Comment on ``Unilateral global bifurcation from intervals for fourth-order problems and its applications'' (Q2398753)

Summary: In recent papers \textit{W. Shen} and \textit{T. He} [Bound. Value Probl. 2016, Paper No. 41, 22 p. (2016; Zbl 1335.34053)] and \textit{G. Dai} and \textit{X. Han} [Appl. Math. Comput. 219, No. 17, 9399--9407 (2013; Zbl 1294.34017)] established unilateral global bifurcation result for a class of nonlinear fourth-order eigenvalue problems. They show the existence of two families of unbounded continua of nontrivial solutions of these problems bifurcating from the points and intervals of the line trivial solutions, corresponding to the positive or negative eigenvalues of the linear problem. As applications of this result, these authors study the existence of nodal solutions for a class of nonlinear fourth-order eigenvalue problems with sign-changing weight. Moreover, they also establish the Sturm type comparison theorem for fourth-order problems with sign-changing weight. In the present comment, we show that these papers of above authors contain serious errors and, therefore, unfortunately, the results of these works are not true. Note also that the authors used the results of the recent work by \textit{G. Dai} [``Spectrum of Navier \(p\)-biharmonic problem with sign-changing weight'', Preprint, \url{arXiv:1207.7159}] which also contain gaps.