Compare Fischer's rise from scratch when he started going to a chess club.
Yes, I agree that Fischer's early ascent was incredible.
But the controversy directly relates to Niemann's rise after hitting 2500. His progress until then was relatively unremarkable. His progress after that point was ... unprecedented.
It's an unfortunate coincidence (for Niemann) that his sudden acceleration began almost immediately after he was caught cheating online ...
PhD research is much more difficult than for a Masters, or should be. This from someone who has neither but who has a wife who told me after she completed her MSc that if she ever decided to do a PhD I had to stop her, using whatever persuasion or force that's necessary.
It's 'arder. The length of time it takes reflects that.
A PhD shouldn't have different research than a masters. I'm telling you this as someone who has 15+ years in academia, including research, graduate school, medical school, etc.
The research done is always based on the advisor's research. You can't magically change his research based on whether or not you are doing a masters or PhD. It will be the same type of research.
That being said, the difficult part of a PhD compared to a masters is the amount of research needed, not the level of arduous research.
A PhD requires more publications, more data collected, and more time.
This is all in hard sciences.
I do not know about other majors like english, history, or subjects like that.
The definition according to wikipedia is "a scientific and philosophical rule that entities should not be multiplied unnecessarily which is interpreted as requiring that the simplest of competing theories be preferred to the more complex or that explanations of unknown phenomena be sought first in terms of known quantities."
Hans has been playing well, beating players like Magnus and Aronian in important tournaments, but also losing to players like Fabiano. Just recently he lost against Fabiano with the white pieces.
This dude is not cheating OTB.
The witch hunt only exists because Magnus lost a game vs. Hans with the white pieces and now he's going out way to ruin his chess career because of a bruised ego.
That's the simplest and most logical explanation. Don't overcomplicate things.
And I say this as a master degree chemist and physician, often times the most simplest explanation is the most realistic.
"when you hear hooves, think horses, not zebras".
a few points that instantly came into my head when reading this:
1: Magnus has lost to lot's of young and up and coming players before, like Prag, Parham, etc. he had also Lost to Hans Niemann multiple times before his loss in the Sinqfield cup. This isn't about a bruised Ego, it makes no sense to claim it to be that. Someone who claims to be as intelligent as you should instantly negate that as a possibility.
2: You say Hans Niemann. has lost to people like Caruana. I dont even understand this point. Are you saying a cheater would just win against everyone? thats not smart cheating. A cheater, especially at the high GM level needs to be cautious and very gentle with the cheating otherwise its blatantly obvious.
Using Occams Razor here makes no sense because you can say the argument that he is cheating is much more simple than the one claiming he isn't cheating.
The definition according to wikipedia is "a scientific and philosophical rule that entities should not be multiplied unnecessarily which is interpreted as requiring that the simplest of competing theories be preferred to the more complex or that explanations of unknown phenomena be sought first in terms of known quantities."
Hans has been playing well, beating players like Magnus and Aronian in important tournaments, but also losing to players like Fabiano. Just recently he lost against Fabiano with the white pieces.
This dude is not cheating OTB.
The witch hunt only exists because Magnus lost a game vs. Hans with the white pieces and now he's going out way to ruin his chess career because of a bruised ego.
That's the simplest and most logical explanation. Don't overcomplicate things.
And I say this as a master degree chemist and physician, often times the most simplest explanation is the most realistic.
"when you hear hooves, think horses, not zebras".
a few points that instantly came into my head when reading this:
1: Magnus has lost to lot's of young and up and coming players before, like Prag, Parham, etc. he had also Lost to Hans Niemann multiple times before his loss in the Sinqfield cup. This isn't about a bruised Ego, it makes no sense to claim it to be that. Someone who claims to be as intelligent as you should instantly negate that as a possibility.
2: You say Hans Niemann. has lost to people like Caruana. I dont even understand this point. Are you saying a cheater would just win against everyone? thats not smart cheating. A cheater, especially at the high GM level needs to be cautious and very gentle with the cheating otherwise its blatantly obvious.
Using Occams Razor here makes no sense because you can say the argument that he is cheating is much more simple than the one claiming he isn't cheating.
I'm can't tell you why Magnus with the white pieces losing to Hans made him so angry, but it did. It clearly struck a chord with him. He didn't go after Hans until "after" he lost to him. That's a major sign of a bruised ego.
Sure, cheaters can cheat smart. If this was an online match, I'd say the chances of him cheating are very plausible, as Hans has cheated online before.
But this wasn't online. It was a secure area with many security checks in place. I don't know why people think he magically cheated OTB. That's not a realistic stance without any evidence. It's not even close to the most simple explanation.
The most simple explanation is Magnus lost fair and square.
It's that simple and reasonable.
