Monday, December 18, 2017

Re: USA Africa Dialogue Series - Remember Enoch Opeyemi Who Claimed to have Solved the Riemann Hypothesis?

apples, oranges and nuts


Professor Gloria Emeagwali



From: 'Biko Agozino' via USA Africa Dialogue Series <usaafricadialogue@googlegroups.com>
Sent: Monday, December 18, 2017 9:47 PM
To: usaafricadialogue@googlegroups.com
Subject: Re: USA Africa Dialogue Series - Remember Enoch Opeyemi Who Claimed to have Solved the Riemann Hypothesis?
 
More cautionary tales for those who are proposing the jailing of scientists (not to be confused with a con artist who claims to be a professor just to get dates); to those who believe that a brother like Emeagwali should be locked up in a  mental hospital simply because he has not yet won a Nobel Prize after winning the Bell Prize; please read the following and learn from the failures of geniuses:

https://na01.safelinks.protection.outlook.com/?url=https:%2F%2Fwww.uky.edu%2F~eushe2%2FPajares%2FOnFailingG.html&data=01%7C01%7Cemeagwali%40ccsu.edu%7C78061827437a4607d82208d5468f306c%7C2329c570b5804223803b427d800e81b6%7C0&sdata=IM1cNxr5XJf7ojAB%2Bpm0JsN6h%2BD1CD0%2FmqVzJyKGxns%3D&reserved=0

Biko
--------------------------------------------
On Mon, 18/12/17, Oluwatoyin Vincent Adepoju <toyin.adepoju@gmail.com> wrote:

 Subject: Re: USA Africa Dialogue Series - Remember Enoch Opeyemi Who Claimed to have Solved the Riemann Hypothesis?
 To: "usaafricadialogue" <USAAfricaDialogue@googlegroups.com>
 Date: Monday, 18 December, 2017, 19:15
 
 Strange But Mostly True, Stories
 Sad, Stories Funny
 in addition to Falola's
 tragically funny accounts and Farooq's observations,
 these accounts below might be added-
 
 I'm not arguing anything on
 either side of the debate, I am not suggesting these now
 vindicated odd cases are identical with those Farooq
 outlines, just observing the strangeness
 that sometimes occurs around the highest mathematical
 achievements.  All links except one are to Wikipedia
 articles, which provide rich references to substantiate 
 claims made by the articles.
 
 
       Albert
 Einstein
 
 What work was Einstein doing when
 he wrote his 3 annus mirablis -miracle year-papers in his
 20s in 1905? He was working in a patent office in
 Switzerland. Can you imagine it- his 3 greatest papers, for
 which he got the Nobel,  papers which included his
 transformational work on special relativity and
 matter/energy equivalence, before the one on general
 relativity that came eight years later, if I have the
 timeline right,  3 papers that fundamentally changed
 physics constructed while he was obscurely analyzing patent
 applications, and even being passed over for promotion in
 that job, having failed to get an academic job in 'two
 frustrating years' of searching, according to the
 Wikipedia essay on him.
 Charles
 Sanders Pierce
 Charles Sanders Pierce, described
 as the greatest US philosopher and a
 landmark mathematician, could get no academic job for much
 of his career
  and struggled with poverty.
 'In 1887 Peirce spent part of
 his inheritance from his parents to buy 2,000 acres
 (8 km2) of rural land near Milford,
 Pennsylvania, which never yielded an economic return. There
 he had an 1854 farmhouse remodeled to his design. The
 Peirces named the property "Arisbe". There they
 lived with few interruptions for the rest of their lives,
 Charles writing prolifically, much of it unpublished to this
 day . Living beyond their means soon led to grave financial
 and legal difficulties.He spent much of his last two decades
 unable to afford heat in winter
 and subsisting on old bread donated by the local baker.
 Unable to afford
  new stationery, he wrote on the verso
  side of old manuscripts. An outstanding warrant for assault
 and unpaid
 debts led to his being a fugitive in New York City for a
 while".-Wikipedia on Pierce
 
