Pattern
Recognition
In 1993, a correspondent wrote to my firm in response
to an article about physicists pursuing chaos in financial markets and
said, "Like Alexander King’s story of the man in the isolated village in
Switzerland who unknowingly reinvented the typewriter, it looks like
these people are about to rediscover the Elliott wave." Rediscovery in
isolation may be excused. Knowing about a previous discovery and
claiming it for oneself may not.
In the latter 1980s, James Gleick made Mandelbrot
famous in a glowing New York Times article and his national best selling
book, Chaos. Gleick, an unabashed fan, was nevertheless compelled
to include this frank discussion of what fellow scientists saw as a
chronic and disturbing propensity of Mandelbrot’s:
Mandelbrot[’s]…book…rings with the first person:
I claim…I conceived and developed…and implemented…I have confirmed…I
show…I coined…." Wherever chaos led, Mandelbrot had some basis to
claim that he had been there first…. Even an admirer would cry with
exasperation, "Mandelbrot didn’t have everybody’s thoughts
before they did." [emphasis in the original]16
Whatever the extent of his proclivity, in this latest
article, he has overstepped the bounds of courtesy and honesty by an
unforgivable margin. This transgression is particularly glaring given
Mandelbrot’s own lifelong passion for demanding proper credit when it is
warranted. Gleick describes this ardor:
At the height of his success, he was reviled by
some colleagues, who thought he was unnaturally obsessed with his
place in history. They said he hectored them about giving due credit….
Sometimes when articles appeared using ideas from fractal geometry he
would call or write the authors to complain that no reference was made
to him or his book.17
Because R.N. Elliott is safely dead, he is unable to
exercise the same privilege. It is fortunate for the integrity of the
history of scientific discovery that some of us know the facts.
In an inset to his article, Mandelbrot asks us to
"pick the fake." This is a tempting invitation that I will avoid
answering out of deference to a brilliant scientist who has given the
world so much in advancing the science of fractal geometry. Yet after
giving the world so much, is it really necessary that he claim even
more? The 1993 book, Classics on Fractals,18 sets the
record straight regarding much of the history of work involving
fractals. My 1999 book,19 which discusses the vast
implications of Elliott’s work, credits Mandelbrot with his inarguably
great achievements. Can he not bring himself to do the same for his
predecessors?
Continue with
Prechter's Response
Scientific
Controversy Introduction - Mandelbrot's Article - Prechter's
Letter to the Editor - Prechter's Response
Follow-up Responses - Postscript - Mandelbrot's
Reply and Prechter's Response - Socionomics
