Thesis Defense Horror Stories

A rich assortment of STEM thesis defense horror stories of the format, "Famous professor X disproved this guy's thesis at his defense in thirty seconds". An example:

A case I know of first-hand: A doctoral student in engineering developed some powerful pattern matching theorems based on various transformations including one that was introduced in a major conference paper. At the student's defense one of the examiners pointed out an example showing that the transformation doesn't have one of the key claimed properties. The student sat silent for a minute and then simply said that his thesis is wrong. The examiners were shocked and assured him that the situation couldn't be that bad. It turned out that it was that bad and the student did not complete his doctorate. Fortunately his advisor helped him land a good job in which he has established a successful career.

Computational Complexity

The Difference Between Humantities and Mathematics

Consider the charts of Polish national high-school exit exams below.

From Imgur. Discussion on Reddit.

How To Ruin Your Favorite Sitcoms With Simple Math

Math does not exist to make things better. It exists to empower you to tear things apart.

I support this message. 

It Can Never Lie To You

An very nice interview with Sylvia Serfaty, Paris-based mathematician, and winner of the Poincaré Prize:

“First you start from a vision that something should be true,” Serfaty said. “I think we have software, so to speak, in our brain that allows us to judge that moral quality, that truthful quality to a statement.”

At Wired.

The Nelson-Tao Case

A case that I read in the past, and have searched fruitlessly for months (or years) to cite-reference -- which I just found via a link on Stack Exchange (hat tip to Noah Snyder). Partly so I have a record for my own purposes, here's an overview:

In 2011 Edward Nelson, a professor at Princeton, was about to publish a book demonstrating a proof that basic arithmetic theory (the Peano Postulates) was essentially inconsistent. This started a discussion on the blog of John Baez, in which the eminent mathematician (and superb mathematical writer) Terry Tao spent some time trying to explain what was wrong with Nelson's proof. After about three cycles of back-and-forth, the end result was this:

You are quite right, and my original response was wrong. Thank you for spotting my error.

I withdraw my claim.

Posted by: Edward Nelson on October 1, 2011 1:39 PM

This is one of the best examples of what I personally call "the brutal honesty of mathematics". Read the whole exchange here on John Baez' site.