 Grigori
 Perelman
 Where was Grigori Perelman, after
 being recognized for a proof of a famous mathematical
 problem he proudly refused to even try to publish in a
 journal,   having satisfied himself by posting it on a
 mathematical site where mathematicians posted problems for
 analysis by anyone who cared, and having recognized its
 power his peers offering him the Fields Medal, the
 mathematical equivalent of the Nobel Prize, along with the
 Clay medal, which comes with a $1,000,000 award, which he
 turned down? Living with his mother in Russia, having
 shunned any further contact with the mathematical community
 whom he is said to have described as soiling the purity of
 the mathematical discipline.
 Very entertaining:
 "In August 2006, Perelman
 was offered the Fields Medal for "his contributions to
 geometry and his revolutionary insights into the analytical
 and geometric structure of the Ricci flow",
  but he declined the award, stating: "I'm not
 interested in money or
 fame; I don't want to be on display like an animal in a
 zoo." On 22 December 2006, the scientific journal
 Science recognized Perelman's proof of the
 Poincaré conjecture as the scientific "Breakthrough of
 the Year", the first such recognition in the area of
 mathematics.On 18 March 2010, it was announced that
 he had met the criteria to receive the first Clay Millennium
 Prize
  for resolution of the Poincaré conjecture. On 1 July 2010,
 he turned
 down the prize of one million dollars, saying that he
 considered the
 decision of the board of CMI and the award very unfair and
 that his
 contribution to solving the Poincaré conjecture was no
 greater than that
  of Richard S. Hamilton, the mathematician who pioneered the
 Ricci flow with the aim of attacking the conjecture. He also
 turned down the prestigious prize of the European
 Mathematical Society.      
 The Fields Medal and Millennium PrizeIn
 May 2006, a committee of nine mathematicians voted to award
 Perelman a Fields Medal for his work on the Poincaré
 conjecture. However, Perelman declined to accept the prize.
 Sir John Ball, president of the International Mathematical
 Union, approached Perelman in Saint Petersburg
  in June 2006 to persuade him to accept the prize. After 10
 hours of
 attempted persuasion over two days, Ball gave up. Two weeks
 later,
 Perelman summed up the conversation as follows: "He
 proposed to me three
  alternatives: accept and come; accept and don't come,
 and we will send
 you the medal later; third, I don't accept the prize.
 From the very
 beginning, I told him I have chosen the third one ... [the
 prize] was
 completely irrelevant for me. Everybody understood that if
 the proof is
 correct, then no other recognition is needed."
 "'I'm
  not interested in money or fame,' he is quoted to have
 said at the
 time. 'I don't want to be on display like an animal
 in a zoo. I'm not a
 hero of mathematics. I'm not even that successful; that
 is why I don't
 want to have everybody looking at me.'"
 Nevertheless, on 22 August 2006, Perelman was publicly
 offered the medal at the International Congress of
 Mathematicians in Madrid
  "for his contributions to geometry and his
 revolutionary insights into
 the analytical and geometric structure of the Ricci
 flow". He did not attend the ceremony, and declined to
 accept the medal, making him the only person to decline this
 prestigious prize.
 He had previously turned down a prestigious prize from
 the European Mathematical Society.
 On 18 March 2010, Perelman was awarded a Millennium Prize
 for solving the problem.
  On June 8, 2010, he did not attend a ceremony in his honor
 at the
 Institut Océanographique, Paris to accept his $1 million
 prize. According to Interfax, Perelman refused to accept
 the Millennium prize in July 2010. He considered the
 decision of the Clay Institute unfair for not sharing the
 prize with Richard S. Hamilton,and stated that "the
 main reason is my disagreement with the organized
 mathematical community. I don't like their decisions, I
 consider them
 unjust."
 The Clay Institute subsequently used Perelman's prize
 money to fund
 the "Poincaré Chair", a temporary position for
 young promising
 mathematicians at the Paris Institut Henri Poincaré.
 
