By Farooq A. Kperogi, Ph.D. Twitter: @farooqkperogi The moment I read about Dr. Enoch Opeyemi's claim to have solved the 156-yea...
By Farooq A. Kperogi,
Ph.D.
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.
You don’t need to
think too deeply to realize that Dr. Opeyemi is one heck of a hilariously
delusional intellectual scammer in the mold of Philip Emeagwali and Gabriel Oyibo. The second to the last paragraph in the Vanguard story that announced Opeyemi’s “mathematical genius” was
what did it for me. “Dr Enoch had previously… discovered a scientific technique
for detecting and tracking someone on an evil mission,” the report said. Seriously? How do you scientifically detect and track someone
on an “evil mission”? What is an “evil mission,” and what has science got to do
with that? No one with this kind of prescientific, atavistic mindset can be
trusted to have the cognitive capacity to solve an age-old mathematical puzzle
like the Riemann Hypothesis.
 |
| Dr. Enoch Opeyemi who claims to have solved the Riemann Hypothesis |
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.
In fact, a
spokesperson for the US-based Clay Mathematics Institute (CMI), which offers a
$1 million reward for anyone who can solve the Reimann Hypothesis, told CNN
that any claim to have proved the hypothesis “would need to be published in a
journal ‘of worldwide repute’ and accepted for two years within the mathematics
community before it would be considered.”
Opeyemi merely orally
presented what he claims is his proof of the hypothesis at a conference on November
11. As of the time of writing this column, there is no written record of the
paper Opeyemi presented at the conference, much less its publication in a
journal. He told CNN’s Thomas Page that his proof of the hypothesis is “due for publication by a
journal attached to the Vienna conference on December 1.” So why claim to have
solved a problem when you haven’t even gone through the basic protocols of scientific
verification? Even if Opeyemi has indeed proved the hypothesis, it would take
two years to earn the recognition and the reward. Why is he jumping the gun?
But, most importantly,
Opeyemi actually stands no chance of even being able to prove the hypothesis
because none of the journals published by the International Conference on
Mathematics and Computer Science is of “worldwide repute.” The conference’s
flagship journal, called the International Scientific Journal, isn’t even listed, much less ranked, in Scientific Journal Rankings (SJR), the most prestigious database that measures the
scientific impact and prestige of journals in the hard sciences.
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.
I wrote a
widely circulated article on August 13, 2011 titled “Bait-and-Switch Publishing: New Face of Academic Fraud” that exposed this fraud. Among other things, I
wrote: "Mr. Atovigba’s claims
to unparalleled mathematical genius might very well be true, but we have no way
of knowing this for certain because he chose to publish his 'record-breaking'
findings in the 'Research Journal of Mathematics and Statistics' owned by a
bait-and-switch publishing company called Maxwell Scientific Organization."
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. So sad!
Related Articles:
No comments
Share your thoughts and opinions here. I read and appreciate all comments posted here. But I implore you to be respectful and professional. Trolls will be removed and toxic comments will be deleted.