co β-asymmetry parameter in search for tensor currents in weak interactions, F. Wauters, I. Kraev, D. Zákoucký, M. Beck, M. Breitenfeldt, V. De Leebeeck, V. V. Golovko, V. Yu. Kozlov, T. Phalet, S. Roccia, G. Soti, M. Tandecki, I. S. Towner, E. Traykov, S. Van Gorp, and N. Severijns, Phys. Rev. C 82, 055502 (2010)

10. Arginine in the salt-induced peptide formation reaction: enantioselectivity facilitated by glycine, l- and d-histidine, Feng Li, Daniel Fitz, Donald G. Fraser, Bernd M. Rode, Amino Acids , (2010)

http://www.jstor.org/stable/94981 - Dirac's Quantum Theory of the electron

1. http://arxiv.org/abs/1102.2408 (2011)

2. Self-interacting Elko dark matter with an axis of locality, D. V. Ahluwalia et al, Phys. Rev. D 83, 065017 (2011)

3. Calculation of microscopic exchange interactions and modelling of macroscopic magnetic properties in molecule-based magnets, J. J. Novoa et al, Chem. Soc. Rev., 40, 3182 (2011)

4. http://arxiv.org/abs/1101.2251 (2011)

5. http://arxiv.org/abs/1104.5632 (2011)

6. Electronic Transport in Graphene Heterostructures, Andrea F. Young and Philip Kim, Annual Review of Condensed Matter Physics 2, 101-120 (2011)

etc.. etc...

ALL of the papers/book listed above have TONS of citation from 2011, 2010, 2009, etc. I've only listed a few. So the starting premise that " .. no one seems to touch them anymore... " is utterly false!

Zz.

 

[ZapperZ]

You see back at the early days of physics, university education was only for a select few who formed the "intellectual elite" and the academics of those times were held at high esteem. Today university degrees is already part of the mass education system and it is a norm and university graduates no longer can be classed as the "intellectual elite", those that go on with post graduate studies and authoring research papers now are forced into expressing themselves with the most complicated way and lengthy adjectives to raise themselves into a "postmodern intellectuals" class.

Alan Sokal beautifully demonstrated this by high-jacking fancy text, adding some glue and getting his hoax paper "Transgressing the Boundaries: Towards a Transformative Hermeneutics of Quantum Gravity" peer reviewed and published, needless to say a academic storm followed.

http://www.physics.nyu.edu/faculty/sokal/index.html
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sokal_affair

Yes, you will get "hammered" for this, because you utterly missed the point that Sokal was trying to make. His hoax is an indictment of post-modernism, not of science! He is highlighting the bastardization of science as done in a section of philosophy, social science, political science, etc. adhering to the post-modernism principle.

If he is trying to highlight gooblygook being done in science, he would have tried it in a physics journal. He didn't! Furthermore, you made an unsubstantiated accusation. You haven't shown a single case in which a peer-reviewed publication in a respected journal actually got published simply because it used some convoluted language ala post-modernists. Just because YOU didn't understand it doesn't mean that the referees and the intended audience didn't! This is nowhere similar to the Sokal hoax where the referees clearly had no clue what they were reading.

Zz.

 

[Redbelly98]

Their most highly-cited papers (of people like Yang, Oppenheimer, Teller, Feynman, etc.) are surprisingly readable. And they're *really* deep. They're highly cited for both of those reasons, after all. But no one seems to touch them anymore.

Doesn't the phrase "highly cited" contradict the statement "no one seems to touch them anymore"?

I can only tell you what Feynman said about this, and this was a direct face-to-face quote. "Don't read the literature," he said. "If you read what the other guy did, you'll make the same mistake he made."

Sounds like that comment was made tongue-in-cheek. Did Feynman not cite other papers in his own publications?

 

[ZapperZ]

Doesn't the phrase "highly cited" contradict the statement "no one seems to touch them anymore"?Sounds like that comment was made tongue-in-cheek. Did Feynman not cite other papers in his own publications?

Well, it could be "highly-cited" decades ago. I've just proven that this is not the case, i.e. they are still cited even this year.

Zz.

 

[Borek]

Doesn't the phrase "highly cited" contradict the statement "no one seems to touch them anymore"?

No.

It works this way - there is a classic paper, that everyone knows about. Someone does research that adds something to the classic paper. But, classic paper is 15 years old, and thing is already described in many later papers and books. In such case classic paper can get cited, even if the author have never read it personally.

At least I know of such cases. Classic paper was about solving differential equation describing rather convoluted experimental setup, it was cited by all people working with this setup. I know some of them have never read it, they were just using the final equation.

 

[SpectraCat]

No.

It works this way - there is a classic paper, that everyone knows about. Someone does research that adds something to the classic paper. But, classic paper is 15 years old, and thing is already described in many later papers and books. In such case classic paper can get cited, even if the author have never read it personally.

