Talk:Edward R. Dewey

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Articles for deletion This article was nominated for deletion on 28 April 2006. The result of the discussion was keep.

Contents

[edit] Move

Shouldn't this be moved to Edward R. Dewey (with a dot after R initial? Also, Category:Sociologists may fit here - may, I don't know if he was an academic? --Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus Talk 18:01, 18 August 2005 (UTC)

I agree. I had difficulties locating this entry before I realized that a period is missing. Cruise 20:41, 18 August 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Cycle synchrony (Dewey) merged here

See Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Cycle synchrony. Johnleemk | Talk 12:49, 23 January 2006 (UTC)

[edit] The second or third RfA related to this article

See Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Cycle theory.

I have rewritten the article to counter the claims by the FSC crowd that legitimate research in physics, biology and economics which rests upon dynamical systems theory somehow "validates" the mystical numerology of Edward R. Dewey. Sheesh!---CH 02:23, 7 April 2006 (UTC)

Hillman once again makes things up so that he has an easy target. Dewey never did anything that in any way resembles numerology. He did observe that commonly reported cycles (mostly by others) from many disciplines had common periods and that these periods often had periods related by simple ratios such as 2 and 3. Such observations are not numerology and may be found in recent peer reviewed papers on solar phenomena with periods of 154 days, 77 days and 26 days. Produce some evidence of Dewey and numerology Hillman! Again, Hillman does not understand the difference between observation and theory. Dewey's observations do not rest on any theory. Theory comes after observation and is an attempt to explain it. Ray Tomes 22:32, 8 May 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Expansion needed

This article was merely an advert for the Foundation for the Study of Cycles, with no biographical information whatever on Edward R. Dewey but plenty of gibberish regarding his alleged speculations. I have attempted to balance that by surveying some mainstream mathematics dealing with cycles, but someone still needs to add basic biographical information at the beginning and to verify noted facts. That helpful user should however avoid using the FSC website as sole source for information, since this is a partisan pro-Dewey website. Note that User:RayTomes is apparently the codirector of FSC. ---CH 02:34, 7 April 2006 (UTC)

Sheesh indeed!!! The tone of writing in this article on Dewey reads like a Skepdicks Anonymous debunking effort, posing the whole subject in a generally negative light. How about giving an impartial and objective, informative description of Dewey and his work, instead of putting your own negative opinions in print.
(Comment added anonymously by User:Taishanglao on 04:57, 12 April 2006, how ironic)

Taishanglao, did you miss the fact that I used my knowledge of dynamical systems to extract from Dewey's obessive quest a reasonable question which might inspire further mathematical study? I contrasted this with his numerological/mystical speculations, which are of no mathematical or scientific value, but unlike the previous version of the article, I was able to identify and explain to a skeptical audience something of (admittedly modest) value!

As for negative light, do you really not see the distinction between the powerful theorems which I briefly described and the table someone entered and attributed to Dewey? The point is one which has to made in an encyclopedia article mentioning so-called cycle theory: Dewey's speculations simply do not constitute a theory in the sense in which this word is used in mathematics or the applied sciences. Also, one cannot describe Dewey's assertion that cycles are present in everything which has been studied in an encyclopedia article without saying that this is simply not true. A sharp way of making this essential point is to point out that there are mathematically well-defined notions of cycle studied in dynamical systems theory, and then there are applicable examples of dynamical systems which provably contain no cycles at all. In this sense, Dewey's mantra is provably untrue, and WP readers deserve to be told this. Did you miss the fact that I provided citations? The previous version cited only the cranky and highly partisan website Foundation for the Study of Cycles, which cannot be taken to represent independent or mainstream scientific views.

Did you also miss the point that I drew attention to the fact that the previous version of the article had no biographical information at all? E.g. it seems that Dewey worked in the FDR administration; this kind of presumably verifiable and undisputed factual information should precede discussion of controversies. ---CH 16:15, 14 April 2006 (UTC)

