Reinventing nonprofit theory

Read and learn from the following story in the 2/16 New Scientist:

Richard Taylor alerts us to a blog post by an American physics student in England last year at http://fliptomato.wordpress.com about a 1994 paper by M. M. Tai entitled: "A mathematical model for the determination of total area under glucose tolerance and other metabolic curves" (Diabetes Care, vol 17, p 152).

Just what is it about Tai's finding that has made it worth a mention after all this time? As Flip Tomato suggests, let's substitute a variable in the title: "A mathematical model for the determination of total area under x curves". Now, anyone who persisted with mathematics into their late teens may recognise that Tai has reinvented integration. That would be the mathematics of finding areas under curves, as originally devised by Isaac Newton and/or Gottfried Leibnitz - in the 1670s.

To be fair to Diabetes Care's readers, some of those commenting on the article noted this. Even so, Flip Tomato found 75 papers citing what Tai calls "the Tai method", and when Feedback looked there appeared be up to 90 that reference it.

That so many still cite a paper that "discovers" something mathematicians have known for three centuries makes the case, as Flip Tomato notes, for "the importance of interdisciplinary communication".