       
 Possible Withdrawal from MathematicsPerelman quit his job at the
 Steklov Institute in December 2005.
  His friends are said to have stated that he currently finds
 mathematics
  a painful topic to discuss; some even say that he has
 abandoned
 mathematics entirely.
 Perelman is quoted in an article in The New Yorker
  saying that he is disappointed with the ethical standards
 of the field
 of mathematics. The article implies that Perelman refers
 particularly to
  the efforts of Fields medalist Shing-Tung Yau to downplay
 Perelman's role in the proof and play up the work of Cao
 and Zhu.
  Perelman added, "I can't say I'm outraged.
 Other people do worse. Of
 course, there are many mathematicians who are more or less
 honest. But
 almost all of them are conformists. They are more or less
 honest, but
 they tolerate those who are not honest."
  He has also said that "It is not people who break
 ethical standards who
  are regarded as aliens. It is people like me who are
 isolated."
 This, combined with the possibility of being awarded a
 Fields medal,
 led him to quit professional mathematics. He has said that
 "As long as I
  was not conspicuous, I had a choice. Either to make some
 ugly thing or,
  if I didn't do this kind of thing, to be treated as a
 pet. Now, when I
 become a very conspicuous person, I cannot stay a pet and
 say nothing.
 That is why I had to quit." (The New Yorker
 authors explained
 Perelman's reference to "some ugly thing" as
 "a fuss" on Perelman's part
  about the ethical breaches he perceived).     
 Perelman and the MediaPerelman has avoided
 journalists and other members of the media. Masha Gessen,
 the author of Perfect Rigour: A Genius and the
 Mathematical Breakthrough of the Century, a book about
 him, was unable to meet him. Perelman refuses to talk to
 journalists. One who managed to reach him
 on his mobile was told: "You are disturbing me. I am
 picking mushrooms."- Wikipedia on Perelman
 
 Georg
 Cantor  , John
 Nash and Srinivasa
 Ramanujan
 
 On claims of being close to God,
 what happened to Georg Cantor in connection with his
 foundational work on infinity and other aspects of
 mathematics, to John Nash who got the Nobel for his labours
 in game theory?
 Nash was hospitalized on account of
 mental health issues, some related to his
 claim that he was inspired to reach his mathematical
 ideas through telepathic stimulation by non-human
 intelligences.
 Cantor "identified the
 Absolute Infinite with God,and he considered his work on
 transfinite numbers to have been directly
  communicated to him by God, who had chosen Cantor to reveal
 them to the
  world"  (from Wikipedia on Cantor). In the midst of
 fierce professional and psychological battles in connection
 with challenges to his mathematical ideas, Cantor  was
 hospitalized a no of times for depression and is described
 as dying in one of such hospitalizations.
 Ramanujan, famous for his self
 taught genius in mathematics, also claimed his family
 goddess inspired him, but since he did not display what was
 seen as aberrant behavior, unlike Nash and Cantor, he had no
 problems.
 "A deeply religious Hindu,
 Ramanujan credited his substantial mathematical capacities
 to divinity, and stated that the mathematical knowledge he
 displayed was revealed to him by his family goddess.
 '"An equation for me has no meaning," he once
 said, "unless it expresses a thought of
 God."-Wikipedia on Ramanujan.
 Archimedes
 