I've removed the mathematics section. This is an article about Dewey's life and work. Whilst criticism is relavant it need to be directly related to Dewey, that is direct criticism of Dewey theories. WHilst there is a place for the material I've deleted it is not here, perhaps a seperate article or perhaps Business cycle. --Salix alba (talk) 07:52, 29 April 2006 (UTC)
In response to CH readdition of the mathematics section. Yes I do agree that this is good and interesting mathematics, however I do not feel it is on topic for an article on Dewey life and work. It could be said that is gives undue weight to the modern theroies, and it is currently not verified that these criticims have been applied to Dewey's work. I do feel there is a need for a page which includes this material. Cycles is a disambig so it can't go there. Cycle theory and Cycle studies both look likely to be deleted, so I'm not sure about where it should go. I'm curreltly preparing a page in my user space User:Salix alba/Cycle studies collecting information about the topic.
Out if interest Dewey's table basically shows period doubling, which is linked to Sarkovskii's theorem and posibly Hopf bifurcation. --Salix alba (talk) 10:08, 1 May 2006 (UTC)
It is a similar idea, but adds tripling. If the article is correct, he also claims that the 36th harmonic is stronger than the 16th, which seems very odd. Septentrionalis 19:01, 5 May 2006 (UTC)
Hillman states that "Also, one cannot describe Dewey's assertion that cycles are present in everything which has been studied in an encyclopedia article without saying that this is simply not true". If this is not true, then please produce evidence of any real world time series study that shows that cycles are not present. Even the measure of time has had to repeatedly undergo revision (a process that is still admitted to be incomplete) because the clocks have been found to have inconstancy. In order these are - rotation of the earth, revolution of the planets, motion of the moon, oscillations of caesium, pulsar rotation. Every one of the things chosen to be most constant at the time has subsequently (with greater accuracy of measurement) been found to have oscillations that include cyclical components. Og course all clocks are inherently based on cycles, but in addition the periods of these cycles also have cyclical elements. Ray Tomes 23:22, 8 May 2006 (UTC)

[edit] References?

Is it just me, or do the references here have nothing to do with the article? Were they meant for another article? If not, what is their relation to the text of the article? --Philosophus 12:30, 27 April 2006 (UTC)

(I swear I answered this, but...) This is my fault. I took out a section of material about dynamical systems that wasn't about Dewey, but didn't notice that it came with references. · rodii · 01:51, 29 April 2006 (UTC)
I agree that the references have nothing to do with the article. This is partly because of the silly act of merging FSC with Dewey when they are two separate but related topics. That needs to be reversed at some time. However Hillman keeps adding references and material about theories to explain cycles. The material belongs somewhere else it has nothing to do with Dewey. He thinks he is disputing Dewey's theory when Dewey had no theory. Ray Tomes 23:27, 8 May 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Some references

This article looks doubleplusungood. "was apparently an economist who allegedly worked in the Roosevelt administration" good grief. However, WorldCat lists a number of books he wrote with significant holdings in academic libraries. Not everything important is on the web; perhaps someone will look up some of these titles and write a proper article. Thatcher131 22:44, 28 April 2006 (UTC)

Cycles: the mysterious forces that trigger events, Author: Dewey, Edward R.; Mandino, Og, Publication: New York, Hawthorn Books 1971 408 libraries

Cycles, the science of prediction, Author: Dewey, Edward R.; Dakin, Edwin Franden, Publication: New York, H. Holt and Company 1947 396 libraries

Cycles, the science of prediction, with 1950 postscript: Further deflation and its promise, Author: Dewey, Edward R.; Dakin, Edwin Franden, Publication: New York, Holt 1949 175 libraries

Cycles;selected writings Author: Dewey, Edward R. Publication: Pittsburgh, Foundation for the Study of Cycles 1970 88 libraries

User: Thatcher131,
  1. Did you look at the version I started with? I think that was much worse! In part because it failed to cite any sources not associated with the creator of this and several related articles, User:RayTomes.
  2. I added the qualifications because while trying to rewrite the article, which apparently was written as part of a kind of propaganda campaign to portray this stuff as respectable mainstream science, I noticed that the only places on the web where I could find information about Dewey all seemed to be associated with Ray Tomes, author of this and several other articles currently up for AfD.
  3. if you search for certain well-known cranky books which were self-published by some wealty crank, you will find that the author donated copies to many leading university libraries, where they still reside. I'd have to wrack my addled brains for an example, but IIRC, several are mentioned in one of Martin Gardner's books and I think in E. H. Hobson, Squaring the Circle. Hmm... one name which comes to mind is George Fabyan (see William F. Friedman); IIRC David Kahn mentions in The Codebreakers that Fabyan self published a cranky book and sent it to every college which then existed in the U.S.
HTH you understand the appearance of the article, which I agree has far too many unsourced claims.---CH 06:52, 29 April 2006 (UTC)
  • I didn't look at earlier versions, the first one I saw may very well have been an improvement. I added the books because few wikipedians seem to have access to WorldCat and clearly amazon is not going to be a good reference in this case. If anyone is interested and wants to post the city in which they live I can tell you if any of Dewey's books are in a library near you; I believe notable crackpots can deserve an article here, provided it presents the theory fairly in addition to any criticsm. It would be nice if someone with an interest (but not a Foundationist) would look over his work and give a nice non-silly summary. Thatcher131 17:29, 29 April 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Please see these AfDs

Please see these related current AfDs:

  1. Cycle studies

and these related past AfD/CfDs:

  • Harmonics Theory (this article was deleted after the AfD)
  • Category:Cycles (this category was deleted after the CfD; sorry, I lost the link to the archived CfD)

TIA!

