Talk:Ivan Fesenko

Extended-confirmed-protected edit request on 7 August 2019
The word "object" is misspelled as "oject" within this article. The typo should be corrected. 107.195.4.38 (talk) 17:41, 7 August 2019 (UTC)
 * Fixed, thanks for pointing it out. --JBL (talk) 18:30, 7 August 2019 (UTC)

Extended-confirmed-protected edit request on 12 September 2019
I propose adding more details to the final short paragraph starting with "Fesenko played an active role in organizing the study of..." because of the considerable public interest on the issue (see, for instance, some of the sources cited in the existing version). Specifically, I suggest replacing this paragraph with the following:

In 2012 Shinichi Mochizuki released four (as yet unpublished) preprints on his inter-universal Teichmüller theory (IUT) and his claimed proof of the abc conjecture over every number field. Mochizuki's work and, especially, the part concerning the abc conjecture has been the subject of great controversy in the mathematical community, ,. One of the most persistent supporters of the validity of the proof is Ivan Fesenko. He has published a defence of the theory in the popular science online magazine  Inference: International Review of Science , and a general audience survey of Mochizuchi's work. Dan Abramovich reviewing the survey for MathSciNet assessed it as very helpful but suggested that the difficulties to follow the material were due to "the reviewer's limitations, though [he thought he had] a right to doubt this". In 2015, Ivan Fesenko was a co-organizer of an Oxford workshop "aimed to assist mathematicians interested to study IUT". Its list of participants included many leading mathematicians, such as Alexander Beilinson, Brian Conrad, Gerd Faltings, Dorian Goldfeld, Kiran Kedlaya, Laurent Lafforgue, Andrew Wiles and Shou-Wu Zhang. The reception was mixed with several number theorists remaining sceptical. In response, Fesenko posted a "Scientific Report" which dismissed the participants' questions as "rushed, irrelevant or trivial" and referred to complains about a participant from "a US university, who came relatively unprepared and declined to prepare talks, but applied considerable efforts to disturb the workshop and later wrote a highly erroneous shallow post about the workshop containing dozens of actual math mistakes." A post about the workshop was written by Brian Conrad who  expressed "frustration" at the lack of mathematical specifics in the talks. He questioned why participants "were shown lists of how many hours were invested by those who have already learned the theory and for how long person A has lectured on it to persons B and C" instead of focusing on "the force of ideas" itself.

In August 2018, Peter Scholze (Fields Medal 2018) and Jakob Stix released a note asserting that the third preprint of Mochizuki's contains an irreparable flaw. Fesenko dismissed Scholze's attempt "to publicly downgrade IUT" by stating that Scholze's "very rushed take on IUT was his own caricature of it", that "his [Scholze's] and Stix’s understanding of IUT is false and without foundation". He referred to Mochizuki's own response to Scholze-Stix's concerns. This is part of more extensive critique is contained in one of the most prominent articles defending IUT and the claimed proof of the abc conjecture. The main defence of the correctness of Mozizuki's proof is that "none of mathematicians who made genuine math breakthroughs decades ago, are known to have managed to advance in their study of IUT". Further, several quantified arguments in defence of the theory are made, e.g.  "The number of researchers who have mastered IUT is steadily growing, reaching a two-digit number three years ago", "The number of mathematicians able to write expert reports on the IUT papers already exceeds the number of such reports on previous major breakthrough papers at the time of their publication", "the total amount of time dedicated to the verification process of IUT by mathematicians has probably exceeded 50 researcher-years", "the total number of questions asked by active learners of IUT since 2012 is a 4-digit number" etc.

In Section 3.5 of his article, Fesenko condemns the "odious negative reaction to IUT" by a "tiny group of people" and proposes a range of possibilities for their motives, from "recklessness" to "justifying one’s own failure to study, helping to promote oneself or another one by seeding doubts about another fundamental work, etc." The article's objections to evidence of errors in Mochizuki's theory are summarized by asking why mathematicians make "public their opinions about a fundamental development in the subject area....without providing any math evidence of errors in the theory? Are they affected by the worst aspects of chimp politics?". He concludes that "something is fundamentally rotten here and has to be addressed properly." JRuel (talk) 17:57, 12 September 2019 (UTC) — JRuel (talk&#32;• contribs) has made few or no other edits outside this topic.


