When people bring this up, no one is arguing that Wolfram did not have a legal basis to sue or that the NDA was fabricated or anything like that. (Legally it may be questionable in some regards, and had it gone to trial Cook might’ve been vindicated or paid only trivial damages—what damages? - but that’s not the central issue here.)
They bring it up because it is a shocking violation of norms, even commercial ones because zero money was at stake (especially because), for a rich entrepreneur like Wolfram to so punitively use the court system to go after an employee like that for something so utterly academic & a truly microscopic detail of CS theory where he knows full well that it will cost them a ton of money to fight it even for just a settlement and where the lawsuit could accomplish no good (in the tiny world of CAs, surely most people interested heard from the conference or were there). This was not “a literary convention”; this was cruel and vindictive.
And also because Wolfram’s subsequent behavior and the text of NKS further demonstrated the self-aggrandizing behavior he was already infamous for. He knew many readers would know about the lawsuit, and would be examining the Rule 110 part closely. He nevertheless wrote NKS as it is: you can almost hear the teeth being pulled as he grudgingly mentions Cook at all instead of what was obviously the original plan (done with all the others) of just a brief mention of unspecified work, sort of like when a PI mentions a grad student in the acknowledgment section for ‘coding’ or ‘experiments’, using omission to take all the credit. NDA or no, that is not kosher citation. (Why don’t any of the others complain or document what they did? Maybe because Wolfram would frigging sue them! Most people would rather keep quiet to keep their retirement funds & house than risk liquidating their 401k or mortgaging their house to hire high-powered IP lawyers to fight the owner of a corp with annual revenue >$100m & software margins. Toxic.)
You link the endnotes, buried 1100 pages deep, where Wolfram spends much of it talking about how awesome he is for overseeing the proof (done [deep Wolfram sigh] by some irrelevant young guy named Cook—did I mention he was an assistant? because he was assisting me, Wolfram—who would have failed without the guidance of me, Wolfram, anyway enough about him), which is bad enough, but at least it does give Cook credit...? Except that in the main text Wolfram is silent and strongly implies he did it himself (referring to “several years of work” which in the context of discussing his own views & work on related problems over time any reader will take to mean that Wolfram did the rule 110 proof). It’s quite hilarious in its own way if you look at the NKS hits for ‘Cook’; Wolfram simply cannot mention or give any credit to Cook without jamming himself in:
History [of cyclic tag systems] Cyclic tag systems were studied by Matthew Cook in 1994 in connection with working on the rule 110 cellular automaton for this book.
The set (a) below was announced by Roger Penrose in 1994; the slightly smaller set (b) was found by Matthew Cook as part of the development of this book.
But I have been fortunate over the years to employ a variety of talented assistants, who have helped the project in many different ways: Eric Berg (project management, 2000–2001), Jason Cawley (historical and philosophical issues, 2001–2002 and before), Matthew Cook (technical content, particularly constructions and proofs, 1991–1998), Andrew de Laix (technical content and book production systems, 1998–2002), Matthew Frank (mathematical and historical issues, 2001–2002), Andrea Gerlach (fact finding and checking, 1999–2002), David Hillman (constructions and other technical content, 1997–2001), Scott Koranda (book production systems and project management, 1996–1998), Ed Pegg, Jr.
It would be so easy not to do any of that! He doesn’t mention the source for Penrose, just the date, he could easily have done the same thing for Cook—but he just can’t bring himself to leave himself out. It would be so easy to be a little more specific than ‘technical content’ (...what other content is there in NKS, exactly...), like ‘Rule 110 proof’ (which is 3 letters shorter, even, so he’s going out of his way to be vague and meanwhile raising questions about how many of the proofs were done by the others similarly cursorily dispensed with) - but he just cannot do it. Because he’s Wolfram.
I can (maybe/kinda) imagine someone else doing something like this and not definitely thinking it was wholly unjustified, but I agree now that this a damning part of a larger damning (and long enduring) pattern of bad behavior on Wolfram’s part.