BTW, I have reverted to my version with the section comparing Dewey's vapid numerological mysticism (preceeding section) to a some genuinely important theorems from dynamical systems theory which mention cycles. This section was deleted by another skeptic who misunderstood my motivation, which was to contrast a real theory (dynamical systems) with vapid dreck (Dewey's tables &c.) I reverted because I refer to what I wrote in my comments in various of the AfDs. I don't disagree that this one section might be worth saving in some other article, so I am copying it to my user pages. But for the moment let us let all these related AfDs run their course.---CH 06:57, 29 April 2006 (UTC)

I didn't misunderstand your motivation at all, as I explained on yout talk page, I just don't believe that your section belongs in an article about Dewey. But I won't revert war about it. I appreciate your efforts. · rodii · 12:57, 29 April 2006 (UTC)
Oh, I just realized what you meant--yes, I did misunderstand at first, until I realized it was by you and not Tomes. Got it. · rodii · 13:16, 29 April 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Accuracy

In 1931 he was apointed Chief Economic Analyst of the Department of Commerce under the Roosevelt administration

No, he wasn't. Roosevelt was inaugurated March 4, 1933. The rest of the claims made by website of Dewey's "cycle-analysis" correspondence course are probably about as accurate as this; but this is obvious. Septentrionalis 04:31, 4 May 2006 (UTC)

User: Salix alba has found a "source" for Dewey's appointment at Commerce, but the source is from a former FSC director, so we're back on the FSC merry-go-round. I don't consider that independent verification. A firstgov search doesn't turn up any trace of Dewey at Commerce at all, so I remain skeptical. · rodii · 13:43, 4 May 2006 (UTC)
According to the CCLC (Cycles Clasic Library Collection) volume I (page 1):
  • "I first became interested in cycles in 1930 or 1931. We were in the midst of the depression. I was in the department of commerce, rated as a chief economic analyst. President Hoover wanted to know why we were having a business setback. One of my jobs was to interview economists to get an answer."
So he may have served under Roosevelt, but was appointed to this role by Hoover. This should sort out this objection.

Ray Tomes 23:09, 8 May 2006 (UTC)

We need a secondary source on this. Dewey isn't a good source, because he's writing about himself. Richard Mogey isn't a good source, because he's selling something (cycles-based economic analysis) and the legitimacy of the Dewey/FSC is an important element in his sell. Furthermore, it's hard to tell how significant "chief economic analyst" is as a job classification. Were there ten of these? Hundreds? One? If this point is important, someone should be able to document it. This is just one instance of a general lack of biographical detail in this article. · rodii · 13:39, 9 May 2006 (UTC)
Well, I don't know if anybody bothered to look at the paper I cited as part of my reason to voting keep. It's an obituary written by Solco Tromp, an important figure in biometeorology (see this article on the history of an international society of biometeorology for Tromp's notability). The journal appears to be a respectable one: it's published by Springer, and researchers at respectable places like UC Berkeley publish in it (I browsed biometeorology sites using Google). Here's the relevant excerpt from Tromp:

After a number of small positions he became chief of Current Statistics of Marketing of the U.S. Census Bureau, followed by an appointment as Assistant Chief of the Bureau of Foreign and Domestic Commerce in 1931 and Chief economic analyst in 1932. In this period President Hoover wanted to know why the U.S. had a serious economic set-back. This was the beginning of Professor Dewey's great interest in Economic Cycles.

Since it seems nobody is actually willing to confirm or refute the claim made by physically going to a research library and doing the extensive researching that is probably necessary, I think this article is more than sufficient as a citation for the claim. --Chan-Ho (Talk) 13:51, 9 May 2006 (UTC)
Awesome, thanks. (I tried to look at your links, but the article was inaccessible without a subscription. I'll try again now that I'm at said research library.) · rodii · 14:04, 9 May 2006 (UTC)
My local research library does not, and never has, subscribed to it; I have my doubts. Septentrionalis 21:13, 10 May 2006 (UTC)

[edit] New section on the Foundation for the Study of Cycles

The result of the AfD was inconclusive between delete and merge (with Edward R. Dewey), so I have boldly merged what little there was that was clearly relevant to Dewey and the FSC and turned The Foundation for the Study of Cycles into a redirect to Edward R. Dewey. Without independent and reliable sources, I felt it appropriate to cut down the description to a minimum, but kept the link to their website, so curious WP readers can easily find out what FSC says about itself.

I deleted mention of the competing organization founded by Ray Tomes as per several recent (and some not so recent) AfDs which have resulted in deletion of articles pertaining to his splinter group.---CH 08:01, 6 May 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Removal of material totally unrelated to Dewey

I have removed material that has nothing to do with Dewey that was placed by Hillman. This includes theories by Sarkvski and Hurwitz and other such. Also removed references to "Dewey's theories" because he did not propose theories but reported only the presence of cycles.

I would also note that Dewey was well aware of a variety of different types of cycles including regular, irregular and so on. Cycles such as the sunspot cycle which are not strictly periodic are still cycles. They may be difficult to predict however and many have got it wrong.