 Archimedes, described,with Newton
 and Friedrich Gauss, as one of the trio of three greatest
 mathematicians in history,  the man who calculated the no
 of grains of sand on the earth, was doing mathematical
 calculations in the sand when the Romans invaded his city.
 In the midst of the chaos, the bedlam from fleeing people,
 he remained engrossed in his work. Was this not the same man
 who had run naked into the street, shouting the now famous
 'eureka!' after accidentally discovering in his bath
 the principle of flotation? A Roman soldier came upon this
 ridiculous creature who seemed not to know that a war was on
 and challenged him. The abstracted master ignored the
 military man, urging to be left alone to engage in a
 worthwhile pursuit unlike whatever the troublemaker was on
 about. The soldier promptly finished him off.
 "Archimedes died c.
 212 BC during the Second Punic War, when Roman forces under
 General Marcus Claudius Marcellus captured the city of
 Syracuse after a two-year-long siege. According to the
 popular account given by Plutarch, Archimedes was
 contemplating a mathematical diagram
  when the city was captured. A Roman soldier commanded him
 to come and
 meet General Marcellus but he declined, saying that he had
 to finish
 working on the problem. The soldier was enraged by this, and
 killed
 Archimedes with his sword. Plutarch also gives a lesser-known
  account of the death of Archimedes which suggests that he
 may have been
  killed while attempting to surrender to a Roman soldier.
 According to
 this story, Archimedes was carrying mathematical
 instruments, and was
 killed because the soldier thought that they were valuable
 items.
 General Marcellus was reportedly angered by the death of
 Archimedes, as
 he considered him a valuable scientific asset and had
 ordered that he
 not be harmed [as the US at the fall of Germany in WW2
 salvaged the scientists who built Germany's military
 rocket program and successfully used their skill in the US
 space program]. Marcellus called Archimedes "a
 geometrical Briareus" [ a kind of deity].
 The last words attributed to Archimedes are "Do not
 disturb my
 circles", a reference to the circles in the
 mathematical drawing that he
  was supposedly studying when disturbed by the Roman
 soldier. This quote
  is often given in Latin as "Noli turbare circulos
 meos,"
  but there is no reliable evidence that Archimedes uttered
 these words
 and they do not appear in the account given by Plutarch.
 Valerius Maximus, writing in Memorable Doings and
 Sayings in the 1st century AD, gives the phrase as
 "...sed protecto manibus puluere 'noli'
 inquit, 'obsecro, istum disturbare'" -
 "... but protecting the dust with his hands, said
 'I beg of you, do not disturb this.'" The phrase
 is also given in Katharevousa Greek as "μὴ μου
 τοὺς κύκλους τάραττε!" (Mē mou
 tous kuklous taratte!).- Wikipedia on
 Archimedes.Chike
 Obi
 It is said in a Nigerian anecdote
 illustrating how mathematics at a certain particularly
 advanced level conduces to unconventional approaches to
 reality, that the famous Nigerian mathematician Chike Obi
 used to enter and leave his home through the window instead
 of the door bcs the window was the shortest way out
 according to his calculations.
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 .
 
 
 
 
 
 On 18 December 2017 at
 20:16, Farooq A. Kperogi <farooqkperogi@gmail.com>
 wrote:
 Professor Falola,
 You're right that most of these
 people are actually mentally sick. Incidentally, Moses and I
 have privately discussed this dimension several times in the
 past. In my November 9, 2010 column for the Daily Trust
 titled "Intellectual
 419: Philip Emeagwali and Gabriel Oyibo
 Compared," I said this of
 Oyibo:
 "But anyone who has
 followed Oyibo's life closely will agree that the man
 needs help—seriously. The brother has lost it. He has no
 job as I write now. He left the university system as an untenured
 associate professor years ago. (Hmm.... Can you imagine
 a four-time Nobel Prize nominee in Physics who no U.S.
 university or research institution wants to touch with a
 barge pole?) If you need evidence of Oyibo's
 undisguised psychic imbalance,
  read
 his deleted profile on Wikipedia, which he wrote
 of himself.
 Here is a sample from the profile for your
 amusement: "Honors and Awards:
 Professor G. Oyibo has been recognized as
 being closer to GOD (intellectually and in other ways), than any
 other human being because of the GAGUT discovery. He has also been recognized by the
 Nigerian Federal Government as Mathematical Genius which was
 inscribed on a Nigerian Postage Stamp that was issued in
 2005. Professor G. Oyibo has also been
 recognized as the Greatest Genius and the Most Intelligent
 Human Being ever created by GOD.
 He has also been recognized as the Greatest Mathematical
 Genius of all time. Professor G. Oyibo has been
 recognized by the Nigerian Senate, representing the entire
 population of Nigeria of over 200 million people, through a
 Senate Motion No. 151 page 320 presented in the Federal
 Republic of Nigeria Order Paper on Tuesday, 15th March,
 2005."
 Farooq
 If the above is not proof of a man who is
 truly in need of psychiatric help, I don't know what
 is. 
 Farooq A. Kperogi, Ph.D.Associate ProfessorJournalism & Emerging
 Media
 School of Communication &
 MediaSocial Science
 Building Room 5092 MD
 2207402
 Bartow Avenue
 Kennesaw
 State University
 Kennesaw, Georgia, USA
 30144
 Cell: (+1) 404-573-9697
 Personal
 website: https://na01.safelinks.protection.outlook.com/?url=www.farooqkperogi.comTwitter&data=01%7C01%7Cemeagwali%40ccsu.edu%7C78061827437a4607d82208d5468f306c%7C2329c570b5804223803b427d800e81b6%7C0&sdata=3aAv3kED%2Fq7jTFPbqTVNmx5Hq8KFS79zaG3YCTRflgM%3D&reserved=0: @farooqkperogAuthor of Glocal English: The Changing Face and Forms
 of Nigerian English in a Global World
 