It's like college students taking an exam online vs. in person.
Many college students are going to find a way to cheat on online exams, but the likelihood they are going to try that when proctors are watching in a classroom are extremely slim. It becomes drastically more difficult and unrealistic to do so. Only a small fraction of those who cheated online would attempt to cheat in person, probably less than 1%.
I just don't see any reason to believe Hans cheated OTB.
The game against Magnus itself isn't even remotely suspicious. Hans is roughly 2700, so him beating a 2800 isn't as crazy as people make it seem.
PhD research is much more difficult than for a Masters, or should be. This from someone who has neither but who has a wife who told me after she completed her MSc that if she ever decided to do a PhD I had to stop her, using whatever persuasion or force that's necessary.
It's 'arder. The length of time it takes reflects that.
A PhD shouldn't have different research than a masters. I'm telling you this as someone who has 15+ years in academia, including research, graduate school, medical school, etc.
The research done is always based on the advisor's research. You can't magically change his research based on whether or not you are doing a masters or PhD. It will be the same type of research.
That being said, the difficult part of a PhD compared to a masters is the amount of research needed, not the level of arduous research.
A PhD requires more publications, more data collected, and more time.
This is all in hard sciences.
I do not know about other majors like english, history, or subjects like that.
More evidence that you do not have the experience you claim.
(This criticism is from someone who has a PhD, publications, and more than 30 years of university teaching.)
PhD research is much more difficult than for a Masters, or should be. This from someone who has neither but who has a wife who told me after she completed her MSc that if she ever decided to do a PhD I had to stop her, using whatever persuasion or force that's necessary.
It's 'arder. The length of time it takes reflects that.
A PhD shouldn't have different research than a masters. I'm telling you this as someone who has 15+ years in academia, including research, graduate school, medical school, etc.
The research done is always based on the advisor's research. You can't magically change his research based on whether or not you are doing a masters or PhD. It will be the same type of research.
That being said, the difficult part of a PhD compared to a masters is the amount of research needed, not the level of arduous research.
A PhD requires more publications, more data collected, and more time.
This is all in hard sciences.
I do not know about other majors like english, history, or subjects like that.
More evidence that you do not have the experience you claim.
(This criticism is from someone who has a PhD, publications, and more than 30 years of university teaching.)
Nothing you say will change the fact those are my credentials.
I could sit here and spell every word wrong, say the sky is yellow, have a 100 chess rating, and those credentials would still be true.
My experience with people who question credentials is because they often disagree with you in some discussion and their thought process is "how can this person disagree with me and have credentials showing he is somewhat intelligent, this cant be!".
Notice how I don't question your credentials? It's partly because I don't care, but I also couldn't prove any different anyway even if I thought otherwise.
PhD research is much more difficult than for a Masters, or should be. This from someone who has neither but who has a wife who told me after she completed her MSc that if she ever decided to do a PhD I had to stop her, using whatever persuasion or force that's necessary.
It's 'arder. The length of time it takes reflects that.
A PhD shouldn't have different research than a masters. I'm telling you this as someone who has 15+ years in academia, including research, graduate school, medical school, etc.
The research done is always based on the advisor's research. You can't magically change his research based on whether or not you are doing a masters or PhD. It will be the same type of research.
That being said, the difficult part of a PhD compared to a masters is the amount of research needed, not the level of arduous research.
A PhD requires more publications, more data collected, and more time.
This is all in hard sciences.
I do not know about other majors like english, history, or subjects like that.
More evidence that you do not have the experience you claim.
(This criticism is from someone who has a PhD, publications, and more than 30 years of university teaching.)
Nothing you say will change the fact those are my credentials.
A master's in medicine? Or a PhD?
For a PhD in any field, the general expectation is that you have become a producer of knowledge. This can occur at the master's level, but generally the focus is on mastery of the skills that are the foundation for the production of knowledge.
There are exceptions even at the PhD level. In some cases, the PhD will be granted to someone who shows only mastery of basic research and data analysis skills. This example of a cookie-cutter application of a theory to a problem it clearly will not fit is a case in point: https://tigerprints.clemson.edu/arv_dissertations/523/
PhD research is much more difficult than for a Masters, or should be. This from someone who has neither but who has a wife who told me after she completed her MSc that if she ever decided to do a PhD I had to stop her, using whatever persuasion or force that's necessary.
It's 'arder. The length of time it takes reflects that.
A PhD shouldn't have different research than a masters. I'm telling you this as someone who has 15+ years in academia, including research, graduate school, medical school, etc.
The research done is always based on the advisor's research. You can't magically change his research based on whether or not you are doing a masters or PhD. It will be the same type of research.
