As a mathematical physicist, it's fascinating to me that multiple people in this thread have reacted in this way. From a mathematician's point of view, there si

As a mathematical physicist, it's fascinating to me that multiple people in this thread have reacted in this way. From a mathematician's point of view, there simply isn't such a thing as "deflecting blame" for errors in a proof: if someone identifies a flaw in the reasoning, there's no sensible way of denying it. To the extent that they're based on math, the sciences often work in the same way (so physics comes closer than biology, for example). But clearly people who aren't specialists in math don't recognize that math is "special" in this way: it's just more academics arguing over ideas. I wonder if this is part of what feeds into public distrust in science, when that arises.