 "The nice thing about pessimism is that
 you are constantly being either proven right or pleasantly
 surprised." G. F. Will
 
 
 On Mon, Dec 18, 2017 at
 6:30 AM, Toyin Falola <toyinfalola@austin.utexas.edu
 > wrote:
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 Moses and
 Farooq:
  
 Allow me to complicate this a
 little further, and do please respond in a way to push the
 debate.
  
 Can we not argue that those who
 behave in making the grandiose claims, if they are true as
 you both have analyzed, deserve our sympathy: that they are
 actually sick, somewhat like Trump, and we need to help
  them. I don't know how to help them. But should we treat
 them as normal? If you are not based at Oxford, and you
 deceive yourself and others to the level of giving a
 Convocation Lecture, is this not a sort of
 madness?
  
 I once alerted some institutions
 that a Nigerian guy based in Houston is not a surgeon. He
 made bogus claims, and was actually capable of giving
 lectures. It cost me three visitations to him to realize
 that
  he failed in medical school, but continued to see himself
 as a surgeon who won the Nobel Prize!  I am sorry to say
 this in public: he once came to my annual conference in a
 nice car, announced his wealth and position. Guess what, he
 took women home, professional
  women with PhDs. I apologize for saying this, but it has to
 be said. When I told one of the women that the man was fake,
 he abused me to high heavens, saying that I am jealous.
 Well, when she was abandoned in a hotel room as the man fled
 and she was asked
  to pay, I did, as this is what Jesus Christ taught me to do
 in the Book of Matthew.
  
 I do have a former graduate
 student who goes every day to check his mail box, saying
 that he is expecting a job from Yale and Princeton. When I
 asked him if he applied, he said "no". He said they are
 bound
  to offer him a job as he is the best historian in the
 world.  He continues to talk like this, and recently in
 Chicago, he was looking for his name in the list of
 Herskovits winners.
  
 Are we dealing with fraud or
 should we approach it from larger serious mental
 problems?
  
 It is one thing to day dream; it
 is another thing to have exaggerated ambitions. But to make
 bogus claims speaks to the state of mental
 health.
  
 TF
  
 
 
 
 Toyin Falola
 
 
 Department of History
 
 
 The University of Texas at
 Austin
 
 
 104
 Inner Campus Drive
 
 
 Austin,
 TX 78712-0220
 
 
 USA
 
 
 512
 475 7224
 
 
 512
 475 7222 (fax)
 
 
 https://na01.safelinks.protection.outlook.com/?url=http%3A%2F%2Fsites.utexas.edu%2Fyoruba&data=01%7C01%7Cemeagwali%40ccsu.edu%7C78061827437a4607d82208d5468f306c%7C2329c570b5804223803b427d800e81b6%7C0&sdata=0AlXwCd8CkEzK9UBJseuwbYnRBMyEE0b3X5nPrekDn4%3D&reserved=0
 -studies-review/
 
 
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 ces/africa  
 
 
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 /USAAfricaDialogue   
  
 
 From: dialogue <usaafricadialogue@googlegroup
 s.com> on behalf of agbetuyi <yagbetuyi@hotmail.com>
 
 Reply-To: dialogue <usaafricadialogue@googlegroup
 s.com>
 
 Date: Monday, December 18, 2017 at 5:15 AM
 
 To: dialogue <usaafricadialogue@googlegroup
 s.com>
 
 Subject: Re: USA Africa Dialogue Series - Remember
 Enoch Opeyemi Who Claimed to have Solved the Riemann
 Hypothesis?
 
 
  
 
 
 Let us remember that it is
 not only the Nigerian media that is gullible on these claim
 a section of the international media (the BBC) is too.  So
 let us not essentialise Nigerian
 gullibility.
 
