Math's no-scooping norm: young researchers protected, big open questions fair game

nihilunbounded · x · 2026-09-07

The thread's starting exchange: @littmath argues there's a norm against scooping young people on small problems, but definitely not against multiple people attacking a major open question—most problems have few people working on them only because math is huge. @nihilunbounded counters that it's not just young people: results can sit announced and talked about for two years before publication, and no one in good conscience would scoop once the talks present all the key ideas.

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