Hillman is a debunker on a witch hunt, and he is going about trying to destroy anything that I have had something to do with. That is not a proper basis of work in WP. The life and work of Dewey entirely predates my knowledge of his or the FSC existence and this great man does not deserve to be listed as a pseudo-scientist by people who know nothing about his work or the history of the field. Ray Tomes 23:01, 8 May 2006 (UTC)

Ray, you apparently alluded above to quasiperiodicity or maybe intermittency. It's pretty funny that you continue to insist that I know nothing about those subjects. I don't consider myself a debunker, but I do think that as editors, we are ultimately here to serve our readers, not to preach from soapboxes about our pet idiosyncratic notions. As for witch hunt, I realize that you feel very strongly about this, but please bear in mind WP:CIV.

[edit] Further suspect claims introduced in recent edits

Unless these claims can be supported by independent and reliable sources, they should be removed:

  1. Dewey used Feynman's recommendations as a basis for his research and found that many cases of cycles were significant and because of relationships with other unrelated phenomena, statistically could not result from causes within systems based on traditional scientific disciplines.
  2. the quote from Feynman---can someone not affiliated with the pro-Dewey orgs verify that he said this? I suspect the quote has been taken out of context.

---CH 03:52, 9 May 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Trying to avoid a reversion war by giving the reasons for changes that you reverted

Please read this before reverting again! Also read above remarks added recently.

  • I have given above a source for the claim of Dewey's - therefore "student" not needed.
  • Dewey did not have a theory so please stop adding that to the text.
  • It is senseless to say "unrelated events had often similar cyclicity (cycle synchrony)" as there are two separate things involved and they do notr relate to events but to cycles in events.
  • Sarkovskii's theorem has nothing to do with Dewey. If you think otherwise please give a source (other than Hillman)
  • Dewey did not form FSC to "promote his ideas" but to research cycles (the clue is in the name).
  • The stuff about Philip Ball and Critical Mass are irrelevant because Dewey did not claim anything like what Hillman says. He often referred to aperiodic cycles and other unpredictable cycles.
  • When an article is about Dewey it should not have the next 20 years of stuff that someone else thinks replaces his work. It should be about Dewey.

Ray Tomes 03:48, 9 May 2006 (UTC)

Ray, I assume you are addressing me. I don't intend getting into an edit war with you, but please be aware that WP is concensus driven and to judge from several AfDs old and new, you are persistently disregarding the community view on what is appropriate in this encyclopedia. Please reconsider your editing behavior here.
I didn't understand some of your comments:
  1. what claim of Dewey?
The claim to be appointed as an economist. Ray Tomes 05:29, 9 May 2006 (UTC)
  1. Not a theory: I agree obviously, which was one reason why I took the time to contrast Dewey's vapid numerological mysticism with real theorems from dynamical systems theory, which is indeed a theory. As far as I recall, I did not add introduce the statement that Dewey claimed to have a "theory" into the text, but carried it over from previous versions.
Good, so we are agreed that Dewey had no theory and so there should be no statements about that, and obviously therefore none that say his theory was wrong or that the FSC continues those that believe in his theory. You have given no evidence whatsoever that Dewey practiced Numerologuy. You are a long way off course with this. If you want that in the article then you better produce evidence and a source. Ray Tomes 05:29, 9 May 2006 (UTC)
  1. unrelated events had often similar cyclicity (cycle synchrony). Are you perhaps addressing Salix alba?
It was rodii who put this back. Ray Tomes 05:29, 9 May 2006 (UTC)
  1. Sarkovskii's theorem has nothing to do with Dewey. I agree obviously, but see what I said above. If you and others stop claiming that Dewey's work is mainstream, or that mainstream mathematical work mentioning cycles somehow "validates" his vapid numerological mysticism, I probably would not object to taking out that section and cutting down this article to a stub, since Dewey does not appear to be a notable figure.
I see nothing in the article about main stream. However he was a perfectly respectable person with the confidence of many, and certainly there is nothing pseudo-scientific about him. All his methods were well accepted practices of the time. Again, your numerology references are entirely without any basis in fact. Ray Tomes 05:29, 9 May 2006 (UTC)
---CH 04:01, 9 May 2006 (UTC)

I've reinserted a cut down version of the Ball critique of buissness cycles. The article as it was had no critique, and Ball critiques the field. It would be good in a more specific reference could be found, but it will have to do for now.