 
  
 
 
 Forget about the Yale
 doctoral student as Opeyemi would want us to, what is the
 position of  the Nigerian academic mathemical community on
 all of these?
 
 
  
 
 
 I think this is where the
 emphasis should lie.  Claims are being made tangentially in
 their name by someone supposedly one of their own.  As far
 as they are concerned do the claims hold?  It is not the
 members of a listserve that should
  riddle the claims with holes.Two years is sufficient for
 them to do their job thoroughly.   They should take the
 lead.
 
 
  
 
 
  
 
 
  
 
 
  
 
 
 
 Sent from my Samsung
 Galaxy smartphone.
 
 
 
  
 
 
  
 
 
 -------- Original message
 --------
 
 
 From: Ibukunolu A Babajide
 <ibk2005@gmail.com>
 
 
 
 Date: 18/12/2017 10:39
 (GMT+00:00)
 
 
 To: USAAfricaDialogue
 <usaafricadialogue@googlegroup
 s.com>
 
 
 
 Subject: Re: USA Africa
 Dialogue Series - Remember Enoch Opeyemi Who Claimed to have
 Solved the Riemann Hypothesis?
 
 
 
  
 
 
 
 
 Farooq,
 
 
  
 
 
 You have unearthed the
 anti-intellectualism that has garrotted the throat of the
 Nigerian intellectual space.  It is all signs and wonders
 and miracles without exertion.  I am glad you have
 refreshed our collective memory of the father
  of the Internet fraud by Phillip Emegwali and the GO
 Adeboye claim that he drove his jeep for 200miles without
 fuel.  A few like Abalaka also rode on the HIV-AIDS lie
 bandwagon.
 
 
  
 
 
 My consternation is how
 gullible the Nigerian public space can be with people
 defending these charlatans and their incredulous statements
 with all the energy and life in them.  How can we develop
 as a country when our minds are slothfully
  reliant on miracles signs and wonders and we are too lazy
 to think straight.  That is why every Ponzi scheme and get
 rich quick snake oil scams take root easily and destroy
 Nigerians.  The reason is that we are intellectually lazy
 and we always want miracles
  to inure to our benefit.
 
 
  
 
 
 I only this morning asked
 a zealot friend of mine where it is written that we must
 tithe and he informed me that he does not need the
 scriptures to inform him anymore because the holy spirit
 puts the truth on his heart.  Pure hogwash! 
  When they are pinned to the wall they resort to magical
 spiritism.
 
 
  
 
 
 I know you and I has
 departed ways on your attempt to be the gate-keeper of
 English language and grammar and your unabashed pro-Atiku
 political grandstanding in the past but on this one where
 you expose intellectual 419ers, I am solidly
  behing you like the hump of the camel.  More grease to
 your elbows as you expose more liars and
 charlatans!
 
 
  
 
 
 Cheers.
 
 
  
 
 
 IBK
 
 
  
 
 
  
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
  
 
 
  
 
 
 _________________________
 
 
 Ibukunolu Alao Babajide
 (IBK)
 
 
 (+2348061276622)
 
 ibk2005@gmail.com
 
 
 
 
  
 
 On 16 December 2017 at
 21:26, Farooq A. Kperogi <farooqkperogi@gmail.com>
 wrote:
 
 
 
 Remember
 Enoch Opeyemi Who
  Claimed to have Solved the Riemann
 Hypothesis?
  
 By Farooq A. Kperogi,
 Ph.D.
 
 
 Twitter:@farooqkperogi
 
 
  
 
 
 Two years ago, a certain Dr. Enoch
 Opeyemi who teaches mathematics at the Federal University in
 Oye-Ekiti suckered the Nigerian and British
  media into believing that he had solved the 156-year-old
 Riemann Hypothesis and would earn the $1 million prize for
 this "feat" from the US-based Clay Mathematics
 Institute.
 
 
  
 
 
 In my November 21, 2015 column
 titled, "'Mathematical'
  Enoch Opeyemi and the Making of Another Nigerian
 Intellectual 419er," I pointed out that Opeyemi's
 claims didn't stand up to scrutiny. "The moment I read
 about Dr. Enoch Opeyemi's claim to have solved the
 156-year-old Riemann Hypothesis in the Vanguard
  of November 15, 2015, I didn't need to read a second
 opinion to know it was suspect at best and fraudulent at
 worst," I wrote.
 