 * So you're asking us to publish Fesenko's bad-faith assumptions about and insults towards other mathematicians, with no contrary opinions, as though his attitude is the mainstream position in mathematics? That seems a violation of WP:FRINGE. In addition, the request to use a self-published report by Fesenko to source material other than non-controversial factual information about Fesenko himself (in particular his opinions of other mathematicians) seems likely to violate WP:BLPSELFPUB. —David Eppstein (talk) 20:16, 12 September 2019 (UTC)
 * I agree -- heavy quoting from the subject of a BLP on controversial topics is almost always a bad sign, this doesn't seem like an exception. --JBL (talk) 21:11, 12 September 2019 (UTC)
 * I understand your concerns, but I thought that direct quoting would be the best way to show the fringe nature of the assumptions without risking WP:POV. The current form of the relevant paragraph gives the impression of a dispassionate debate where the balance of opinion is about equal. At the same time, I hear what you're saying. How about removing all quoting from what I proposed and briefly describe what the cited online posts and articles say? JRuel (talk) 17:42, 13 September 2019 (UTC)
 * In view of David Eppstein's and JBL's justified objections to my proposed modification, I now propose the following replacement of the final paragraph of the article:

In 2012 Shinichi Mochizuki released four (as yet unpublished) preprints on his inter-universal Teichmüller theory (IUT) and his claimed proof proof of the abc conjecture over every number field . Mochizuki's work and, especially, the part concerning the abc conjecture has been the subject of great controversy in the mathematical community ,, . One of the most persistent supporters of the validity of the proof is Ivan Fesenko. He has published a defence of the theory in the popular science online magazine  Inference: International Review of Science  and a general audience survey of Mochizuchi's work. Dan Abramovich reviewing the survey for MathSciNet assessed it as very helpful but suggested that the difficulties to follow the material were due to "the reviewer's limitations, though [he thought he had] a right to doubt this". In 2015, Ivan Fesenko was a co-organizer of an Oxford workshop "aimed to assist mathematicians interested to study IUT". Its list of participants included many leading mathematicians, such as Alexander Beilinson, Brian Conrad, Gerd Faltings, Dorian Goldfeld, Kiran Kedlaya, Laurent Lafforgue, Andrew Wiles and Shou-Wu Zhang. The reception was mixed with most number theorists remaining sceptical. . Fesenko wrote a very-strongly worded dismissal of Scholze's and Stix's concerns .His article mainly focused on questioning the motivations rather than the actual mathematical points of those doubting the validity of the proof.


 * JRuel (talk) 12:35, 15 September 2019 (UTC)


 * I have unbroken a variety of referencing problems in your post that were causing errors (notably, for most of the discussion to not be displayed). I will not have a substantive comment probably for a few days because of real-life busyness. --JBL (talk) 13:16, 15 September 2019 (UTC)


 * Thanks! Looking forward to your (and other Wikipedians') comments on that. JRuel (talk) 13:59, 15 September 2019 (UTC)
 * Pictogram voting comment.svg Note: No clear consensus found. Reopen this request when you've reached consensus regarding a specific addition. Melmann 17:00, 3 October 2019 (UTC)
 * Given the above discussion, I think that the readers would be interested in the controversial circumstances of the dispute. Would something like the following be acceptable? "Fesenko played an active role in promoting the validity of Shinichi Mochizuki's inter-universal Teichmüller theory. He has co-organized two international workshops on IUT and written a survey and a general article on the theory. His defense of the theory has been considered controversial by some mathematicians, in terms of both the tone and of the mathematical content.