The Feynman quote is interesting, Dewey quotes its and then according to the article ignores it completely. Does any of Dewey's do any hypothesis testing? --Salix alba (talk) 08:26, 9 May 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Propose revert

I think that overall recent edits have moved too far to suppress criticism of Dewey. I think it should be reverted back to the most recent version by User:Rodii. For one thing, my rewrite was just plain better written than the current version. I think I know what Ray will say, but does anyone else have any comment on this proposal? ---CH 04:06, 9 May 2006 (UTC)

There has bee no published criticism of Dewey. Your personal views about his work are not proper subject matter for the encyclopedia. Ray Tomes 05:21, 9 May 2006 (UTC)
I am ambivalent about CH's section, but something has to be done to fix this horrible wankfest of an article. I took out the references to Feynman--the "fact" (unsourced, except by Dewey) that Dewey had a conversation with Feynman in which Feynman described an utterly commonplace fact about statistical research doesn't give Deweyites the right to use Feynman's name as if it were an endorsement of Dewey's numerology. In fact, Feynman disapproved of this kind of research in very strong terms, calling it "cargo cult science", and the fact that he refrained from calling Dewey a crank to his face doesn't mean he would have supported it.
I also took out a few of the approximate seven references to the founding or the current status of the FSC. Once or twice is fine, but come on. If the intent here is to use the Dewey article to publicize the existence of the FSC website, then I say it's spam and I say the hell with it.
So what's left that's verifiable? Dewey existed, write some pamphlets and a couple books on cycles, founded an organization, possibly worked for the Dept. of Commerce (I could find no verification for this, and except for a blurb by a former FSC director, nothing to indicate he was in a position of any importance at Commerce). Nothing about his birthplace, education or death, as one might expect in a biographical article (leading me to suspect the real intent here is more to prop up the other cycle articles than to do an honest article about Dewey). There's just a bizarre table that communicates nothing, a passage on the FSC, and some criticism about business cycles.
So, as I say, I am ambivalent about CH's criticism section, but at least it was an attempt to inject a little intellectual honesty into an article that I would characterize otherwise as sleazy. I am regretting voting to keep this article in its recent AfD--what was I thinking? · rodii · 12:43, 9 May 2006 (UTC)
OK, I'm going to retract some of that--the plethora of FSC references was no doubt a result of the merge, for which I thank CH and apologize for implying was promotional. Hopefully the FSC material is somewhat more concentrated now. Since Dewey apparently did two notable things--authoring some books and founding the FSC--it seems to me that those two things ought to be the primary foci here. More depth on the FSC--officers, founding, research program, funding--would probably be useful if it's not in overwhelming depth. But the reason to be apprehensive about the FSC is that it's unclear how legitimate an organization it is. Many "organizations" that appear legitimate on the surface are one or two people working out of their home to push a scientific or ideological agenda, and to date nothing has really appeared here to suggest otherwise. · rodii · 13:32, 9 May 2006 (UTC)
There is ample evidence that the FSC is a real organisation. When I first visited them in 1989 there were about 6 staff in an office in Irvine, California. There was a very extensive library including Raymond Wheeler's famous "Big Book". You only have to look at the list of past directors and members to see many nobel laureates and university professors etc. I do wish people would stop making things up about things that they are uninformed of. Ray Tomes 22:23, 9 May 2006 (UTC)

Ray, you claimed:

  1. FSC is a real organisation. Actually, no-one is disputing that FSC in some sense exists, although I wish I could verify that it is at least incorpoorated as a non-profit as you claim. But where is the independent, reliable, and verifiable evidence that FSC maintains office space and no less than six paid employees?
  2. Past directors of FSC include many nobel laureates and university professors. What Nobel laureates? How can we independently and reliably verify this claim?

Again, please review WP:CITE, WP:RS and WP:VERIFY. ---CH 01:31, 12 May 2006 (UTC)

Here are some past committee and advisory members (mostly PhDs)

of FSC listed from an issue of "Cycles" magazine: Maurice Allais (Nobel prize for economics) Sir Julian Huxley (Zoological Society of London) Rhodes Fairbridge (Climatology, Columbia University) John T Burns (Chronobiology, Bethany College) Sallie Baliunas (Astronomy) Howard G Tucker (Statistics, University of California, Irvine) Charles S Elton (Oxford University) Louis M Thomson (Agronomoy, Iowa State University) Ellsworth Huntington (Yale University) Charles Dales Dawes (30th Vice-persident of US) Lt Com David Williams (USNR, retired) Arne Sollberger (Chronobiology, Southern Illinois University) Robert T Pretcher (Elliott wave theorist) L A (Pat) Hyland (Chairman Emiritus, Hughes Aircraft Corp) Charles Gresley Abbott (Smithsonian Institution) Of course you will just say that this is a related source. But isn't that sonething that is always true? Ray Tomes 03:39, 20 May 2006 (UTC)

This is supposed to be an article about Edward Dewey not FSC. The merging of the articles was a totally daft act. Edward Dewey was recognised for a lot more than writing a couple of books and starting FSC. He established (without any reasonable doubt for anyone willing to look at the facts) that there are things going on in the world that people did not know about that could be detected by cycles. Eventually this led him to the conclusion that influences from beyond the earth were responsible for the patterns of cycles observed that imnfluenced the weather and life etc. Although this was not a popular view amoung scientists at the time, the subsequent arrival of the space age has produced ample evidence of space weather and recent peer reviewed papers have shown that the solar cycle affects how many cosmic rays reach the earth and that these in turn affect the formation of clouds and so the weather. Dewey achieved the same realisations without the benefit of data from space. Ray Tomes 22:23, 9 May 2006 (UTC)

