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Mochizuki’s paper seems like a debatable example. Many mathematicians have been baffled by the proof or ended up feeling that it was not that promising, even prior to attempting to do a detailed analysis. If it’s unrecoverable, then the community will look good for its hesitation. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15971802



Take for instance Wu-Yi Hsiang's suggested proof of the Kepler conjecture as a less controversial example.

Quoting from https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kepler_conjecture:

"The proof was praised by Encyclopædia Britannica and Science and Hsiang was also honored at joint meetings of AMS-MAA."

Which is followed, after a few sentences, by:

"The current consensus is that Hsiang's proof is incomplete."


Or Kempe's (mistaken) proof of the 4 color theorem.




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