Today’s number: 0.02 percent
Tuesday, Oct 3, 2017 - Posted by Rich Miller
* Sen. Daniel Biss touts himself as a math wiz, but one of his papers had to be retracted, which is an exceedingly rare occurrence…
The Sun-Times inquired about some errors made in the Evanston Democrat’s mathematical papers, including an “erratum” — or an error in printing or writing — made to the Annals of Mathematics about a 2003 paper and another “erratum” submitted for a paper he wrote in 2006. Another paper from 2002 was retracted. Some of the errors were noted on Retraction Watch, which tracks scientific errors.
The website in February noted a retraction in a paper Biss wrote in 2002. “Topology and its Applications” wrote that the article was retracted “after receiving a complaint about anomalies.” The editors asked for further reviews “which indicated that the definitions in the paper are ambiguous and most results were false.” The website followed up and said the journal noted the findings were “inaccurate” but “not fraudulent.” […]
Biss’ campaign noted that “in a few cases” some of his papers “didn’t stand up.” But they said “revisions” are part of a normal part of the academic process. A CBS News story from 2015 noted that just 0.02 percent of some three million mathematical papers were retracted, but retractions are not necessarily seen as a bad thing. Instead, many view them as a better option than scientists and mathematicians choosing to let their errors live on in the academic realm.
“Theoretical mathematics is a field built on proposing new ideas that are scrutinized by peers over time, revised and perfected to move understanding forward,” Biss’s campaign said. “Whether it was training at MIT or the University of Chicago, Daniel has had dozens of academic papers reviewed by his peers and published. In a few cases, further research has found that the case posited in the original article didn’t stand up, and he revised his findings.”
* Biss recently got a very detailed question about the issue at an event. Biss had been invited to explain his support for the pension reform bill…
AUDIENCE QUESTION: I have a question about your general candidacy. From what I’ve read, it seems you’ve had two camps in your professional life so far, when you were an academic and now as a politician. And I see, you know, some of your history in both of those having two big blunders. Excuse me, but two big blunders. As far as your academic career, you made some fame and notoriety for yourself by publishing a few papers, and they were put into very good mathematical journals, for which, you know, you were applauded for. But as you know, a Russian mathematician found that the math that was involved in the proofs was fatally flawed, and so you were forced to withdraw those publications from the press. And I imagine that affected, you know, being at the University of Chicago too, your publication record, maybe your tenure track. I don’t know about those details, I’m just speculating.
Now at that time then, you also decided to switch courses then and go into politics. And you’re most famous for what you just talked about, and that is the SB1 bill. Because it is the bill you co-sponsored that had the most far-reaching affects to the state of Illinois. But again, a big blunder. A catastrophe really, I would call it, because of course it enraged state employees. I was at Eastern Illinois University. We spent two years raging against that bill that you co-sponsored. We’d go to Springfield, we rallied, we sent postcards, we’d make phone calls. And we got nowhere, of course it was passed like you said, and ultimately the Supreme Court of Illinois deemed it to be illegal. And it went up in flames. So what was the outcome of that? Nothing good. That bill that you co-sponsored disen- not disenfranchised but disappointed so many Democrats, and I know some of them, good Democrats, who said I’m not voting on the Democratic ticket this time around when Quinn went up for governorship. And some of them said they were even going to vote for Rauner, but they were good Democrats otherwise. And Rauner won by a sliver, and I think it’s a fair statement that some have proposed, that a lot of the blame for Rauner coming to power and wrecking the devastation that he’s done must be laid at your feet because of the SB1 bill.
So now you want us to endorse you as governor to fix the mess that you helped create. So my question here, I guess, is why did it take you almost four years to come to the conclusion, from 2013 to now, that it was a mistake? Because I saw a video of you in 2013 being not apologetic and being defensive about that bill when you were being challenged by some retired professors, or teachers rather. And then I met you about a year and a half ago in Mattoon, at an event that the local Democrats put on. And I asked you about the SB after you gave your talk and you were equally defensive and not apologetic. So now I hear – and I hear that you went on Fred Klonsky’s radio show and you were apologetic. So I assume that’s true. And I hear today that yes, you regret having done what you did. But why would it take so long? Excuse me for being cynical, but it happens to coincide when you’re running for governor. So can you calm my fears about your record and what it’s all about?
