Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Diego Saá

The following discussion is an archived debate of the proposed deletion of the article below. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as the article's talk page or in a deletion review). No further edits should be made to this page.

The result of the debate was delete. Mailer Diablo 00:02, 23 March 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Diego Saá

The article does not provide any evidence that Diego Saá has any publications in peer-reviewed journals, nor does it indicate that any notable scholars have cited and discussed his work. (As User:Dmharvey notes on the talk page, ArXiv.org e-print archive is not peer-reviewed; any registered user can upload a paper and have it appear within hours.) Searching for "Diego Saá" on Google Scholar yields only 11 hits, some of which are clearly not relevant. In short, the subject of the article does not appear to satisfy the usual notability criteria for academics. dbtfz^talk 06:00, 17 March 2006 (UTC)

• Provisional delete. If he's actually a full prof at Politecnico de Quito, I might have to consider if that's enough, but I can't find any confirmation of that alleged fact. Of the 11 hits referenced above, the only ones that appear to be by el nuestro are three crank papers (unless a CS prof is branching out into the effects of chlorine gas on children's airways—an important topic, I suppose, but who thinks of these things? not that it matters here). --Trovatore 06:30, 17 March 2006 (UTC)
  • Further comment of course, crank status alone is not reason to delete, but I don't see any evidence here of notable crankdom. --Trovatore 06:35, 17 March 2006 (UTC)
  • Comment He is listed as "principal a tiempo parcial" (whatever that means) of the Escuela Politecnica National at this page. I couldn't find any papers of his in Web of Sciece or MathSciNet. -- Jitse Niesen (talk) 12:20, 18 March 2006 (UTC)
• Delete non-notable crank. JoshuaZ 06:43, 17 March 2006 (UTC)
• Delete non-notable crank. linas 23:36, 17 March 2006 (UTC)
• Delete per above. --Khoikhoi 03:53, 18 March 2006 (UTC)
• Delete, nn crank. The only Google hits on the first page are from Wikipedia, WP mirrors, and similar open-content reference sites. Haikupoet 03:57, 18 March 2006 (UTC)
  • Comment. I'd prefer we didn't disparage the subject of the article with terms like "crank". There's no need for that. dbtfz^talk 04:30, 18 March 2006 (UTC)
    • "Crank" is an accepted term for anyone who espouses theories that do not pass muster in mainstream scientific thought. Haikupoet 04:39, 18 March 2006 (UTC)
      • That's a little like saying "asshole" is an accepted term for a person with poor social skills.  :-) I'm just pointing out that we could try to be a teensy bit more civil. dbtfz^talk 04:55, 18 March 2006 (UTC)
        • I tend to agree, and I apologize for using the term first. I certainly don't agree with Haikupoet's broad construction of the term. There is room for dissent in science, and even in math; civility aside, I don't use the word "crank" just for thought that differs from expert consensus. It's when they claim to have discovered simple mistakes in the established theory that, somehow, everyone else has just missed, that I think the "c" word is accurate. Whether it's good judgment to use it is a separate question. --Trovatore 05:05, 18 March 2006 (UTC)
        • WP:CIVIL Mainly applies to talking to/about other wikipedians. There is no issue if we are making vaiue judgements about people in articles. JoshuaZ 05:00, 18 March 2006 (UTC)
          • The two aren't always mutually exclusive.  :-) At any rate, I don't think that anyone here meant to be insulting or uncivil. dbtfz^talk 05:17, 18 March 2006 (UTC)
          • So just because WP:CIVIL applies only to Wikipedians, it means that it's okay to be uncivil toward others? —Larry V (talk) 22:11, 18 March 2006 (UTC)
            • If it is borderline uncivil and relevant yes. In this case, "crank" is a useful classification term. Do you have a prefered, more polite term? JoshuaZ 23:30, 18 March 2006 (UTC)
• Delete per nom. Melchoir 04:02, 19 March 2006 (UTC)

• Comment Before we make a judgment about this issue -and any other similar issue- we should be aware that throughout human history, many of our systems have not been correct. The systems through which humankind validates its science today are definitely far from being efficient. This sort of incorrectness led humanity to the Dark Ages before. We should begin to notice that Science is being taken to a sort of Dark Age in which it is becoming increasingly difficult to question the consensus. In present time, someone who actually challenges the consensus is never taken seriously. We also should be aware that through history; the consensus has held incorrect theories/conceptions as valid/correct for long periods of time (for instance Geocentrism and Creationism). There are several similarities between the way we treated new ideas and people during the Dark Ages and the way we treat them in the present time:
  • The inquisition condemned lots of people because their ideas differed from the expert consensus. In other words; their ideas differed from the church's opinion; so the church called them, not cranks, but heretics. Today, scientists whose ideas differ from the consensus rarely get published by peer reviewed journals.
  • It was not really relevant to the condemnation of someone that he was right or wrong about something. It was only relevant that his ideas weren’t conflicting with the consensus, and that the ecclesiastical authorities accepted his ideas.
  • To judge others, a person had to be part of the church. Today, to be a "notable scholar", a scientist has to agree with the consensus.

Does anyone think that maybe it would be better deciding to cease the existence of scientists in Wikipedia by judging their work instead of judging them in base of their so called notability? It would be good that a decision like this would be taken by someone who understands the ideas that the author has expressed as clearly as he can in his papers. Diegueins 21:20, 20 March 2006 (UTC)

• Delete. Spurred on by the above comment, I had a look at the ideas in one of Diego Saá's papers, and based my decision on them. -- Jitse Niesen (talk) 22:50, 20 March 2006 (UTC)
• Delete. Spurred on by Jitse, I decided to take a look at Saa's paper "Godel's theorem is invalid". I ended up being very not impressed. But that may be because I'm a "cantorian". --Chan-Ho (Talk) 19:26, 22 March 2006 (UTC)

The above discussion is preserved as an archive of the debate. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as the article's talk page or in a deletion review). No further edits should be made to this page.