That being said, the difficult part of a PhD compared to a masters is the amount of research needed, not the level of arduous research.
A PhD requires more publications, more data collected, and more time.
This is all in hard sciences.
I do not know about other majors like english, history, or subjects like that.
More evidence that you do not have the experience you claim.
(This criticism is from someone who has a PhD, publications, and more than 30 years of university teaching.)
Nothing you say will change the fact those are my credentials.
A master's in medicine? Or a PhD?
Masters in chemistry. Doctorate in medicine if that's what you consider physicians. Although Physicians often don't say they have a doctorate, they usually say MD or DO.
PhD research is much more difficult than for a Masters, or should be. This from someone who has neither but who has a wife who told me after she completed her MSc that if she ever decided to do a PhD I had to stop her, using whatever persuasion or force that's necessary.
It's 'arder. The length of time it takes reflects that.
A PhD shouldn't have different research than a masters. I'm telling you this as someone who has 15+ years in academia, including research, graduate school, medical school, etc.
The research done is always based on the advisor's research. You can't magically change his research based on whether or not you are doing a masters or PhD. It will be the same type of research.
That being said, the difficult part of a PhD compared to a masters is the amount of research needed, not the level of arduous research.
A PhD requires more publications, more data collected, and more time.
This is all in hard sciences.
I do not know about other majors like english, history, or subjects like that.
More evidence that you do not have the experience you claim.
(This criticism is from someone who has a PhD, publications, and more than 30 years of university teaching.)
I can add to what I wrote, though. It's only anecdotal but I believe it's correct. When my son was doing his PhD in Condensed Matter Physics, he struggled quite a lot. It took him six months, he told me, just to write down the initial equation which had to be solved. This even though he had the reputation of being one of the two best mathematicians ar St Andrews University and despite his Masters being in maths and not physics.
He told me that in practice, even the PhD students were streamed or segregated and the less able ones would get a less problematic piece of research; the aim being to test students to near their limits. His project was to represent magnetism in terms of fermionic spins. He says that he discovered a new state of matter through the equations he devised but it was extremely difficult. He says that the equation could also be written back to front ... that is, constants as variables and vice versa, but that the maths necessary to solve it that way round hasn't been devised yet. The proof isn't complete without that being done and then his equations used to predict metallic alloys for practical testing.
It certainly seems to me that that isn't Masters level. I did some original research as my own dissertation for my BA in philosophy and that was to a slightly less rigorous standard than Masters would require. No less accurate but the writing up didn't need to be so exact.
That is absolutely master level physics. I had advanced quantum chemistry colleagues and they had similar struggles to what you're describing.
PhD research is much more difficult than for a Masters, or should be. This from someone who has neither but who has a wife who told me after she completed her MSc that if she ever decided to do a PhD I had to stop her, using whatever persuasion or force that's necessary.
It's 'arder. The length of time it takes reflects that.
A PhD shouldn't have different research than a masters. I'm telling you this as someone who has 15+ years in academia, including research, graduate school, medical school, etc.
The research done is always based on the advisor's research. You can't magically change his research based on whether or not you are doing a masters or PhD. It will be the same type of research.
That being said, the difficult part of a PhD compared to a masters is the amount of research needed, not the level of arduous research.
A PhD requires more publications, more data collected, and more time.
This is all in hard sciences.
I do not know about other majors like english, history, or subjects like that.
More evidence that you do not have the experience you claim.
(This criticism is from someone who has a PhD, publications, and more than 30 years of university teaching.)
Nothing you say will change the fact those are my credentials.
A master's in medicine? Or a PhD?
Masters in chemistry. Doctorate in medicine if that's what you consider physicians. Although Physicians often don't say they have a doctorate, they usually say MD or DO.
Good use of Wikipedia.
For a PhD in any field, the general expectation is that you have become a producer of knowledge. This can occur at the master's level, but generally the focus is on mastery of the skills that are the foundation for the production of knowledge.
There are exceptions even at the PhD level. In some cases, the PhD will be granted to someone who shows only mastery of basic research and data analysis skills. This example of a cookie-cutter application of a theory to a problem it clearly will not fit is a case in point: https://tigerprints.clemson.edu/arv_dissertations/523/
Nothing is going to change the fact that master and PhD students continue the same research of their advisor, where the main difference is the length of the program and the fact you need more results for a PhD.
Literally if I wanted a PhD, I would have used the exact same data from my Masters, but would just spend a couple more years doing it.
PhD research is much more difficult than for a Masters, or should be. This from someone who has neither but who has a wife who told me after she completed her MSc that if she ever decided to do a PhD I had to stop her, using whatever persuasion or force that's necessary.
It's 'arder. The length of time it takes reflects that.
