[WikiEN-l] RE: copyright and NOR policies re: math and science

[Brown, Darin]

Fastfission wrote:

> Yes, but judges generally don't listen to philosophers (the legal
> realm generates its own implicit philosophical concepts, some of which
> are quite interesting). I think a judge would have a problem with a
> mathematician testifying that yes, his work was completely logical and
> worked from first principles, though he also wanted to count it as
> artistically creative. But I don't know for sure.

In the case of research papers, though, it wouldn't be the mathematician at
all...since the mathematician (or anyone writing for an academic journal, if
I understand correctly) doesn't actually personally have the copyright...the
publisher does.

> The difference is that I am perfectly willing to trust a known and
> "certified" authority (i.e. a guy with a real job) than some anonymous
> guy on the internet who claims to know what they are talking about.
> Hence the dominance of printed sources from well-respected publishers
> over testimonies of any miscellaneous user. Obviously in some cases
> these two communities are actually made up of the same people, except
> in the "real world" there are many checks and verification steps that
> we don't (and won't) have on an open project like Wikipedia.

Well, there are many people with "real jobs" here, and it's easy to verify
that.  I am not talking about research-level material, I'm talking more
about basic skills, undergraduate-, or at most, beginning graduate-level
material.  In the case of math, I really think there's less to worry about.
If a true crank does post some nonsense or even half-nonsense, it will get
viewed by many people quickly.

We allow people here to correct grammar and sentence structure, or at least
check that it's correct, without them having "certified" authority.  You
don't have to submit a paper to Literary Criticism Quarterly to verify that
"Irregardless of what people think, the single most important criteria
determining there future success is whether they could care less." is a
sentence with a lot of mistakes in it.  If you asked them how to fix it,
they would consider it a waste of their time.  Similarly, you don't need to
contact a published print source to verify the mathematical equivalent -- a
routine computation of a limit, integral, or series; or even some
symbol-pushing in algebra or topology.  Usually, you just ask a friend to
look over it.  If worst comes to worst, you can give a reference to a
textbook explaining the concept.

The difference, of course, is that to a certain extent, knowledge of correct
grammar (or the potential knowledge of correct grammar) is something held by
everyone, so that everyone knows the difference between correcting grammar
and verifying sources, claims, and arguments in a particular domain, etc.
And of course, grammar is not considered to be "original research".  Whereas
the mathematical equivalents are still only held by a relative minority, so
to the majority who aren't mathematical, there is no discernable difference
in appearance between the truly trivial and routine, and the genuinely
nontrivial and novel.

darin