Not a surprise to see pi in there really, since we're averaging over "surfaces" of circles/spheres. In general (spoiler), it does generalize to arbitrary dimensions. We get a rational factor for odd dimensions, and 1/pi * rational for even.
The title instantly identifies it as belonging to the genre of vacuous contrarian hot-takes. Without having read it in its entirety either, I would guess that if does make a good point, it relies on confusing the dangers of bad info, excessive application, or selective focus on areas for improvement, for detriments of the enterprise of self-improvement itself.
This requires owning both repositories. The user puts a measure of "trust" in the owner whose repository he had starred already, so this seems more like a violation of that trust rather than an "exploit".
I'm assuming you mean nearly everybody would profit in a non-financial sense, or that more wealth would be created in the aggregate but not so much individually, and if that's what you mean, I generally agree.
IMO, it would be better for the group to curtail copyright somewhat in the US. But here I meant "profit" in the depressingly literal, "a specific individual or group, that can afford an IP attorney, who makes money on whatever they consider to be their IP" sense.
For better or worse, the system in the US currently favors those with the desire and resources to hire great IP attorneys, who are themselves motivated to always argue for stricter IP laws, whose firms have the resources to make huge campaign contributions.
There is no one spending equal amounts of money to push things in the opposite direction, therefore as long as there's money in politics there will always be an invisible hand guiding things in favor of "individuals or groups who stand to profit from something" over all other criteria.
I've noticed a lot of hair-splitting in these comments over whether this was a failure of peer review, whether to call the papers, considered as specimens of scholarship in their appropriate fields, "fraudulent" rather than "bad", or whether the number of hours they actually logged at the dog park is a relevant concern. All of this is quite besides the point. The researchers passed a version of the Turing Test among the reviewers of their papers. All that we need from that point is an acknowledgement of the absurdity and falseness of the papers themselves. This may not be easily forthcoming, though. One of the reviewers of Social Text took the position, in the wake of Sokal's hoax, that his paper constituted good scholarship, despite the stated intentions of its author. Also confer with Poe's Law. However, when we admit this as a possible response, we are in the territory of radical relativism, with no way to adjudicate between the claims of these scholars and their critics, and for that matter, those of religious fanatics, mentally ill delusional people, confidence scammers, or indeed anybody at all. This is a position which seems, at least, to be somewhat at odds with the fundamental scholarly enterprise. At its heart, one has to cross the pons arsinorum of admitting that, yes, the papers are indeed absurd nonsense. At this point, it seems impossible to convince some people to take this step.
If the critics's objections could be distilled into something with a semblance of validity and germaneness, then it would be that the researchers's methods were too unfocused. But had they taken a narrower approach, the response could just have been to rationalize and ignore. Fight fire with fire (being generality, in this case).
To a reviewer with three hours to spare, fake research is indistinguishable from good research. Unless you want to give me months to review a paper, I will not be able to detect fraud.
Instead I rely on the fact that the community will attempt to integrate these ideas after publication and arrive at the conclusion that the paper was garbage.
If you only have three hours, can't detect fraud, can't tell if the the paper is even real. Then what's the point of even doing the peer review? Again, peer review offered no value at all in this case.
Peer review can still inspect whether the evidence presented in a paper would—if not fabricated—truly be enough to support the paper's conclusion. Mistaken analysis of honestly collected data, improper experimental methods, flawed proofs, etc. can all show up at review time.
You can certainly come to that conclusion if you'd like. Arxiv exists. But "peer review isn't especially usrful" and "these entire fields are nonsense" are very different conclusions.
Upsetting anyone? Probably not possible, and probably not desirable. There's always going to be people getting offended when you state a controversial opinion. But of course you can minimize the offense, and it doesn't take much imagination to think up a better option than a conference designed to support women. Blogs/journals/conferences not specifically for supporting women/editorials/radio shows/record a podcast. Write a manifesto for crying out loud.
His findings? A request for comment to the "Frauenbeauftragte" (gender equality officer, women's affairs representative, whathaveyou) or a prof of gender studies would have given a chance to compare his results to others. It's not exactly a master thesis or anything.
Well, I for one thought it meant the first ever torrent is still going. Why wouldn't people assume 'world's oldest torrent' means just that?! And 'the world's oldest running torrent is still running' is like 'world's oldest living human is still alive' - of course they are.
See sections 6-9 here for demonstration: https://arxiv.org/pdf/1109.0595.pdf