BISS: Sure. About my academic record, you know I’ve published dozens of papers and it’s very normal in the course of academic life for a subsequent academic to come and poke holes. And I think my academic record was strong, and I’m proud of a lot of the work that I did. The great majority of which, of course, did hold up. And I think that’s a standard part of the push and pull about that. Happy to go into more detail about that if you’re interested, but I think that’s probably not what most of the people here are hoping to hear.
So I’ll say a couple things. The first thing is that I think your timing is a little bit, a little bit off. Certainly for several years now I’ve been giving that spiel, almost identical to what I just said, since long before I was even considering running for governor, much less actually running. I spent a lot of time, a lot of sleepless nights during that effort and after that effort thinking about what that all meant. And I think an important turning point was the supreme court decision that helped contextualize, as the courts are very useful in doing, not just what that narrow piece of legislation itself meant, but what the opportunities the state of Illinois had at the time were. And if you recall, the argument that the attorney general used to defend the bill in the court was exactly this kind of, ‘hey listen, this is rough, this is frustrating, this is hard, but really we had no choice but – and so we had to.’ And that’s the argument that people who supported the bill used, and that’s the argument that the court shot down.
And watching that argument play out, watching both sides make those arguments during the course of the previous year as the litigation happened and seeing the court decision really made a big impact on me. And I don’t want to go through the calendar in a sort of argumentative way, but I remember talking in the summer of 2015 in a way that was almost identical to what I just said to you.
The full video is here.
- wordslinger - Tuesday, Oct 3, 17 @ 11:44 am:
Biss should have said: “Could you repeat that, please?”
- illusion - Tuesday, Oct 3, 17 @ 11:45 am:
Despite the illusion that he is vigorously trying to develop, Biss is not a progressive. He is a moderate. SB 1 is proof of that.
Despite the illusion that he is vigorously trying to create, Biss is not anti-Madigan. Of all the candidates running for Governor, he is the only candidate to ever receive something from him. The deal he cut with Madigan to drop out of the comptroller race is proof of that.
I could go on and on, but will only add, he was not with Bernie during the election. He was with Hillary.
His math retraction is actually a very serious issue in academia. Although we do not know for certain, it could be the reason he left academia. It also took years for him to retract it, despite pleas from others over many years.
- Periwinkle - Tuesday, Oct 3, 17 @ 11:45 am:
The guy graduated summa cum laude from Harvard, got a PhD in math from MIT, and became a professor at one of the top universities in the country at age 25. Who cares if he had an error in a paper (which editors of a top journal apparently didn’t catch). He was obviously extremely good at math, and he’s been good at politics. This whole line of attack is just dumb and irrelevant.
His answer on SB1 is more important, and it seems sincere. Legislators who want to actually take risks and accomplish things are going to make mistakes, and he’s acknowledging it. Moving on.
- Gimmicks - Tuesday, Oct 3, 17 @ 11:52 am:
Dan Biss has been touting himself as a mathematician that makes him uniquely qualified to be governor. I find it troubling that he has little or no interest in correcting his published errors. I believe that he is a wealthy Springfield insider politician who has lost touch with the common man.
- Century Club - Tuesday, Oct 3, 17 @ 12:01 pm:
Has anyone told Biss that campaigning is poetry and governing is prose?
- Anon0091 - Tuesday, Oct 3, 17 @ 12:03 pm:
Generally I don’t care. He’s a super-smart guy and everyone knows it. I guess the only plausible case of why it matters is the hypocrisy he’s shown in this campaign. As Illusion points out, he is campaigning as something he’s not. So his integrity or lack therof matters. And his attempt to portray this as perfectly normal when in fact it happens in 0.02% of cases is just the kind of mendacity that makes people hate politicians.
- Anon0091 - Tuesday, Oct 3, 17 @ 12:03 pm:
BTW, that question was absurdly long and should have been cut off by the moderator.