At least I know of such cases. Classic paper was about solving differential equation describing rather convoluted experimental setup, it was cited by all people working with this setup. I know some of them have never read it, they were just using the final equation.

Yes, I would believe that happens, perhaps even frequently .. in fact, when I was a first year grad student, I tried it myself. My boss challenged whether I had actually read the paper or not, and he made it ABSOLUTELY clear that it was unacceptable when I confessed that I had not actually read it. More recently, my own students have also tried it, and I have similarly made clear to them why it is inappropriate (and dangerous) to cite papers that you have not read yourself.

 

[ZapperZ]

No.

It works this way - there is a classic paper, that everyone knows about. Someone does research that adds something to the classic paper. But, classic paper is 15 years old, and thing is already described in many later papers and books. In such case classic paper can get cited, even if the author have never read it personally.

At least I know of such cases. Classic paper was about solving differential equation describing rather convoluted experimental setup, it was cited by all people working with this setup. I know some of them have never read it, they were just using the final equation.

But that's alright in my book. One doesn't have to read every square inch of a paper. Most of us seldom do (I certainly don't). Most theorists, for example, would not understand the description of the experimental setup. All they care about is the result. In any case, one still know what paper one took it from, and one still cite that paper as being the source. This is more than just "touching".

Zz.

 

[SpectraCat]

But that's alright in my book. One doesn't have to read every square inch of a paper. Most of us seldom do (I certainly don't). Most theorists, for example, would not understand the description of the experimental setup. All they care about is the result. In any case, one still know what paper one took it from, and one still cite that paper as being the source. This is more than just "touching".

Zz.

Hmm .. I don't know. If you are using what is summarized in a review paper, and want to cite the original source as well as the review paper, then I guess I would agree that's ok. Similarly, if one is only using a "final result", like an equation or a value for a physical property, then it is probably also ok to cite without checking. What my boss objected to was citing a paper based on its usage in another paper to justify a point similar to the one we were trying to make. His point was that one should always read the context of the original work (even if you don't read the entire paper), to make sure that you understand how it pertains to your own paper. Otherwise you are taking for granted that the conclusions of the intermediate author are valid, not only for their case, but for yours as well. That is also true for the first two examples I mentioned above, but it is (probably) not as important. I know of a couple cases where a typo in a value was promulgated through the literature because people were citing a secondary paper where the mistake occurred, rather than the original work where the value was correctly reported.

 

[ZapperZ]

What my boss objected to was citing a paper based on its usage in another paper to justify a point similar to the one we were trying to make.

Well that is a different issue. I don't think I was addressing or condoning that.

Zz.

 

[fluidistic]

Yes, you will get "hammered" for this, because you utterly missed the point that Sokal was trying to make. His hoax is an indictment of post-modernism, not of science! He is highlighting the bastardization of science as done in a section of philosophy, social science, political science, etc. adhering to the post-modernism principle.

If he is trying to highlight gooblygook being done in science, he would have tried it in a physics journal. He didn't! Furthermore, you made an unsubstantiated accusation. You haven't shown a single case in which a peer-reviewed publication in a respected journal actually got published simply because it used some convoluted language ala post-modernists. Just because YOU didn't understand it doesn't mean that the referees and the intended audience didn't! This is nowhere similar to the Sokal hoax where the referees clearly had no clue what they were reading.

Zz.

Playing the advocate of the devil, what about http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bogdanov_Affair ?

 

[George Jones]

As a grad student, my supervisor and I had a long series of meetings during which we systematically worked through Wigner's brilliant, difficult, long, and groundbreaking (in both physics and pure mathematics; started the "Mackey machine") 1939 paper. Worth the effort times 10.

 

[SpectraCat]

Well that is a different issue. I don't think I was addressing or condoning that.

Zz.

Agreed. I was just providing additional context for my earlier remarks.

 

[ZapperZ]

Playing the advocate of the devil, what about http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bogdanov_Affair ?

But that isn't a 'deliberate' hoax! It was simply done by 2 guys who didn't know any better. They certainly believed in what they were doing. One could say the same about the Schon debacle.

If you have followed Bob Park's column throughout the years, you would have read accounts of both the Sokal hoax and the Bogdanov's debacle.

http://bobpark.physics.umd.edu/WN02/wn111502.html

Zz.

 

[fluidistic]

But that isn't a 'deliberate' hoax! It was simply done by 2 guys who didn't know any better. They certainly believed in what they were doing. One could say the same about the Schon debacle.

If you have followed Bob Park's column throughout the years, you would have read accounts of both the Sokal hoax and the Bogdanov's debacle.

http://bobpark.physics.umd.edu/WN02/wn111502.html

Zz.

Sorry I didn't know that. Thanks for the information.