Ray, you claimed:

  1. This is supposed to be an article about Edward Dewey not FSC. I disagree with your implication that the merger was unwarranted. The merged article was in fact only a stub, and it was about Dewey, as anyone can verify. There appears to be considerable question whether Dewey is sufficiently notable to warrant even one WP article, much less two.
  2. Edward Dewey was recognised for a lot more than writing a couple of books and starting FSC. Could well be, but where is the independent, reliable, and verifiable evidence for this claim? The obit is a start, but User:rodii and myself are both concerned that this appears to have been written by a personal friend who was himself known for some cranky beliefs.
  3. He established (without any reasonable doubt for anyone willing to look at the facts) that there are things going on in the world that people did not know about that could be detected by cycles. This certainly seems to be your strongly held personal opinion, but you have presented no scientific evidence to back up this claim. I remind you that the WP is not a soapbox, so this is not the place to argue about this: if you think you have evidence, put it up at one of your websites.

Again, please review WP:WIN#Wikipedia is not a soapbox.---CH 01:31, 12 May 2006 (UTC)

I understand that this is not a soapbox, but do you? It is you that wishes to debate with Dewey - long after he is dead - using information that became available in the mean time. By all means lets have a debate about that, but not here. This is an historical article and subsequent events and your personal opinions about them have no place here. An please do not take "implications" from my statements - I will clearly state what I am stating with no need for implications. I was merely referring to the name of the article and its contents. The fact that it was a silly idea to merge the articles is irrelevant to the present task. A new FSC article based on better information will be supplied in due course. Ray Tomes 03:39, 20 May 2006 (UTC)
Rodii, I reverted an edit that you did yesterday. At the time I thought that youhad just reverted some earlier edits of mine, but from the descriptio that you made I now think that was not your intention. It happens that when a pagfe previously edited is edited again you often get a cached version on your computer and accidentally revert edits by other people and I suspect that you did this. This does mean that the edit you intended was also lost, sorry. Ray Tomes 22:23, 9 May 2006 (UTC)

This article continues to drift toward a panegyric of Dewey written by User:RayTomes and User:Cycles (who I hope is not a sock for Ray Tomes). It would be a disservice to WP readers if we allowed User:RayTomes and User:Cycles to remove all mention of criticism of Dewey. One of the great problems in dealing with them is that there seems to be little if any information about Dewey available from reliable and independent sources. I see that above Tomes has made the novel argument that because criticism of Dewey has not been published (which might well be true in some sense), he is free to say anything he likes about Dewey. Needless to say, I find this argument unacceptable, although the fact that sources for Dewey other than the Tomes and FSC websites (which are manifestly partisan) seem hard to come by suggests that this article should after all be deleted on the grounds that Dewey is simply not notable. ---CH 01:43, 11 May 2006 (UTC)

Dewey certainly was a notable person. The very large number of people that joined the organisation that he founded, including a US president, US vice-president, nobel prize winner, many university professors, some themselves notable - all this shows that he was anotable person who was a thorough researcher. He reached many conclusions that have only been fully understood by other experts as a result of space exploration and space weather measurements. He was never ever regarded as a crackpot or numerologist as you state. Your remarks on this show how extremely ill-informed that you are and how little you understand scientific method. You have not - and no doubt will continue to not - show even the slightest evidence (that means not just your guess) that Dewey practiced numerology or was a pseudo scientist. Your suggestion that Dewey made up things about Feynman or that Feynman would have disliked Dewey's approach are nothing but fantasies on your part. I can show you peer review journal papers from the last 5 years where phsyicists are just starting to recognise things about harmonically releted commonly found cycle periods that Dewey had more thoroughly understood 60 years ago. Ray Tomes 03:39, 20 May 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Dewey obit text

User:Cycles posted the text of the obituary of Dewey from the International Journal of Biometeorology on the article page. We can't use it in that form (copyvio) and it doesn't really fit the article's structure as is, but it has a lot of information that would answer many of my objections about the poor quality of the article as biography. So I'm moving it over here as source material to be worked back into the article. We should probably delete it for copyright reasons as soon as we're done processing it. Thanks. · rodii · 18:56, 9 May 2006 (UTC)

In the references section of the article, I have fixed the mangled link to the on-line abstract for this obit provided by Springer. ---CH 01:37, 11 May 2006 (UTC)

Dewey's "In Memoriam" Obituary is cited here as biographical information: (As published in International Journal of Biometeorology 1978, vol. 22, number 3, pp. 161-162 by Solco W. Tromp - citation below)

In Memoriam Professor Edward R. Dewey 1895-1978

"On Monday, 6 February 1978, Professor Edward R. Dewey, better known amongst his friends as Ned Dewey, died after a brief illness at the Presbyterian University Hospital in Pittsburgh, Pa, U.S.A. He was born on the 2nd of May 1895.