- Veil of Ignorance - Tuesday, Oct 3, 17 @ 12:04 pm:
Wow, is this Pritzker or Kennedy that’s worried about Biss enough to send folks down this line of attack? The pension reform issue is fair game, but math paper retractions? I guess some folks are still worried he survives the Rosa flap…
- Periwinkle - Tuesday, Oct 3, 17 @ 12:09 pm:
==Dan Biss has been touting himself as a mathematician that makes him uniquely qualified to be governor.==
He *is* a mathematician, and while he uses that in his campaign in quirky ways, it’s not what makes him uniquely qualified to be governor. What makes him uniquely qualified to be governor is that he’s literally the only one in the race with any experience in Springfield.
- City Zen - Tuesday, Oct 3, 17 @ 12:11 pm:
A long-winded current professor asking a long-winded former professor a question is not the best sell for academia.
- Anonymous - Tuesday, Oct 3, 17 @ 12:16 pm:
“I believe that he is a wealthy Springfield insider”
he is definitely not wealthy according to his tax returns..
- OneMan - Tuesday, Oct 3, 17 @ 12:22 pm:
To some degree, I am impressed that his paper was interesting enough that someone read it and thought ‘hey this doesn’t seem right’ and spent the time to ‘do the math’ so to speak.
His background does expose a very real risk IMHO, there is a reason we have not had a lot (or any) successful Presidents with engineering backgrounds. Engineers (and technical people in general) tend to think “I have explained this to you in a logical way using available data, so therefore the discussion should be over”.
- DuPage Bard - Tuesday, Oct 3, 17 @ 12:27 pm:
This is what happens when you put Miss and Fortner in a room alone.
- Honeybear - Tuesday, Oct 3, 17 @ 12:28 pm:
Great point about Quinn. Going after our pensions was the number one reason why I had very few AFSCMEs out with me canvassing.
Boss keeps pointing to the math as being sound
I point to the lives he tried to make unsound
During their retirement years.
I don’t trust someone who obviously
Prefers
Math
Over
Lives.
- Captain Obvious - Tuesday, Oct 3, 17 @ 12:31 pm:
One Man - Ever heard of Jimmuh Carter?
- Anonymous - Tuesday, Oct 3, 17 @ 12:34 pm:
A Biss-Chris Welch ticket, considering their mathematical capabilities, could really turn Illinois’ finances around.
- DarkHorse - Tuesday, Oct 3, 17 @ 12:36 pm:
This question about Biss’ math papers isn’t going to go away. Some reporter is going to get to the bottom of whether he left academia because of it. It’s potentially very damaging because it gets to the question of whether he misrepresents himself - politically, as a progressive when he’s really a moderate.
All that said, because the inconsistencies in his paper were first spotted by a Russian mathematician, I hope no one claims “Russian interference in yet another US election” /s
- Chicago PR Guy - Tuesday, Oct 3, 17 @ 12:42 pm:
One publishes in academic journals in great part to get peer reviewed which leads to commentary (criticism) and sometimes the identification of errors.
The issue for the candidate isn’t that an error was found. The issue is how long it took him to admit that an error was found.
- Joe Bidenopolous - Tuesday, Oct 3, 17 @ 12:49 pm:
==I believe that he is a wealthy Springfield insider politician who has lost touch with the common man==
Wealthy, Biss definitely is not. The rest of the statement checks out though.
- Perwinkle - Tuesday, Oct 3, 17 @ 12:49 pm:
===it gets to the question of whether he misrepresents himself - politically, as a progressive when he’s really a moderate.==
I don’t see what a high-level math error has to do with whether he’s a progressive or a moderate.
- Anon0091 - Tuesday, Oct 3, 17 @ 12:51 pm:
Chicago PR, sometimes is actually 0.02%. That would be exceedingly rare which I believe was the point of Rich’s post.
- Perwinkle - Tuesday, Oct 3, 17 @ 12:57 pm:
==who has lost touch with the common man==
This is not the Daniel Biss I see at all. And look at the viable alternatives - a Pritzker and a Kennedy. Come on.
- Loop Lady - Tuesday, Oct 3, 17 @ 1:11 pm:
I academia, this happens…Biss is too smart to fall on his sword for this…JB and Chris have no experience in IL government…this alone causes me to favor him over all other comers…
- Last Bull Moose - Tuesday, Oct 3, 17 @ 1:26 pm:
Don’t forget that great engineer, Herbert Hoover.
