[p2p-research] Math research: a peer review breakthrough

[Maria Droujkova]

http://friendfeed.com/cameronneylon/36e28cf1/p-np-and-future-of-peer-review

"In the case of this new mathematical proof, the author Vinay Deolalikar,
apparently took the standard approach that one does in maths, sent a
pre-print to a number of experts in the field for comments and criticisms.
The paper is not in the ArXiv and was in fact made public by one of the
email correspondents. The rumours then spread like wildfire, with widespread
media reporting, and widespread online commentary.

Some of that commentary was expert and well informed. Firstly a series of
posts appeared stating that the proof is
“credible”<http://rjlipton.wordpress.com/2010/08/08/a-proof-that-p-is-not-equal-to-np/>.
That is, that it was worth deeper consideration and the time of experts to
look for holes. There appears a widespread skepticism that the proof will be
correct, including a $200,000 bet from Scot
Aaronson<http://scottaaronson.com/blog/?p=456>,
but also a widespread view that it nonetheless is useful, that it will
progress the field in a helpful way even if it is wrong.

After this first round, there have been summaries of the proof, and now the
identification of potential issues is occurring (see RJLipton
<http://rjlipton.wordpress.com/>for a great
summary<http://rjlipton.wordpress.com/2010/08/09/issues-in-the-proof-that-p%E2%89%A0np/?utm_source=twitterfeed&utm_medium=twitter>).
As far as I can tell these issues are potentially extremely subtle and will
require the attention of the best domain experts to resolve. In a couple of
cases these experts have already potentially “patched” the problem, adding
their own expertise to contribute to the proof. And in the last couple of
hours as Michael Nielsen <http://michaelnielsen.org/> pointed out to
me<http://twitter.com/michael_nielsen/statuses/20786300596>there is
the beginning
of a more organized collaboration to check through the
paper<http://michaelnielsen.org/polymath1/index.php?title=Deolalikar%27s_P%21%3DNP_paper>
.

This is collaborative, and positive peer review, and it is happening at web
scale. I suspect that there are relatively few experts in the area who
aren’t spending some of their time on this problem this week. In the market
for expert attention this proof is buying big, as it should be. An important
problem is getting a good going over and being tested, possibly to
destruction, in a much more efficient manner than could possibly be done by
traditional peer review."

Cheers,
Maria Droujkova

Make math your own, to make your own math.
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