These slips from Quanta are puzzling. Quanta normally seems to be more meticulous about accuracy, and the author is a veteran.
The attraction of Quanta has always been that its writers seemed to have an intrinsic passion for math, treating it as more than just a gee-whiz topic to gloss over in between the latest panicked missives about politics and how cellphones are destroying our children. One of its most delightful qualities has been the consistent willingness to take a few extra sentences to explain even advanced concepts in a manner that is basically technically correct.
Certainly the article remains far better than the average mass media STEM writing, but Quanta should take greater care to keep their quality pristine. They have been utterly unique and have set the example for everyone else.
It's not entirely fair to call the second point a major slip. I think that it is still sort of inaccurate, but not exactly for the reason I had said above; see the thread following kevinventullo's comment below. In any case, my second point is sort of pedantic. I don't love the terminology used, but I wouldn't heap very much blame on the author.
The first one is a bit worse. I think if I had read this knowing nothing about convexity I would have gotten the wrong idea from the arbitrary choice of 1%. I understand the desire to simplify, but it is an art to simplify while keeping what you say technically correct. Quanta usually does an excellent job of this. I wouldn't say that the first point above is an egregious error by any means, but I think it is a slip.
Ian Petrow defines the Subconvexity Problem as "Prove non-trivial upper bounds for L-functions on the critical line" [1]
Given that, it seems fair-ish to say that Nelson solved the Subconvexity Problem. You just have to understand that the problem is really a family of problems of increasing hardness (e.g. prove tighter and tighter bounds), and solutions more powerful than Nelson's may come later.
By that definition, I agree, if you add the qualifier "Nelson solved the subconvexity problem for for automorphic L-functions."
I still think it's vague to talk about "the" subconvexity problem without specifying what variable you want the bound to be subconvex in, but, really, who am I to argue with Ian Petrow..!
Over the past few years, Quanta has become my go-to place for learning about current science developments. A decade or more Scientific American started focusing on their political agenda. And in the last year or two, American Scientist has been completely taken over by wokeness. I haven't found a better venue for pleasure-type learning about science than Quanta.
To be fair, I think there are economic conditions that drive the unfortunate situation. Quanta is very lucky to have enormous free support from a billionaire-funded foundation (Simons Foundation).
When publications become desperate for cash, they dive into the politics and culture war rathole.
The attraction of Quanta has always been that its writers seemed to have an intrinsic passion for math, treating it as more than just a gee-whiz topic to gloss over in between the latest panicked missives about politics and how cellphones are destroying our children. One of its most delightful qualities has been the consistent willingness to take a few extra sentences to explain even advanced concepts in a manner that is basically technically correct.
Certainly the article remains far better than the average mass media STEM writing, but Quanta should take greater care to keep their quality pristine. They have been utterly unique and have set the example for everyone else.