Quote:
Originally Posted by tompe
The main purpose is probably not to guard against corruption. What you want to do is being able to check that your copy of the paper corresponds to the original. You need to check that you do not have the wrong version of the paper or a version that have been changed.
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I have to agree with tompe. Scientific papers often go through multiple revisions, particularly if they're being published in a journal, so the signature is a good way to ensure that you're reading the version that you think you're reading. It can also be used to ensure that you're reading an authorized (i.e. not necessarily final, but at least unmodified according to the authors) version of the article. It can protect from randomized corruption, but chances are that randomized corruption would either be rejected by the renderer (if programmed properly) or rejected by the user (if reading carefully).