Some people compose music or make YouTube videos for a hobby. That’s Brandon Yates’ job — so in his spare time, he tries his hand at theoretical physics. But his only published paper was questioned because of his lack of professional training in the field — despite the physicist who inspired his work saying the work looks legitimate.
Based in Las Vegas, Yates earns a living as a composer for the animated series called “Death Battle.” He also has had an “intuitive understanding of, and love for, General Relativity for as long as I can remember,” he told Retraction Watch. But he has no formal training in physics and is self-taught, he said.
After watching a video lecture series online by Canadian physicist Eric Poisson, in January, Yates built a computer algebra program to look into rules in general relativity used to fuse two spacetimes across a thin shell, Yates said. By March, he had come across a conditional result he believed to be novel.
He spent a few weeks trying to understand his finding, “and then sat on it a couple more weeks for a literature search and to decide whether to submit a paper despite my station,” Yates told us. He submitted his findings to the International Journal of Geometric Methods in Modern Physics and said the peer reviewers asked only for a few “presentational” fixes, including that he hadn’t used his key words enough.
While the paper was under review, Yates posted on X in March asking for an endorsement so he could post a preprint on arXiv, which requires such backing for new authors.
General relativity is a popular topic for amateur physicists or people working outside their expertise. Regardless of his lack of formal training, Yates’ paper on vanishing surface density in generalized Vaidya spacetimes was published on June 20, listing him as an independent researcher.
“It’s probably worth making explicit that I have no incentive to fudge anything. I’m successful in another field and already have a thriving career,” Yates told us.
The day after it was published, a physicist who declined to give us his full name because he “would like to focus quietly on my academic research without troubles,” emailed the journal to express concern that Yates “appears to have no formal education in any STEM-related field.”
“This lack of background, coupled with the highly technical nature of the work, strongly indicates that the manuscript was likely generated using an aggressive, AI-assisted workflow by someone outside the scientific community (specifically, a professional musician),” the physicist wrote.
Yates told us he used a generative AI tool, but within the confines of what is acceptable at the journal. The AI “was limited to assistance with phrasing in academic register, LaTeX formatting/typesetting, and assistance preparing the Python verification script,” he said. “The mathematical claims are supported by the exact symbolic verification materials and do not depend on AI output.”
Francesco Bajardi, co-executive editor at the International Journal of Geometric Methods in Modern Physics, told us the journal’s review of the article “has not identified evidence suggesting improper use of AI, though we cannot state this with certainty.”
“However, the lack of affiliation and background are clearly suspicious,” Bajardi said. He told us the journal was no longer investigating the article because “there is no certain proof that the manuscript has been entirely written by AI.”
Poisson, whose work inspired Yates, told us the paper “doesn’t reveal any red flag that suggests to me a major AI involvement.” He noted the work “describes a rather straightforward exercise in applying junction conditions in general relativity, with no particular interest nor novelty, but I see nothing objectionable about it,” he said.
Yates told us “there was never a grand plan here. I found a result I thought might be novel, did my best to turn it into a proper paper, and submitted it through the normal process.” He is now taking online courses so he “can pursue proper accreditation,” Yates said. “A BA, and later if I’m lucky, a PhD in mathematical or computational physics. I’m also actively seeking out a mentor, though I’ve had no luck so far.”
“I didn’t expect that working without a degree would turn a refereed paper into news,” he said. “I’m pursuing physics because it brings me joy, and submitted the paper when I’d found something.”
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If Wikipedia is to be believed, Albert Einstein published ground-breaking papers on the photoelectric effect, Brownian motion, the special theory of relativity and the equivalence of mass and energy in 1905, before being formally awarded a PhD in 1906. It’s not that the gentleman described in the article is a new Einstein – it sounds as though his research is rather routine, not ground-breaking at all. However, objecting that his paper shouldn’t have been published because he lacks the proper academic credentials is absurd, and snobbish. Talented amateurs have made major credentials in many fields. Charles Darwin, arguably the greatest biologist of all time, didn’t have a PhD, and studied theology rather than biology at university … Papers should be judged on their own merits, not on the basis of the letters (if any) after the names of their authors. That objection to the current paper is credentialism at its worst.
Reminds me a bit of the career path of this fellow, who came to science from music by way of bike racing:
https://www.relationrx.com/about/lindsay-edwards