 
 
 
  
 
 
 Certain credulous Nigerians
 attacked me for this. The more reasonable ones among them
 said since the Clay Mathematics Institute said it
  would reward any claim to have solved the hypothesis only
 if such a claim is published in a reputable mathematical
 journal and remains unchallenged in the mathematical
 scholarly community for two years, I should wait two years
 before pronouncing Opeyemi a
  delusional scammer.
 
 
  
 
 
 Well, I have waited two years. I
 checked the website of the Clay Mathematics Institute, and
 the Riemann Hypothesis that Opeyemi claimed
  to have solved two years ago is still listed as
 "unsolved." So, clearly, Opeyemi fooled the
 Nigerian and British media who in turn fooled the world.
 Some of us who
  saw through the chicanery and pointed it out were called
 cynical, negative, hypercritical, and even accused of being
 jealous of a high-achieving Nigerian
 scholar.
 
 
  
 
 
 When Opeyemi's claims invited a
 critical mass of scrutiny from sundry scholars and
 commentators, he chose to grant
  a TV interview to a popular Nigerian pastor by the
 name of Sunday Adelaja. During the interview, Opeyemi made
 even more ridiculous claims that, frankly, call his very
 sanity into question.
 
 
  
 
 
 A Yale University PhD student in
 mathematics, for instance, was particularly clinical in
 tearing Opeyemi's claims to shreds. In his attempt
  to undermine the Yale University PhD student during the TV
 interview, Opeyemi said PhD students don't publish in
 scholarly outlets until they have defended their doctoral
 dissertations, and that his challenger wasn't worthy of
 any attention.
 
 
  
 
 
 It takes unusual ignorance for a
 person who supposedly has a PhD to make that kind of
 outrageously fallacious claim. In many PhD programs
  in the US students are not allowed to graduate until they
 have published in well-regarded academic journals. This is
 especially true of the hard
 sciences.
 
 
  
 
 
 It also turned out that Opeyemi
 plagiarized a paper on the Riemann Hypothesis and uploaded
 it onto his
 academia.edu page. (It
 isn't clear if it was the plagiarized paper he presented
 as his "solution" to the Riemann Hypothesis). When
 Adelaja asked him about this, his defense was that the
 plagiarized paper on
  his academia.edu page was
 uploaded by someone who hacked into his account! But the
 plagiarized paper had been on his
 academia.edu page months
 before he attracted attention to himself through his false,
 ridiculous claims.
 
 
  
 
 
 I am dredging up this issue for
 two related reasons. One, we tend to be amnesic, and because
 we're amnesic we continually fall victim
  to the same cheap scam tactics. To rejig the memories of
 people who forgot about this issue, here is an abridged
 version of my
 November 21, 2015 column:
 
 
  
 
 
 Now, Opeyemi's only evidence for
 claiming to have solved the Riemann Hypothesis was that he
 presented a paper on the puzzle at the International
  Conference on Mathematics and Computer Science in Vienna,
 Austria.
 
 
  
 
 
 Well, it has turned out that the
 conference itself may be a borderline scam operation. An
 August 20, 2011 blog post titled "Fake Paper
  Accepted by Nina Ringo's Vienna Conference" revealed
 that a scientist by the name of Mohammad Homayoun who was
 suspicious of the genuineness of the International
 Conference on Mathematics and Computer Science (ICMC)
 decided to test his suspicion by submitting
  a fake, worthless, nonsensical paper to the conference to
 see if it would be accepted or
 rejected.
 
 
  
 
 
 The researcher's hunch was
 accurate: the ICMC in Vienna appears to be an elaborate,
 money-making scholarly scam. His paper was accepted
  even though it was intentionally nonsensical. "The
 conference claims that submissions/papers are
 reviewed/refereed BUT they are not," the researcher wrote.
 "A fake paper was submitted for evaluation to
 intercomp2011@gmail.com
 on Sun, Jan 2, 2011. The notification of acceptance was
 received on Sun, Jan 9, 2011." That's just one week of
 "peer review."
 
