3 ms·

Kaluza's name is mentioned, but not Klein's, and there's no mention of their theory whatsoever. Kaluza-Klein theory is the archetype of expressing electromagne

by kmm 5y ago

Kaluza's name is mentioned, but not Klein's, and there's no mention of their theory whatsoever. Kaluza-Klein theory is the archetype of expressing electromagnetism purely through curvature, and I'd expect any paper doing the same to refer to it, as well as explain how the work in the paper differs from or expands on it. The fact that the metric proposed in the paper corresponds to the term added to the 4D spacetime part of the Kaluza-Klein metric is already suspicious. It makes me think they're either repeating Kaluza and Klein's work, or aren't properly citing it when they should have.

makeitdouble 5y ago
I have never been in academia and this is the first time it clicked to me that citing a paper is not just an act of mentioning it as a networking artefact, and should be critical to the substance. Thanks for the explanation.
codethief 5y ago
> I'd expect any paper doing the same to refer to it, as well as explain how the work in the paper differs from or expands on it. But they do: > The strength of the present approach is simplicity, there is no need for higher dimensions, torsion tensors, asymmetric metrics or the like. (emphasis mine) > The fact that the metric proposed in the paper corresponds to the term added to the 4D spacetime part of the Kaluza-Klein metric is already suspicious. Why? There aren't many ways to write down a symmetric 2-tensor starting with a vector field. > It makes me think they're either repeating Kaluza and Klein's work, or aren't properly citing it when they should have. They're doing neither. Sure, they might have mentioned Kaluza's work more explicitly (AFAIK Klein's contribution was the suggestion to compatify the 5th dimension) but I suppose 1) they assumed that readers are familiar with it and 2) they wanted to mention several approaches to marry GR and ED and Kaluza's approach was just one of them.

by kmm 5y ago

makeitdouble 5y ago

I have never been in academia and this is the first time it clicked to me that citing a paper is not just an act of mentioning it as a networking artefact, and should be critical to the substance. Thanks for the explanation.

codethief 5y ago

> I'd expect any paper doing the same to refer to it, as well as explain how the work in the paper differs from or expands on it. But they do: > The strength of the present approach is simplicity, there is no need for higher dimensions, torsion tensors, asymmetric metrics or the like. (emphasis mine) > The fact that the metric proposed in the paper corresponds to the term added to the 4D spacetime part of the Kaluza-Klein metric is already suspicious. Why? There aren't many ways to write down a symmetric 2-tensor starting with a vector field. > It makes me think they're either repeating Kaluza and Klein's work, or aren't properly citing it when they should have. They're doing neither. Sure, they might have mentioned Kaluza's work more explicitly (AFAIK Klein's contribution was the suggestion to compatify the 5th dimension) but I suppose 1) they assumed that readers are familiar with it and 2) they wanted to mention several approaches to marry GR and ED and Kaluza's approach was just one of them.