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From: jqb@netcom.com (Jim Balter)
Subject: Re: Why scientists popularize premature speculations?
Message-ID: <jqbD0DxKJ.1oI@netcom.com>
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References: <3bd8s0$1q2@pobox.csc.fi> <28NOV199420434185@pavo.concordia.ca> <JMC.94Nov30170339@white.wisdom.weizmann.ac.il> <vanjacD06z1v.96F@netcom.com>
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Date: Tue, 6 Dec 1994 10:38:43 GMT
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In article <vanjacD06z1v.96F@netcom.com>,
Sylvan Jacques <vanjac@netcom.com> wrote:
>Another premature announcement that comes to mind is Wiles
>and Fermat's Last Theorem (FLT).

Wiles' announcement was only premature in hindsight.  He presented
what he had good reason to think was a proof to mathematicians.
Mathematicians found the flaw.  Had he not done so, they would not
have done so.  I can't see anything improper about his actions.

>I haven't been following this, but the last I knew there were
>problems with the proof, which Wiles thought could be fixed.

Supposedly they are now fixed.  Conceivably there are other flaws, or the fix
is flawed.

>I wonder if the public (the small part who care) believes
>that FLT has been proved by Wiles, as a result of the initial
>press releases.

Small is right; so small that it hardly can be viewed as "public".
Hopefully, those few who have a belief about the matter recognize the
scientifically inductive nature of even reaching a conclusion about a
mathemetical deduction carried out by human beings.  The odds that a
complicated proof has no flaws goes up as more mathematicians check it
without finding a flaw, but we can never be *certain* that there is no
flaw.




-- 
<J Q B>
