Talk:Bogdanov Affair

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Help with this template Comments: edit – history – watch – refresh There is good info and a picture, but the article is getting very long. An infobox and more links would be helpful. Green caterpillar 02:11, 8 September 2006 (UTC)

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This article has been cited as a source by a media organization. See the 2006 press source article for details. The citation is in: Stephan Schreiber (2006-06-22). "L'affaire Bogdanov". Micro Hebdo.

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• Archive 1 From 04 August 2005 to 28 August 2005 (128 kb)
• Archive 2 From 01 September 2005 to 25 September 2005 (205 kb)
• Archive 3 From 24 September 2005 to 01 October 2005 (206 kb)
• Archive 4 From 01 October 2005 to 07 October 2005 (159 kb)
• Archive 5 From 07 October 2005 to 12 October 2005 (141 kb)
• Archive 6 From 12 October 2005 to 17 November 2005 (122 kb)
• Archive 7 From 17 November 2005 to 21 December 2005 (123 kb)
• Archive 8 From 22 December 2005 to 13 September 2006 (74 kb)

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Contents 1 Exegesis to fill a slow afternoon 2 Semi-protection 3 {{editprotected}} 4 Irrelevant aside? 5 Comment 6 "Topological origin of inertia" paper 7 External sources

[edit] Exegesis to fill a slow afternoon

I suspect I'm the only person in the world who cares to check up on these things, but that doesn't stop me boldly foraging through the mists of archived history. To wit:

• On 12 October 2005, EE Guy (talk • contribs) adds a brief note about the "Mathematical Center for Riemannian Cosmology", supposedly established in Latvia.
• The next day, Ze miguel (talk • contribs) appends the sentence, "However, in this case, no claim was made of an affiliation with an official University."

Oops. No claims were made, indeed, except by Igor Bogdanov in two distinct French Usenet groups. Details now included in the article. Quite an understandable mistake, to be sure, since it took me half an hour of bilingual Googling to find the original statements. Anville 19:32, 22 September 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Semi-protection

It's been more than a month since the last sockpuppet attack (last reversion). Maybe now is a good time to try un-semi-protecting the article, just to test the waters? Anville 18:34, 3 October 2006 (UTC)

User:Freakofnurture and I are discussing this here. Maybe it will happen, and maybe it won't. Meh. Anville 16:45, 5 October 2006 (UTC)

Okay, the sockpuppet theater is still staging the Tragedy of Classical and Quantum Gravity for our entertainment (diff and diff). I guess un-semi-protection was a little premature. So it goes. Anville 00:29, 7 October 2006 (UTC)

[edit] {{editprotected}}

Request the notice at the top of the page have the link to "sock puppet" be changed so it doesn't redirect. 68.39.174.238 05:26, 13 October 2006 (UTC)

Done – Gurch 09:08, 13 October 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Irrelevant aside?

I have removed the following paragraph from the section "Reflections upon the peer-review system":

On 27 March 2006, E. Capelas de Oliveira and Waldyr A. Rodriguez, Jr. submitted a comment to the arXiv preprint server, claiming that an earlier paper, "On Some Contradictory Computations in Multi-Dimensional Mathematics" by L. A. V. Carvalho,^[1] is "a potpourri of nonsense". According to Rodriguez and de Oliveira, the "proofs" in the earlier paper are trivial errors based on nothing more than misunderstandings of calculus concepts.^[2] (For example, Carvalho's deductions included the puzzling assertion, "multi-variable mathematics is inconsistent with arithmetic (1 = 0) and also auto-contradictory as calculus is part of this theory".) Author and philosopher of mathematics David Corfield posted a blog entry the next day, asking if this event constituted "another Bogdanoff affair".^[3]

Sorry, but I don't see what this has to do with the Bogdanov affair, aside from one mention of it. If I'm utterly mistaken and this is relevant, by all means revert. Phiwum 19:39, 17 November 2006 (UTC)

I think this is relevant, since it illustrates the way the scientific community uses the term "Bogdanov affair". OK, so it's not a great big fuss, but it is indicative of the long-term fallout. Anville 19:15, 11 December 2006 (UTC)

Just my two cents, that I think the paragraph on the Carvalho issue should be left out of the article. The balance in the present article is a joy to see, but I kept waiting for the punch line in the Carvalho paragraph and did not find one. If The way the scientific community uses the term Bogdanov affair is an important subject, it would need broader evidence than one blog posting from David Corfield. The Carvalho thing, if it is notable, could be in its own article, or in a different article, with a link from this one. The Bogdanovs did not work with or influence LAV Carvalho, after all, and the work is unrelated. EdJohnston 21:12, 11 December 2006 (UTC)

Ed and I seem to agree that this blog posting isn't really worth mentioning. Consequently, I will revert the text for now. But if others agree with you on its importance, I would be happy to defer. I am not aiming for a revert war, after all. Phiwum 01:34, 12 December 2006 (UTC)

Fair 'nuff. It is hardly a major matter any way you slice it; although I might prefer to err on the side of inclusiveness (you'll never know what tomorrow's scholars will need to find!) I can certainly grasp your point. Best wishes, Anville 16:24, 12 December 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Comment

I have read the archived discussions on Talk:Bogdanov Affair, and I have one comment - that people whose mamaloshen isn't English sound rather funny sometimes when carpetbagging their arguments onto English Wikipedia. Also, it appears to me, judging from the article AND the argument, that the Bogdanovs appeared not to be in their Ph.D. program for the knowledge or the research, but rather for the status it conferred on them, a bragging point to support them on their television show, and much of their time was spent mainly on writing a document that contained the right jargon without actually saying anything or showing any research on their part. Admittedly, this is a POV, and I have no wish to be an affair participant; nonetheless, as someone in a Ph.D. program myself (although in urban planning and public policy, NOT physics), I couldn't help but notice the controversy over two brothers' doctoral theses and journal articles. If there was any advice I could give to the brothers, it would be this: Head out. Do some research. Find a way to inform people of new knowledge, and back it up with evidence from original research on your part. Allow people to come in and look at your research - let it stand for itself, sans credentials. Nonetheless, as participants in the Affair are forbidden from editing this article or talk page, and further blabbermouthing may render me an inadvertent participant, I will shut up now. — Rickyrab | Talk 16:15, 18 November 2006 (UTC)

[edit] "Topological origin of inertia" paper

"Whatever the orientation, the plane of oscillation of Foucault's pendulum is necessarily aligned with the initial singularity marking the origin of physical space." - I found both of the in-article explanations of this rather unsatisfying. Isn't this just a way of saying "no matter how you point it, the 'triangle' which is created by the swinging of the pendulum is, by necessity, aligned with the point at the top of the pendulum, from which the motion 'spreads'"?

I'm a new editor to Wikipedia and hardly stepped in physics (as the above 'translation' should betray) - just a native English speaker. --Action Jackson IV 18:17, 30 November 2006 (UTC)

[edit] External sources

How did this article become entangled with the item it speaks about? RaccoonFox • Talk • Stalk 19:40, 10 December 2006 (UTC)

Basically, the subjects of the article were editing the article about them, until the request for arbitration banned them from it. --Sam Blanning^(talk) 01:24, 11 December 2006 (UTC)

I have seen this question raised before. Maybe we should ask the ArbCom for a plainer statement of the facts? Anville 16:26, 12 December 2006 (UTC)