Well… yikes! Remember my article on the New Yorker piece on the Fields Medal, the Poincare Conjecture, and the mathematicians Perelman and Yau? Remember that I said:
I cannot comment upon whether the hero of the story (Grigory Perelman) is as heroic as painted, or whether the villian of the piece (Shing-Tung Yau) is really as villainous. The anecdotes that are used to do the painting may well be able to be supplemented by other anecdotes that tell another story, as is sometimes the case. I simply don’t know.
Well, it seems that Yau is quite sure that it is not going to stop there. There was a letter sent to the New Yorker and the authors of the article (apparently) on his behalf by legal counsel. It is discussed and can be found on a web page under Yau’s name. The page is in the form of a press release, and I quote:
Pulitzer-prize finalist Sylvia Nasar (“A Beautiful Mindâ€) defamed world renowned Harvard mathematics professor Dr. Shing-Tung Yau, in an article about a noteworthy mathematical proof in the New Yorker magazine entitled “Manifold Destiny†(August 28, 2006), according to a letter written by Dr. Yau’s attorney, Howard M. Cooper of Todd & Weld LLP of Boston. In the letter, Dr. Yau has demanded that the New Yorker and Nasar make a prominent correction of the errors in the article, and apologize for an insulting illustration that accompanied it.
Well, yes I can see that can certainly be the case. Strong things were said in the article indeed. I note that the site goes on to say, very interestingly:
The attorney letter alleges that Ms. Nasar misrepresented her intentions in emails to him in which she claimed an interest in the “reuniting of physics and mathematics†and that she had been impressed with praise of his work from Stephen Hawking. Never during the three months in which she worked on the article, according to the letter, was Dr. Yau made aware of or asked to respond to charges leveled against him in the published article, claiming that Dr. Yau was trying to take credit for the solution of the Poincaré Conjecture away from Russian mathematician Grigory Perelman. Contrary to the article, there has never been a ‘battle’ over credit for the solution, said the letter. Many of the other scholars interviewed by Ms. Nasar report being similarly deceived, according to the letter, with one professor at the University of Michigan comparing her work to that of the notorious fabricator, Jason Blair of The New York Times.
The letter can be found as a pdf file here.
Assuming all the above is not an elaborate hoax, if it is the case that the authors of the piece behaved in that was, it is very disappointing, since it read as quite a good telling of the story of the mathematics and some of the inevitably strong personalities involved. My reading of it was: Yes, there are strong personalities involved, and maybe there was a bit of an inevitable journalistic spin put on it, but the article was showing part of the cut and thrust of the field… showing some of the life in the field, showing that mathematics is alive and worth being passionate about. This is a good thing to get out there to the public, in my opinion, but not at the expense of sullying someone’s reputation. If the authors were really quite as deceptive as suggested, and twisted the tale so much that the reality is completely unrecognisable, then that is a shame.
If this is true, it will go from being a lovely New Yorker article to a quite dreadful one. Very sad indeed.
We’ll have to see what happens…
-cvj
(Spotted at Ars Mathematica.)
Hi,
I understand that you feel strongly about this, but as I said in comments earlier…let’s stay away from the accusations of lies and theft. I’m not really seeing this leading to a productive direction.
Cheers,
-cvj
Yau’s lies and theft have been proven by the strongest standard of demonstration available in human affairs outside of the courtroom. His 18-month failure to act upon his threats of litigation against Nasar and Gruber and the New Yorker, adds virtual volumes of shame to mendacious legerdemain reported in their article.
Shing, you are the best mathematician ever! I am so doing
an essay on you ( take that as a compliment.) See ya around!
http://www.cds.caltech.edu/%7Enair/pdfs/CaoZhu_plagiarism.pdf
To make matters worse, it looks like there is not an original stitch to the Cao/Zhu (Yau) paper. It seems that Kleiner and Lott provided the AJM with this nice little comparision:
http://www.cds.caltech.edu/7Enair/pdfs/CaoZhu_plagiarism.pdf
that resulted in an erratum being published. Probably in any other journal, this would have merited a full retration.
http://www.intlpress.com/AJM/p/2006/10_2/AJM-10-2-Erratum.pdf
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The New Yorker article stated that Yau’s journal, the Asian Journal of Mathematics, published the Zhu-Cao article without even sending it to referees. When one of the members of the editorial board asked to see the paper, s/he was told it is not available. The paper was accepted just 3 days after submission. To me, this shows that the AJM has no academic standards and reflects very poorly on Yau as one of its co-editor. I find it interesting that the letter from Dr. Yau’s lawyer does not dispute the claim.
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Yau’s complaints all have to do with interpretation and wording — there simply isn’t a defamation case there.
Not in a US court, anyway.
Under US law, STY would have to prove some factual inaccuracy in the article. You can’t base a libel or slander case on arguing about whether or not it’s too tendentious to describe a disagreement over relative proportions of credit as a ‘battle’.