Edward Russell Dewey

"Although his health deteriorated gradually during the last five years, the news of his sudden death will be difficult to grasp by his many old friends. He was a man of few words but with extraordinary mental capacities, great intuition and a great personal charm which enabled him to find the necessary financial support for his cycle projects, which he strongly supported also with his personal funds.

"In 1920 Dewey graduated from Harvard University with honours in Economics and Sociology. After a number of smaller positions he became chief of Current Statistics of Marketing of the U.S. Census Bureau, followed by an appointment as Assistant Chief of the Bureau of Domestic and Foreign Commerce in 1931 and Chief economic analyst in 1932. In this period President Hoover wanted to know why the U.S. had a serious economic set-back. This was the beginning of Professor Dewey's great interest in Economic Cycles. He joined Mr Hoskins and tried to predict economic cycles. In 1939 he came across the Proceedings of the 5th Conference on Biological Cycles organised by Copley Amory at Matamet in Canada. He met the famous Professor Huntington of Yale University and wrote three chapters on cycles in his book "Mainsprings of Civilization". He became particularly interested in interdisciplinary cycle research after studying the work of Anderson of the Bell Telephone Co. on cycles in sunspot numbers. In 1940 he decided to create a Foundation for the Study of Cycles with Amory as its first president and a number of leading scientists in its Board of Directors. After Amory, Dewey became its second president.

"From 1941 to 1950 Professor Dewey worked particularly for business firms on behaviour patterns. Around 1943 he prepared his well-known book: "Cycles, the Science of Prediction".

"Around 1950 the Cycles Magazine was started and in 1951 the Journal of Cycle Research which stopped in 1961. In that year the Foundation moved to Pittsburgh, Pa, and a large board of influential directors was created. Due to his unabating efforts the Foundation was considerably enlarged and was able to create a relative permanent staff and to print the Journal "Cycles".

"It was due to his efforts that in 1970 the International Institute for Interdisciplinary Cycle Research could be created in The Netherlands with a new scientific journal 'The Journal of Interdisciplinary Cycle Research" which laid a firm bridge between cycle studies and biometeoro1ogy.

"Ned Dewey was in many ways a genius, an excellent mathematician and economic expert, he was highly cultural and very witty. He published more than 600 publications on various cycle problems in a broad interdisciplinary field. He had an incredibly strong memory for facts which he could reproduce at any moment during scientific discussions.

"It was only due to his personal efforts for more than fifty years that Cycle Research became a modern science. But unfortunately most of his life this was not recognised by orthodox science and as a result many of his findings were often ignored or considered to be of little scientific value.

"It was only during the last 5-10 years that interdisciplinary cycle research became a recognised international science. This resulted in a series of International Interdisciplinary Cycle Research Symposia in Noordwijk, The Netherlands, organised by the Biometeorological Research Centre, Leiden, but entirely financed by Ned Dewey personally.

"His greatest interest in recent years was the study of solar effects on planetary cycles and vice versa. He engaged a special, astronomically trained assistant for the mathematical work involved. Unfortunately his death did not enable him to see the final results of his work.

"Ned Dewey was also greatly interested in biometeorological cycles and supported this work considerably. In view of his many contributions in the field of biometeorology in general and of special branches of it, either directly or indirectly, he received in 1972 during the 6th International Biometeorological Congress at Noordwijk, The Netherlands the Gold Medal Award of the Biometeorological Research Foundation.

"With his death science has lost one of his great man, those working in the field of interdisciplinary cycle research lost one of their best friends."

(As written by Solco W. Tromp in the International Journal of Biometerology 1978, vol. 22, number 3, pp. 161-162)

  • BTW, just for context, Solco Tromp is the founder of the field of Biometeorology and a Sheldrakean character of some dubiousness himself. For instance, he is the author of Psychical Physics: A Scientific Analysis of Dowsing, Radiesthesia and Kindred Divining Phenomena, a 1949 work "objectifying many aspects of dowsing, still the most systematic and thorough scientific appraisal of the subject." [1] So we should stick to the fact he presents and shy away from his judgments of Dewey as a "genius." · rodii · 19:05, 9 May 2006 (UTC)
Well, that kinda figures :-/ The IP 12.73.122.30 of the anon who signs (not wikisigns) as "S.L., Fridley, Minnesota, USA" is registered to AT&T Corp. and hosts dialup access from the twin cities area, which includes Fridley, MN. ---CH 01:35, 11 May 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Problems with current version of this article

The current version fails to both to clearly explain the bizzare nature of Dewey's central claims and also fails to point out that these claims find no support whatever in dynamical systems theory, or even in common sense. In particular, common sense should suggest that it is unlikely to be true that cycles in unrelated natural phenomena, economic phenomena, or whatever, should not merely share similar periods but should even be in phase.

