I found that a method I was hoping to publish is already known. What would be a proper way to retract emails sent to professors asking for help? Continuation of this post.
Basically, I emailed a publisher and two profs, asking for help on a paper I had written but not submitted. Turns out the method was not as novel as I thought, as an MSE post containing pretty much the same derivation was posted in 2016. Now, I'm trying to figure out how to break the news to them.
Off the top of my head, I considered saying &quot;actually found it's been done before&quot;, but not sure how good that sounds. Probably this is as bad as I think it sounds, but any advice making it sound the best?
Don't worry, we do that all the time (figuring out something has been done/shown before). It actually shows that you do your work.
Maybe give a link to the other solution/work as well in case they are interested (though this is coming from a very different field).