- Whatever - Tuesday, Oct 3, 17 @ 2:08 pm:
From Lobachevsky, by Tom Lehrer:
“I am never forget the day I am given first original paper to write. It was on Analytic and Algebraic Topology of Locally Euclidean Metrization of Infinitely Differentiable Riemannian Manifold. Bozhe moi! This I know from nothing.”
- Lefty Lefty - Tuesday, Oct 3, 17 @ 2:39 pm:
Considering how off-base the media often are in reporting about scientific research, it’s worth noting that the “0.02 percent” finding is not based on any scientific research at all and has no perspective or context in its citation, here or at the CBS News article.
https://www.cbsnews.com/news/how-often-are-scientific-studies-retracted/
You don’t graduate from Harvard (summa cum laude) and MIT in mathematics by looking over your classmate’s shoulder or fudging data.
In my little corner of science, a method of analyzing aquifer data was used for 9 YEARS before a researcher in Kansas figured out it wasn’t accurate. It’s probably still being used too.
- The Historian - Tuesday, Oct 3, 17 @ 3:39 pm:
I have on balance positive impressions of Biss, but I’ve spent 40+ years in academia, & “retractions” are *very* rare & raise eyebrows in a way that only a long word beginning with “p” ever tops…This gives me very serious pause.
- wordslinger - Tuesday, Oct 3, 17 @ 3:51 pm:
–To some degree, I am impressed that his paper was interesting enough that someone read it…–
Are you, really?
–I actually appreciated the long question. If we all had more patience for longer forms of debate..–
Did you, really?
–This question about Biss’ math papers isn’t going to go away.–
Won’t it really?
For crying out loud, you cats are making the Raunerbot apologists look sharp.
I don’t think Biss is even in the ballgame. But you think anyone cars about his academic papers?
- ArchPundit - Tuesday, Oct 3, 17 @ 3:53 pm:
===Chicago PR, sometimes is actually 0.02%. That would be exceedingly rare which I believe was the point of Rich’s post.
That’s how many are retracted. Most errors are never corrected or acknowledged. The argument seems to be that he resisted correcting it, but it took about 4 years which isn’t that long in academic work. That an author didn’t immediately retract it misses how this work is done. I’ve seen nothing to suggest he was thrown out of academia. At worst, he wouldn’t have been granted tenure at University of Chicago. That’s not that uncommon for many talented people. I don’t have the ability to judge whether his record without the retracted publications would have been sufficient. But so what if he wouldn’t have gotten tenure?
It’s a nothingburger and it’s a weird obsession of a few people.
- ArchPundit - Tuesday, Oct 3, 17 @ 3:57 pm:
===But you think anyone cars about his academic papers?
How many voters, heck, how many on this blog can talk about topology in mathematics?
- Amalia - Tuesday, Oct 3, 17 @ 4:32 pm:
well, maybe he’ll stop looking down at folks as much as he usually does. the arrogance.
- Teddy - Tuesday, Oct 3, 17 @ 10:42 pm:
I agree with ArchPundit- silly nothingburger. No average voter is going to care about this, and his base won’t either.
- State worker - Wednesday, Oct 4, 17 @ 7:45 am:
Retractions are rare in history and the social sciences because no one really knows what happened, and people can always defend “their interpretations” which are largely ideological.
In math, work in one area can cause someone to look up old articles and disprove them with proofs. Then people retract them. It is a good thing to retract and correct.
- the Cardinal - Wednesday, Oct 4, 17 @ 7:53 am:
It would appear Mr Biss likes to hear himself explain himself.
With respect to Ausin Powers “allow myself to (long pause) introduce myself?”
- ArmchairAcademics - Wednesday, Oct 4, 17 @ 9:58 am:
Ignorance abound. This was a peer-reviewed paper in mathematics including combinatorics and discrete geometry, and it was published in the computer age. This wasn’t your high school book review of Catcher in the Rye. For the field of Discrete Geometry (category 52C) in the Annals of Mathematics (since the year 2000), 33% of papers have been retracted. About 0.16% (one sixth of one percent) of discrete geometry papers written since 2000 have been published in the Annals. Applying the 0.02% figure to a combinatorics paper is like saying “only 0.000000001% of cyclists have tested positive for steroids,” because that takes into account everyone that’s ever ridden a bike and ignores the figures of percentage of professional cyclists testing positive.