I think I’m missing a LOT of context you have about this. I very well could be – probably am – missing some point, but I also feel like you’re discouraging me from voicing anything that doesn’t assume whatever your point is. Is it just that “Stephen Wolfram is bad and everyone should ignore him.”? I honestly tried to investigate this, however poorly I might have done that, but this comment comes across as pretty hostile. Is it your intention to dissuade me from writing about this at all?
They bring it up because it is a shocking violation of norms, even commercial ones because zero money was at stake, for a rich entrepreneur like Wolfram to so punitively use the court system to go after an employee like that for something so utterly academic & a truly microscopic detail of CS theory where he knows full well that it will cost them a ton of money to fight it even for just a settlement and where the lawsuit could accomplish no good (in the tiny world of CAs, surely most people interested heard from the conference or were there). This was not “a literary convention”; this was cruel and vindictive.
I don’t what norms you’re referring to!
But, AFAIK, some commercial norms do in fact condone or allow for aggressive enforcement of NDAs, even where there are is (obviously) “zero money at stake”. I also guessed that the point of the lawsuit was maybe (partially) about ‘enforcing NDAs generally’ too, which is also one way it could ‘accomplish good’ even tho it didn’t prevent dissemination of the info in the paper itself.
If a member of any other research team, in defiance of their team leader (‘lead/principle investigator’), published a paper describing work done on a team project, is there no recourse or punishment expected?
Do researchers have a blanket right to publish at any time, on their own, about work they’ve done as an employee? That’s surprising if true! I wouldn’t think that’s true even in purely academic organizations.
How do you know that Wolfram’s ‘original plan’ wasn’t to allow Cook to publish the paper of his proof after the release of NKS? Is there some reason why making Cook wait was unconscionable? I’m sincerely curious! What’s the big deal? Why was Cook waiting so bad that of course he should have been able to publish his paper whenever he wanted? Or was making him wait a year fine, but three (or more) not?
Why didn’t Cook just retract his paper and settle with Wolfram immediately? I couldn’t find any relevant details about the suit and it appeared to me that the records were sealed, so I’d guess only the people involved could answer.
I don’t understand your theory of Cook. Why did he publish the paper when apparently Wolfram, his employer, didn’t want him to do that? Why didn’t he just retract or withdraw his paper? Why was he in the right in all of this? (Was he in the right about this?) Should Wolfram have just ignored Cook publishing the paper? Why shouldn’t he have asserted his legal right to control when the paper was published? What’s different about this specific paper than others, in both academia and commercial research? What am I missing?
I am very sympathetic to the lawsuit being “cruel and vindictive”! But I’m also sympathetic to being “cruel and vindictive”. If a (hypothetical) employee of mine openly defied my orders, e.g. released info about work I’d paid them to do and told them not to publish – I’d be pissed! If they had signed a legal agreement to NOT do that kind of thing too, I suspect I’d think of suing them myself. That the project was a non-fiction book doesn’t seem like it’d make this that much different. If nothing else, Cook deprived Wolfram of being able to market NKS as announcing that particular result.
As for the citation/credit generally, NKS is a large book and, AFAICT, it was NOT intended to be an ‘academic’ work. Had it been written in that ‘style’, I’d guess it would have been WAY too big to have been published at all.
Is there in fact a reasonable way that Wolfram could have cited other’s works, and described the contributions to the book itself, that would work not only for the work done by Matthew Cook, but everyone else involved?
I still don’t know very many details of all the contributions to just the Rule 110 proof paper!
(I don’t even know what academic paper authorship means. AFAIK, it is somewhat specific to the field
I am happy to admit that it’s certainly very likely that Wolfram failed to properly cite other’s work, or fairly credit their contributions. I am very sure that he does in fact have a reputation for that.
He nevertheless wrote NKS as it is: you can almost hear the teeth being pulled as he grudgingly mentions Cook at all instead of what was obviously the original plan (done with all the others) of just a brief mention of unspecified work, sort of like when a PI mentions a grad student in the acknowledgment section for ‘coding’ or ‘experiments’, using omission to take all the credit. NDA or no, that is not kosher citation.