 
  
 
 
 But even if the conference were
 genuine, and it could very well be, you can't prove
 something as momentous as a 156-year-old mathematical
  problem with a mere conference presentation. In the rituals
 of knowledge production in academe, for any claim to be
 taken seriously, it has to be published in a well-regarded,
 peer-reviewed outlet, such as a journal. This is elementary
 knowledge…
 
 
  
 
 
  My sense is that Dr. Opeyemi
 genuinely fancies himself as having solved this mathematical
 puzzle, and his self-construal of his intellectual
  machismo got a boost when his paper got accepted for
 presentation at a conference in Vienna, Austria. In the now
 rampant xenophilic academic culture in Nigeria that
 uncritically valorizes the foreign, for one's paper to
 be accepted at an "international" (read:
  white) academic conference is seen as an endorsement of
 one's peerless scholarly
 prowess. 
 
 
  
 
 
 Never mind that many of these
 "international" conferences and journals are actually
 fraudulent.
 
 
 When naive xenophilia seamlessly
 commingles with the kind of mortifyingly cringe-worthy
 credulity that pervades the Nigerian media landscape
  AND the progressive dearth and death of basic fact-checking
 in even international media outlets like the BBC, you end up
 with embarrassing stories like
 this.
 
 
  
 
 
 This is not the first time this
 has happened. In July 2011, another Nigerian academic by the
 name of Michael Atovigba claimed to have
  solved the same Riemann Hypothesis. The ever so gullible
 Nigerian media believed and celebrated him. The reason
 Atovigba convinced himself that he had solved the
 mathematical puzzle that Opeyemi now also claims to have
 solved was that his paper (which has
  only seven references, four of which are from Wikipedia!)
 was found "worthy" of publication in an
 "international" journal, which turned out to be a
 notoriously worthless, predatory, bait-and-switch
 Pakistan-based journal that masquerades as a UK
 journal….
 
 
  
 
 
 Atovigba told the (Nigerian)
 Guardian that he would get his $1 million reward from the
 Clay Mathematics Institute now that he had published
  his "proof" in a "reputable international journal."
 Four years after, another deluded Nigerian "scientist"
 claims to have proved the same hypothesis for which Atovigba
 is still expecting his $1 million, and the media's
 legendary amnesia ensures that these
  clowns continue to expose Nigeria and Nigerians to
 international ridicule. Incredible!
 
 
  
 
 
 What is even more incredible is
 that a Nigerian BBC correspondent's story on Opeyemi,
 inspired by Vanguard's initial reporting (which
  was itself instigated by Opeyemi himself), has caused the
 British media to perpetrate Opeyemi's misrepresentation.
 Now, the British media's uncritical echoing of Opeyemi's
 initial lie is invoked as evidence to lend credibility to
 his claims to a non-existent
  feat. It has become one labyrinthine network of tortuous,
 self-reinforcing falsehoods. Only Philip Emeagwali's
 carefully packaged fraud outrivals
 this.  
  
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 Farooq A. Kperogi,
 Ph.D.
 
 
 Associate
 Professor
 
 Journalism & Emerging Media
 
 School of Communication & Media
 
 
 Social Science
 Building 
 
 
 Room 5092 MD
 2207
 
 
 402
 Bartow Avenue
 
 Kennesaw
 State University
 
 
 
 Kennesaw,
 Georgia, USA 30144
 
 Cell: (+1)
 404-573-9697
 
 Personal website:
 https://na01.safelinks.protection.outlook.com/?url=www.farooqkperogi.com&data=01%7C01%7Cemeagwali%40ccsu.edu%7C78061827437a4607d82208d5468f306c%7C2329c570b5804223803b427d800e81b6%7C0&sdata=bDQTIaJ4bze9QwpUM5JUPL%2B347pb%2FZFDeSmIPgnuBkk%3D&reserved=0
 
 Twitter:
 @farooqkperog
 
 
 Author of
 Glocal
  English: The Changing Face and Forms of Nigerian English in
 a Global World
 
 
 
 "The nice thing about
 pessimism is that you are constantly being either proven
 right or pleasantly surprised." G. F. Will
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
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