3) The main statement in the Science 1997 article[5] was that in Hilbert’s page proofs the explicit field equations cannot be found. It is improbable the editors and referees of Science had not required a copy of the page proofs, and they had remarked the cut-off and had insisted on mentioning it.
However, it is possible that personal relationships had exceptionally made a short-cut of the usual
refereeing procedures. An investigation at Science should be initiated. Perhaps a referee or the
editorial board is still in possession of an intact copy of the page proofs.
4) In this article a very minute comparison is made between the page proofs[2], the published
version[6] and the republished version[15] of 1924. In particular on p. 1272 middle column line 5,
the authors of the article[5] write:
“In the proofs of his first communication, Hilbert’s world function includes a gravitational term
pgK ...”.
However, they could not see that, because on the incomplete page proofs it cannot be found, and
as judged by the published version, it was stated on the cut-off.
5) The authors would have mentioned the cut off. For historians it would be an opportunity to
speculate and to publish about such a peculiarity in a historical document. On the contrary they
let the priority of its discovery to others.
6) Not mentioning the cut-off in an article, stating the whole historical document does not contain
the field equations, would be equivalent to a grossly unethical scientific behavior which would not
be committed without a strong motivation.
Thus CRS have been in possession of an intact copy of the page proofs. Since they have discovered
the page proofs shortly after 1994, the cut-off was not yet done before 1994.