The only factual detail STY disputes is whether or not he assigned percentages of credit for the Poincare conjecture in his talk at strings 2006.
He has no case against the New Yorker based on this, however, since You’s asignment of percentages was reported by several sources long before the New Yorker article, including at least one major wire service. It’s hard to believe they’re all lying.
But even if those reports are wrong and Yau didn’t assign percentages, the New Yorker relied in good faith on what it thought were legitimate sources. That does not provide evidence of malice which you would need to prove a defamation case.
If STY really did not assign percentages, it was a major mistake not to dispute the reports that he did which came out at the time. It’s possible, of course, that the reason he didn’t dispute the reports is because they were true.
Either way, all the Strings talks were preserved as recorded audio. If STY really didn’t say what he’s reported to have said, let him produce the audio recording and prove it.
Standard practice is for audio of Strings talks to be posted on the web soon after they occur — days or weeks at the absolute latest. It’s now been months and the talks have not been posted. Yau is chair of the Organizing Committee for Strings 2006.
Clifford, if you think Yau’s case is so strong, you should ask him why the content of the talks — particularly his own — has not been made public.
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Prof. Richard Hamilton, a key member of the joint effort to solving the Poincare Conjecture, has come to Dr. Yau’s aid by way of an open letter accessible at http://www.doctoryau.com/.
However, the defenders of Nasar/Gruber still roam the online forum at the New Yorker website.
Looks like this matter will take its own tortuous course along the litigation path. Wonder what’s the stand of the respective employers of the protagonists. Internal investigations?
Ms. Nasar Hunts Chinese Witches
(1) In Ms. Nasar’s article with Mr. Gruber, she labeled both Professors Shing-Tung Yau and Shiing-Shen Chern as “the Chinese mathematicianâ€. In fact, both are U.S. citizens born in China. It is important to note that only mathematicians of Chinese heritage were labeled this way in the article. This labeling is in contrary to the common practice of using the term “Chinese American mathematician†in the mainstream news media in both the U.S. and China. (In Chinese media, Yau and Chern are called “mei ji hua renâ€-U.S. citizen of Chinese heritage.) Ms. Nasar went to length to describe the contributions of Yau and Chern to the scientific development in China but neglected to mention that both were awarded this nation’s highest scientific honor, the National Medal of Science. The subliminal message is that both Yau and Chern work only to advance the Chinese interest. Such bigotry is nothing new in this country: Jewish people have been subject to such stereotype for a long time.
(2) While there were extensive discussions on original ideas in mathematics in this 14-page long article, not a single sentence, as far as I know, associated mathematicians of Chinese heritage to originality. Even the originality of Yau’s Fields Medal work was downplayed. This article promotes the false and harmful stereotypes that mathematicians of Chinese heritage are “technical†but not “originalâ€. (See an open letter to Ms. Nasar for more detail on this point.)
(3) Seven mathematicians of Chinese heritage were named in the article: Yau, Chern, Gang Tian, Huai-Dong Cao, Xi-Ping Zhu, Kefeng Liu, Bong H. Lian (implicitly, as the coauthor of Liu and Yau). While there was only minimal coverage on Chern, all six others were alleged, one way or another, to involve in plagiary and/or claiming undeserved credits. More importantly, in the article, no other mathematicians but only those of Chinese heritage were alleged to involve of such unethical practices. This is biased, prejudiced, and, in fact, racist. To illustrate this point, substitute all Chinese names by Jewish names, China by Israel, and Chinese by Jewish. This article would then have been easily recognized as anti-Semitic.
(4) This is not the first time Ms. Nasar spews anti-Chinese venom. In her article Best Business Book 2003: Globalization, she promoted the book World on Fire by Amy Chua. Here is what Ms. Nasar wrote:
This is bigotry, pure and simple. It is now well established that Ms. Nasar distorted other people’s statements to fit her own agenda. (“As it appears in her article, she has purposefully distorted my statement and made it unforgivably misleading.†—Dan Stroock of MIT.) There were also controversies regarding Ms. Nasar’s A Beautiful Mind about the anti-Semitic statements that she attributed to Mr. John Nash. (See, for example, An Anti-Semitic Mind? by Tom Tugent at The Jewish Journal.)
I may have erred on the side of generalization, having extrapolated from my personal experience with the chinese but not from this part of the world.
As for being unfair, I would plead a distant second to the “rich documentation” of Nasar and Gruber. But then again I’m no professional journalist.
Careful now…. I don’t think anyone has proven “lies and theft”. A bunch of anecdotes in a New Yorker article does not constitute “rich documentation”.
Cheers,
-cvj
Say Lee says: “Usually Asian people are loathe to seeking redress through legal means.” This sweepingly unfair observation is partially redeemed by examples of Shin-Tung Yau’s attempts to advance his career with lies and theft, richly documented by Sylvia Nasar and David Gruber.
For those who are mathematically inclined, the Cao/Zhu’s article is accessible at:
http://www.intlpress.com/AJM/p/2006/10_2/AJM-10-2-165-492.pdf
Here is the Abstract.