I can’t “almost hear the teeth being pulled” but I’m even more confused – is Wolfram’s own citations ‘merely’ as bad as that done by many other PIs? I can’t tell what standard you’re judging him by, or how well I should expect him to fare by it, especially given his reputation for doing poorly in this area.
What does the distribution of how well others do in this regard look like? Are, e.g. 95% of researchers, or authors of ‘pop science’ books, basically ‘perfect’? Is Wolfram uniquely terrible?
I also can’t see what you mean by Wolfram “jamming himself in” in any of the quotes you provided.
I also don’t know that Cook didn’t do other “technical content” besides the Rule 110 proof.
I thought Wolfram was clear about NKS being a ‘team effort’ so I still think it’s (somewhat) reasonable that a much longer and more detailed description of more precise contributions were omitted.
I think you are missing the point.
When people bring this up, no one is arguing that Wolfram did not have a legal basis to sue or that the NDA was fabricated or anything like that. (Legally it may be questionable in some regards, and had it gone to trial Cook might’ve been vindicated or paid only trivial damages—what damages? - but that’s not the central issue here.)
They bring it up because it is a shocking violation of norms, even commercial ones because zero money was at stake (especially because), for a rich entrepreneur like Wolfram to so punitively use the court system to go after an employee like that for something so utterly academic & a truly microscopic detail of CS theory where he knows full well that it will cost them a ton of money to fight it even for just a settlement and where the lawsuit could accomplish no good (in the tiny world of CAs, surely most people interested heard from the conference or were there). This was not “a literary convention”; this was cruel and vindictive.
And also because Wolfram’s subsequent behavior and the text of NKS further demonstrated the self-aggrandizing behavior he was already infamous for. He knew many readers would know about the lawsuit, and would be examining the Rule 110 part closely. He nevertheless wrote NKS as it is: you can almost hear the teeth being pulled as he grudgingly mentions Cook at all instead of what was obviously the original plan (done with all the others) of just a brief mention of unspecified work, sort of like when a PI mentions a grad student in the acknowledgment section for ‘coding’ or ‘experiments’, using omission to take all the credit. NDA or no, that is not kosher citation. (Why don’t any of the others complain or document what they did? Maybe because Wolfram would frigging sue them! Most people would rather keep quiet to keep their retirement funds & house than risk liquidating their 401k or mortgaging their house to hire high-powered IP lawyers to fight the owner of a corp with annual revenue >$100m & software margins. Toxic.)
You link the endnotes, buried 1100 pages deep, where Wolfram spends much of it talking about how awesome he is for overseeing the proof (done [deep Wolfram sigh] by some irrelevant young guy named Cook—did I mention he was an assistant? because he was assisting me, Wolfram—who would have failed without the guidance of me, Wolfram, anyway enough about him), which is bad enough, but at least it does give Cook credit...? Except that in the main text Wolfram is silent and strongly implies he did it himself (referring to “several years of work” which in the context of discussing his own views & work on related problems over time any reader will take to mean that Wolfram did the rule 110 proof). It’s quite hilarious in its own way if you look at the NKS hits for ‘Cook’; Wolfram simply cannot mention or give any credit to Cook without jamming himself in:
It would be so easy not to do any of that! He doesn’t mention the source for Penrose, just the date, he could easily have done the same thing for Cook—but he just can’t bring himself to leave himself out. It would be so easy to be a little more specific than ‘technical content’ (...what other content is there in NKS, exactly...), like ‘Rule 110 proof’ (which is 3 letters shorter, even, so he’s going out of his way to be vague and meanwhile raising questions about how many of the proofs were done by the others similarly cursorily dispensed with) - but he just cannot do it. Because he’s Wolfram.
I admit now that I was in fact missing the point.
I can (maybe/kinda) imagine someone else doing something like this and not definitely thinking it was wholly unjustified, but I agree now that this a damning part of a larger damning (and long enduring) pattern of bad behavior on Wolfram’s part.
You were right. I was wrong.
