Post #4409552

When multiple researchers accomplish the same result, who is credited with priority? When I was a graduate student, the primary yardstick for priority was the date of publication in a peer-reviewed journal. Every so often, this would lead to a sordid drama in which a referee of a submitted paper was accused of using the ideas in that paper to rush out a competing paper to a faster journal. Within a decade, though, the arXiv preprint server, with its trusted submitted timestamp, supplanted the journal publication date. This largely solved the previous problem of being "scooped" by one's referees. However, it created a new problem of rushing to place a preprint on the arXiv as soon as possible. In recent months, even the arXiv has been deemed too slow for those racing to claim priority on AI-generated proofs, which are now often announced on social media without waiting for an arXiv submission (and definitely without waiting for a journal publication). This creates significant incentive to cut corners on all the later stages of proof development, such as verification, literature review, exposition, or digestion, to the point where such announcements become a net negative to the collective mathematical literature. I believe that the time has come to change the priority standard once again. To the extent that we need to compete to be "first" at all, we should no longer assign priority to the first to release a preprint, or even a formal proof certificate, as this devolves to a race to who can prompt their AI the fastest. Rather, priority should be awarded to the first author(s) who can present the results clearly in a scientific lecture (and, ideally, answer questions from the audience).