In this paper, we give a complete proof of the Poincar´e and the geometrization
conjectures. This work depends on the accumulative works of many geometric analysts in the past thirty years. This proof should be considered as the crowning achievement of the Hamilton-Perelman theory of Ricci flow.
Isn’t the attribution highly professionally done?
But what about standing for your rights and acting against dubious journalism, personal interests vested notwithstanding?
Aren’t these among the desirable qualities we wish to inculcate in today’s kids? We live in an imperfect world and conflicts do arise when people are at odds with each other. We would not want to harm others, either by word or by deed, but we do have to know how to protect our good name.
I agree, but we must try to salvage anything positive, if we can.
-cvj
I agree with you about the existence of pettiness in anything humans do, my point was about the image being portrayed. Is it healthy for Mathematics to be seen in this light? If people only see smart people arguing over who solved the problem, it might add to their distaste for the subject, instead of encouraging them to join in. You do have a point about it being an interesting human story that is of interest to everyone, but creating villains and lawsuits seems the wrong way to interest people at a human level.
Ben,
I think that through all of this fog, a student will certainly appreciate another useful fact that is not known widely about mathematics, which is that it is an exciting field full of personalities… very much alive. This is a good thing to see. Pettiness, if indeed relevant here, appears in any field where there are human beings working. It is not special to Mathematics.
-cvj
I note that the article in question is put under the feature section named Fact in the New Yorker and you guessed right, there is a separate section named Fiction. From what I can gather, the line seems to have blurred.
Usually Asian people are loathe to seeking redress through legal means. But in this instance suing is perhaps the last recourse available to Yau to redeem his reputation.
Today while teaching my lab I was asked by a student “what do mathematicians so, I mean, I get what physicists do, there’s stuff to figure out, but what can you do in math?” I love these kinds of questions, because it allows me to open up their mind to something fun. It is hard to describe what math is all about at the level of proofs, but one way I do it is by proving the Pythagorean theorm using a square and dividing it up, etc. After this she was so impressed that she couldnt stop talking about it all lab. I actually had to convince her to get back to work and finish the thing. I also showed her some fun facts with cardinality that most people dont know. My point in all this is that math needs public relations, people dont really know what math is all about. But this kind of attention is horrible. If youve never met a person before and you are told “avoid him, he’s a jerk” you probably might. The same goes for math, it is considered hard and boring by most people, it would be a shame if ‘petty’ were attached to that.
Touché. 🙂
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When some of the people quoted in the article started putting out [totally unbelievable] claims that they had been misrepresented, I bet that STY was going to sue. Sadly, I was right. If he doesn’t realise that he is destroying what credibility he has left by proceeding in this way, well, somebody really ought to tell him. And anyone who really believes that STY was not trying to claim that he and his gang played a major role in the proof of geometrization really ought to look at the last paragraph of http://xxx.arxiv.org/abs/math.DG/0607821
I’d sort of not noticed (or ignored) the comments on the work … dismissed as just the ignorance of the journalists, and thought it was secondary to the main thrust of the article. I was wrong. I think that the accusations and anecdotes about his meddling were hearsay that may or may not be true and tht others could give other anecdotes that culd spin the story a different way. Hence my remarks at the end of my first piece …but now I worry that they may have gone way too far…. crossing the line from a clearly partial take on the story to just making stuff up out of whole cloth…. We shall see, indeed.
Oh piffle! Don’t be so po-faced… anyone would think you were at Cambridge or something! Oh, wait….. 😉
-cvj
Just as a parting shot, my original attitude to the New Yorker article was that it was, in parts, desperately unfair to Yau, particularly with respect to the claim that he has not contributed any meaningful mathematics over the past ten years. He has, to be sure, presented some God-awful rubbish (including some patently false claims about a “new” approach to quasilocal mass in general relativity which were swiftly debunked as being both nothing more than a variation on the Brown-York quasilocal mass and, more importantly, wrong), but there’ve been some interesting papers on, for example, information geometry and some work on Einstein-Sasaki manifolds. I can’t comment on any of the other allegations (such as trying to shift the location of a conference at the last minute) but I thought the attacks on his work were completely unwarranted.
The New Yorker has become an unbearable rag over the past decade…
Yau fights back? And how. It seems that S.-T. has hired a firm of rather expensive public relations people in order to attack the New Yorker article head on.* We’ve all undoubtedly heard stories about his, ahem, robust attitude towards criticism, but this does really seem to be taking things to a new level. The next week or so should prove interesting.
*: The website doctoryau.com to which you link above has been parked at GoDaddy by the aforementioned PR firm – see here for more details on the registration.
Although this is only slightly on topic, I thought you might enjoy this new blog where someone attempts to render the articles in each issue of The New Yorker as haiku. The explanatory post is at http://drunkenvolcano.blogspot.com/2006/08/new-yorker-haiku-welcome-to-haiku.html
Fun for New Yorker lovers.
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