"P-adicNum (talk) 17:26, 1 July 2021 (UTC)

Career and research paragraph
The information about the EPSRC grant is not of any encyclopaedic value, at least such information is usually not mentioned on other mathematicians' Wikipedia pages. The same may be said about much of the "Career and research" paragraph: the facts there are mostly of insufficient significance for an encyclopedia and are also not presented in an encyclopaedic style. One suspects that most of it may have been added by Fesenko himself. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Rob.does.the.job (talk • contribs)

As User:Rob.does.the.job points out, the reference to the EPSRC grant does not have any encyclopaedic value and is unusual for mathematician's Wikipedia pages. I propose that it be removed. P-adicNum (talk) 15:26, 18 May 2021 (UTC)
 * Yes check.svg Done removed as per discussion. Run n Fly (talk) 15:32, 18 May 2021 (UTC)

Fesenko group
"In his study of infinite ramification theory, Fesenko introduced a torsion free hereditarily just infinite closed subgroup of the Nottingham group, which was named the Fesenko group." The Wikipedia article on the mathematical object this sentence refers to has recently been deleted as being too niche. The sentence does not make sense without a claim to notability supported by, say, a Wikipedia-worthy article, so I propose that it be deleted. P-adicNum (talk) 10:44, 7 May 2021 (UTC)
 * Red information icon with gradient background.svg Not done: Something does not have to be notable enough for it's own article to be mentioned in the article on another subject. ScottishFinnishRadish (talk) 11:31, 7 May 2021 (UTC)
 * Agreed, but the concensus of the discussion on the "Fesenko group" page was there isn't really a thing called "Fesenko group". There does exist a group with certain properties studied by Fesenko but not with the name "Fesenko group". So I, instead, propose the following modification of the above sentence: "In his study of infinite ramification theory, Fesenko introduced a torsion free hereditarily just infinite closed subgroup of the Nottingham group." P-adicNum (talk) 11:38, 8 May 2021 (UTC)
 * ✅, and thank you very much! Went ahead and removed the text as an unsourced claim. It can be restored if a reliable source is found to verify it.  P.I. Ellsworth   ed.  put'r there 15:40, 8 May 2021 (UTC)

IUT controversy
I think that the readers would be interested in the controversial circumstances of the dispute. Would something like the following be acceptable? "Fesenko played an active role in promoting the validity of Shinichi Mochizuki's inter-universal Teichmüller theory. He has co-organized two international workshops on IUT and written a survey and a general article on the theory. His defense of the theory has been considered controversial by some mathematicians, in terms of both the tone and of the mathematical content.    " P-adicNum (talk) 21:22, 1 July 2021 (UTC)
 * We cannot use sources by Fesenko (the Nottingham links), open forums (the reddit link), or blog sources (the Woit ones) on a biography of a living person, especially for controversial topics. —David Eppstein (talk) 23:53, 1 July 2021 (UTC)
 * Agreed, but what other type of evidence can be provided to show that a controversy exists? It may be undeniable that the discourse has been very controversial, but, I think, Wiki should give some examples.P-adicNum (talk) 09:34, 2 July 2021 (UTC)
 * As the comments in the older discussion about that show, there is a heated controversy among mathematicians about the way some people have participated in the IUT debate and that should be reflected in the article. The blog and other online entries or Fesenko's opinion pieces cannot be included are sources corroborating the validity of Wikipedia statements the but they could be used as the "object" to which the article refers, e.g. something like: "The resulting public discussion has been controversial with various opinions and articles posted in blogs, open forums and other webpages " JRuel (talk) 13:51, 3 July 2021 (UTC)
 * Only if there is a published and reliable source saying so. —David Eppstein (talk) 15:39, 3 July 2021 (UTC)
 * Yes. While there could be some public benefit to describing the controversy, if we rely on Reddit and personal blogs to talk about it, then we violate WP:BLP in a big way. XOR&#39;easter (talk) 20:55, 3 July 2021 (UTC)
 * I see. Then, I retract my proposal, until a published and reliable source is found. Thanks for explaining. P-adicNum (talk) 17:07, 4 July 2021 (UTC)

Nottingham
He seems to have left the University of Nottingham (he's no longer included in the faculty list there and his personal University-based page is re-directed to an independent webpage.)OzgBob (talk) 15:59, 2 February 2022 (UTC)
 * Red information icon with gradient background.svg Not done: please provide reliable sources that support the change you want to be made. casualdejekyll  23:46, 2 February 2022 (UTC)