Comment by vilhelm_s | Hacker News Reader

Comment by vilhelm_s | Hacker News Reader

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In the next issue, the journal published a bunch of letters noting that she had rediscovered the trapezoid rule.

https://kconrad.math.uconn.edu/math1132s20/handouts/taicomme...

Mary Tai herself also replied and explained the background to the paper a bit more:

> While a doctoral candidate working on my dissertation at Columbia University in 1981, I needed to calculate total area under a curve. During a session with my statistical advisor, and after examining several alternative methods, I worked out the model in front of him. The concept behind it is obviously common sense, and one does not have to consult the trapezoid rule to figure it out. [...]

> Why I call it Tai's model. I never thought of publishing the model as a great discovery or accomplishment; it was not published until 14 years later, in 1994. Because of its accuracy and easy application, many collegues at the Obesity Research Center of St Luke's-Roosvelt Hospital Center and Columbia University began using it and addressed it as "Tai's formula" to distinguish it from others. Later, because the investigators were unable to cite an unpublished work, I submitted it for publication at their request. Therefore, my name was rubber-stamped on the model before its publication. [...]

I was really on the author's side till I read these responses. Initially in my head it was just a case of misunderstanding or ignorance, but through her letters she has made clear that she thinks it is significant enough. This is borne out by her tone which is palpatably aggressive and contradictory at some points. She says she didn't publish this model for glory, but she also named it after herself. Also, no effort was made to connect it to already known elementary mathematics. And I don't understand why people would need a citation instead of just saying its calculated using the trapezoidal rule. The whole point about model vs formula is IMO pathetic, models are not just bunch of known formulas. They are supposed to give a new understanding of the system (also who brings up Marriam Webbster in a medical journal? Even in letters it sounds incredibly condescending).

> And I don't understand why people would need a citation instead of just saying its calculated using the trapezoidal rule.

They didn't know the trapezoidal rule.

If they didn't they couldn't have used it and they wouldn't have needed a citation either.

The point is that the "because the investigators were unable to cite an unpublished work, I submitted it for publication at their request" justification doesn't make much sense. She could have just explained to them that no citation was needed for something so trivial.

> The point is that the "because the investigators were unable to cite an unpublished work, I submitted it for publication at their request" justification doesn't make much sense. She could have just explained to them that no citation was needed for something so trivial.

I can see how if you were unaware, and several colleagues in your field were unaware, it might be good to include some kind of external information about the thing. I can also see why you might not want to link to Wikipedia.

I do think writing a medical article about it for people to link to is silly. Surely if you wanted a citation, you could just cite a math textbook.

Well, yes, but if you need a citation for Gaussian elimination, the problem is yours, not anyone else's.

> She says she didn't publish this model for glory, but she also named it after herself.

Aren't many Nobel Prizes in Economics done like that? Take some well-known math/physics formula, rename variables to make them represent some economic quantities, name the resulting formula after oneself, publish, get the prize?

> rename variables to make them represent some economic quantities

You cannot trivialize this step. Most people's job in data analysis is basically this. Figuring out what quantity fits where in the formula _is_ the research.

edit: To make it clear, it would have been fine if here model explained something using trapezoidal formula. But she seems to be claiming the formula, not a model.

Any examples? Not something I've ever noticed but would love to read about.

I think the Black-Scholes option pricing model reapplied a well known result from neutron transport in nuclear engineering.

Both the Black-Scholes formula and the Neutron Transport Equation are instances of the heat equation, which describes a wide variety of different phenomena.

> She says she didn't publish this model for glory, but she also named it after herself.

She didn't name it after herself, the users did:

> collegues ... began using it and addressed it as "Tai's formula"

As is typically the way with eponymous scientific works, people citing the work add the author's name e.g. Maxwell's equations or Higgs' boson. The author doesn't typically declare "I have discovered X, which I shall call ${self.name}"

She used the name "Tai's model" in the original paper.[1] I would consider that naming the method after herself.

[1] (PDF link https://math.berkeley.edu/~ehallman/math1B/TaisMethod.pdf

The quote in the post above indicates that the name was in use before the paper was published.

If this was true, a paper should have been cited. Like all the other people did for their letters

I have published multiple photonics papers and contributed to many and nobody has ever had the need to provide a citation for maxwell's equations. I would consider it reference padding if you do. Point is people could still have used the term without her publishing it. Also, am I supposed to take her word for it, at least she could have cited somewhere which tried to use it and give her credit. This seems like if anyone uses trapezoidal method she would take credit because nobody had a citation so everyone was just using "Tai's model".

> people citing the work add the author's name e.g. Maxwell's equations or Higgs' boson.

I don't think this rule applies here, because the paper introducing "Tai's rule" calls it "Tai's rule" rather than others citing it. As if Higgs called it Higgs' boson in his paper.

There's huge difference in significance though. Maxwell's equations have their distinctive name because he did discover a missing piece in a system (set) of equations that had been known before as separate phenomena and yet weren't used as a whole. The missing piece he discovered on paper, with a pure logical reasoning alone, that would bring consistency to the set of the equations, was later identified and confirmed as electromagnetic fields in reality.

Only because she still claims (or at least doesn't dispute) "ownership" of the "discovery."

At best, a distinction without a practical difference.

Have you ever spent 10min of your life with a doctor in an interpersonal setting? These people are probably the most intelectually insecure group in our society. We put them on a pedestal non-stop, the average grades in their classes are all A+, super-high wages and status, etc. From my point of view, this behaviour fits my expectation of them.

The paper in question can be found with Sci-Hub. Amusingly enough, it contains the following:

> Three formulas have been developed by Alder (3), Vecchio et al. (4), and Wolever et al. (5) to calculate the total area under a curve

[3] Alder I: A New Look at Geometry. New York, The John Day Company, 1966.

This book is in turn available in archive.org:

https://archive.org/details/B-001-001-934/page/n269/mode/2up

So basically the author in question didn't even bother to read the relevant part of the book she referenced, and also misunderstood the explanation of the Area and Integral chapter as something that Irving Alder developed.

I didn't bother looking up the other two references to help preserve my sanity.

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