A PhD shouldn't have different research than a masters. I'm telling you this as someone who has 15+ years in academia, including research, graduate school, medical school, etc.
The research done is always based on the advisor's research. You can't magically change his research based on whether or not you are doing a masters or PhD. It will be the same type of research.
That being said, the difficult part of a PhD compared to a masters is the amount of research needed, not the level of arduous research.
A PhD requires more publications, more data collected, and more time.
This is all in hard sciences.
I do not know about other majors like english, history, or subjects like that.
More evidence that you do not have the experience you claim.
(This criticism is from someone who has a PhD, publications, and more than 30 years of university teaching.)
Nothing you say will change the fact those are my credentials.
A master's in medicine? Or a PhD?
Masters in chemistry. Doctorate in medicine if that's what you consider physicians. Although Physicians often don't say they have a doctorate, they usually say MD or DO.
Good use of Wikipedia.
Good use of 15+ years of academia.
Nothing is going to change the fact that master and PhD students continue the same research of their advisor, where the main difference is the length of the program and the fact you need more results for a PhD.
Literally if I wanted a PhD, I would have used the exact same data from my Masters, but would just spend a couple more years doing it.
Good, you can use the extra years you didn't spend working on a PhD to learn some basic logical skills so you will no longer misapply Occam's Razor 
For a PhD in any field, the general expectation is that you have become a producer of knowledge. This can occur at the master's level, but generally the focus is on mastery of the skills that are the foundation for the production of knowledge.
There are exceptions even at the PhD level. In some cases, the PhD will be granted to someone who shows only mastery of basic research and data analysis skills. This example of a cookie-cutter application of a theory to a problem it clearly will not fit is a case in point: https://tigerprints.clemson.edu/arv_dissertations/523/
Nothing is going to change the fact that master and PhD students continue the same research of their advisor, where the main difference is the length of the program and the fact you need more results for a PhD.
Literally if I wanted a PhD, I would have used the exact same data from my Masters, but would just spend a couple more years doing it.
Tell us more about this MA work.
Tell us more about this MA work.
Ah, that reminds me of when someone showed up for an interview and on his resume put that he had a "MA in Computer Science" from my alma mater. Needless to say, I had good fun with that interview ...
"Occam's razor is only relevant if the two theories predict identical results..."
https://www.theatlantic.com/science/archive/2016/08/occams-razor/495332/
For Hans to be cheating we have to intellectually invent several things: A device that can avoid detection, an accomplice, a way to communicate the current board position, a way to cheat that can outsmart algorithms reviewing his OTB games for engine moves. I think The OP's point is that by the time you construct that scenario you've added illogical complexity to solve the problem.
Carlsen offered a plausible (and relatively simple) way for a grandmaster to cheat at chess:
They simply need to be alerted when there is a winning opportunity on the board. No additional information, or moves, need to be given.
Just something as simple as a single vibration, on a critical move, is all that's needed.
After that, it's up to the grandmaster to use this extra information, to the best of his ability.
This method of cheating would almost certainly avoid detection, via game analysis.
Combine this with the statements of top players like Caruana, who suggested that the anti-cheating measures in place, before this whole controversy, were inadequate to catch anything sophisticated.
Also combine this with Niemann's repeated history of cheating in prize-money chess tournaments.
And combine that with Niemann's sudden Elo rise (unprecedented in history).
It seems well within reason to conclude that Niemann might have been dabbling in such a system, before security tightened.
The conclusion might prove incorrect, but it's certainly not as outlandish as some make it seem ...
For Hans to be cheating we have to intellectually invent several things: A device that can avoid detection, an accomplice, a way to communicate the current board position, a way to cheat that can outsmart algorithms reviewing his OTB games for engine moves. I think The OP's point is that by the time you construct that scenario you've added illogical complexity to solve the problem.
Carlsen offered a plausible (and relatively simple) way for a grandmaster to cheat at chess:
They simply need to be alerted when there is a winning opportunity on the board. No additional information, or moves, need to be given.
Just something as simple as a single vibration, on a critical move, is all that's needed.
After that, it's up to the grandmaster to use this extra information, to the best of his ability.
This method of cheating would almost certainly avoid detection, via game analysis.
Combine this with the statements of top players like Caruana, who suggested that the anti-cheating measures in place, before this whole controversy, were inadequate to catch anything sophisticated.
Also combine this with Niemann's repeated history of cheating in prize-money chess tournaments.
And combine that with Niemann's sudden Elo rise (unprecedented in history).
It seems well within reason to conclude that Niemann might have been dabbling in such a system, before security tightened.
The conclusion might prove incorrect, but it's certainly not as outlandish as some make it seem ...
Now that is interesting....
Compare Fischer's rise from scratch when he started going to a chess club.