I think I’m missing a LOT of context you have about this. I very well could be – probably am – missing some point, but I also feel like you’re discouraging me from voicing anything that doesn’t assume whatever your point is. Is it just that “Stephen Wolfram is bad and everyone should ignore him.”? I honestly tried to investigate this, however poorly I might have done that, but this comment comes across as pretty hostile. Is it your intention to dissuade me from writing about this at all?
I don’t what norms you’re referring to!
But, AFAIK, some commercial norms do in fact condone or allow for aggressive enforcement of NDAs, even where there are is (obviously) “zero money at stake”. I also guessed that the point of the lawsuit was maybe (partially) about ‘enforcing NDAs generally’ too, which is also one way it could ‘accomplish good’ even tho it didn’t prevent dissemination of the info in the paper itself.
If a member of any other research team, in defiance of their team leader (‘lead/principle investigator’), published a paper describing work done on a team project, is there no recourse or punishment expected?
Do researchers have a blanket right to publish at any time, on their own, about work they’ve done as an employee? That’s surprising if true! I wouldn’t think that’s true even in purely academic organizations.
How do you know that Wolfram’s ‘original plan’ wasn’t to allow Cook to publish the paper of his proof after the release of NKS? Is there some reason why making Cook wait was unconscionable? I’m sincerely curious! What’s the big deal? Why was Cook waiting so bad that of course he should have been able to publish his paper whenever he wanted? Or was making him wait a year fine, but three (or more) not?
Why didn’t Cook just retract his paper and settle with Wolfram immediately? I couldn’t find any relevant details about the suit and it appeared to me that the records were sealed, so I’d guess only the people involved could answer.
I don’t understand your theory of Cook. Why did he publish the paper when apparently Wolfram, his employer, didn’t want him to do that? Why didn’t he just retract or withdraw his paper? Why was he in the right in all of this? (Was he in the right about this?) Should Wolfram have just ignored Cook publishing the paper? Why shouldn’t he have asserted his legal right to control when the paper was published? What’s different about this specific paper than others, in both academia and commercial research? What am I missing?
I am very sympathetic to the lawsuit being “cruel and vindictive”! But I’m also sympathetic to being “cruel and vindictive”. If a (hypothetical) employee of mine openly defied my orders, e.g. released info about work I’d paid them to do and told them not to publish – I’d be pissed! If they had signed a legal agreement to NOT do that kind of thing too, I suspect I’d think of suing them myself. That the project was a non-fiction book doesn’t seem like it’d make this that much different. If nothing else, Cook deprived Wolfram of being able to market NKS as announcing that particular result.
As for the citation/credit generally, NKS is a large book and, AFAICT, it was NOT intended to be an ‘academic’ work. Had it been written in that ‘style’, I’d guess it would have been WAY too big to have been published at all.
Is there in fact a reasonable way that Wolfram could have cited other’s works, and described the contributions to the book itself, that would work not only for the work done by Matthew Cook, but everyone else involved?
I still don’t know very many details of all the contributions to just the Rule 110 proof paper!
(I don’t even know what academic paper authorship means. AFAIK, it is somewhat specific to the field
I am happy to admit that it’s certainly very likely that Wolfram failed to properly cite other’s work, or fairly credit their contributions. I am very sure that he does in fact have a reputation for that.
I can’t “almost hear the teeth being pulled” but I’m even more confused – is Wolfram’s own citations ‘merely’ as bad as that done by many other PIs? I can’t tell what standard you’re judging him by, or how well I should expect him to fare by it, especially given his reputation for doing poorly in this area.
What does the distribution of how well others do in this regard look like? Are, e.g. 95% of researchers, or authors of ‘pop science’ books, basically ‘perfect’? Is Wolfram uniquely terrible?
I also can’t see what you mean by Wolfram “jamming himself in” in any of the quotes you provided.
I also don’t know that Cook didn’t do other “technical content” besides the Rule 110 proof.
I thought Wolfram was clear about NKS being a ‘team effort’ so I still think it’s (somewhat) reasonable that a much longer and more detailed description of more precise contributions were omitted.