The article also fails to point out that Dewey's "arguments", as exhibited by the table, amount to numerological mysticism.

By the way, it is still not clear to me whether User:Salix alba yet appreciates the meaning of Sarkovskii's theorem, since IIRC he said somewhere that he thinks the occurence of 2,3 in the table validates Dewey's claim! (No doubt other mathematically minded readers familiar with the theorem will see why this comment was so funny.)---CH 21:06, 13 May 2006 (UTC)

I admit I was thinking more of period doubling phenomena, such as I seem to recall in the Hopf bifucation. If you have a system with period p then it can undergo a catastrophe to give a system with period 2p, this is a phenomena which Dewey seems to have observed. Period doubling is a classic feature of chaotic systems mentioned in twelve different places in James Gleicks chaos.
Now is Sarkovskii's theorem remotely relevant to the study here? Discrete dynamical systems generated by iterative maps are a --Salix alba (talk) 07:47, 14 May 2006 (UTC)very different phenomena to time series. Here we are interested in whether f(t + α) = f(t) not whether fn(t) = t.
Do two systems having equal periods defy belief? Yes is we can assume they are independent systems. But this is not the case with the cycles in the real world that Dewy was studying which have complex interrelationships. For example Dewey looked at crop yields, war and stock market prices. Back in the 30's agriculture was a major driver of the economy, a poor crop yield might lead to a depression in the markets, further lack of food has often been cited as a cause of unrest. Dewey linked many of these to sun-spot cycles as a primary driver of the systems.
The way to critique Dewey is via the statistics of time series. This is why I originally included the Feymann quote, paraphrased as "Do some proper statistics, with a null hypothesis!". Unfortunately Dewey seemed to have ignored the advice. I do have one paper which Ray has kindly provided where Bartlett's Test is applied to time series, although I've not had time to read it.
For a complete curve ball, there's an interesting idea of shuffling data, which we've discussed elsewhere. One problem with cyclic phenomena is that its easy to over fit the data, if you throw enough terms at it then you can get any degree of fit that you like (basically Fourier analysis). Suppose you have a dataset for which sin(a t)+sin(b t)+sin(c t) seems to give a good fit. Now randomly shuffle the data and try to fit a three term series to it. If you can obtain as good a fit then it would be a good indication that your over fitting. (Ducks) --Salix alba (talk) 00:35, 14 May 2006 (UTC)

"Period doubling is a classic feature of chaotic systems". Indeed, although I am amused that you refer me to a popular book, since I am familiar with many graduate level textbooks and have read thousands of research papers in the area of dynamical systems. However, catastrophes arise in studying the unfolding" of singularities (such as cusps) in algebraic geometry. Hopf bifurcation involves flows. Sarkovskii's theorem and classic examples of period doubling involve iterated mappings.

Precicely, flows are a more appropriate model here that iterative maps. At one level catastrophe theory underpins bifurcation, the cusp catastrophe explains regime change. If you have a dynamical system depending on a parameter a say, then you can divide the parameter space up according to states of the system, changes between states happen precisely when when the parameter crosses a fold catastrophe. I surprise you have not encountered this in your readings.
You still have not explained why an iterative map is a useful model here. Iterative maps are nice simple examples of chaotic systems, but a world apart from continuous systems. Also we have the problem of noise which would be expected in these systems, does Sarkovskii's theorem still hold when nose is added to the data.

From the table in the article, I don't see why you think Dewey was observing period doubling. You asked rhetorically "do two systems having equal periods defy belief?" but my rhetorical question was more like this: "is it reasonable to expect that two systems having roughly comparable periods will also be in phase?".

Dewey makes two separate claims, 1) that systems have the same period, and 2) that those systems share the same phase. Before examining 2) the possibility of 1) needs to be looked at. 1) is a much more reasonable assumption than 2).

The (very badly written) article suggests that Dewey claimed that periodicity of say one month is widespread in many systems from astronomy, economics, etc. and that in such cases these cycles are also in phase.

Fact - Dewey made these claims.

I have been complaining about the absurdity of this for a long time now and neither you nor Tomes has addressed it. Of course I appreciate that in complex systems, some subsystems might be correlated, but the article entirely fails to qualify the very sweeping claim. (In my rewrite, I made a half-hearted attempt to fix this, but you and/or Tomes reverted what I wrote.)

You wrote "the way to critique Dewey is via the statistics of time series." Of course I understand that this is the first notion many researchers in "applied chaos" will reach for, but there are many other grounds on which Deweys claims can be criticized.

Citation needed. This whole discussion on both sides is close to WP:OR we are bringing in techniques which have not to my knowledge been applied to Dewey's work.

You wrote "there's an interesting idea of shuffling data, which we've discussed elsewhere." I trust you have observed that Galois entropy gives a much more direct (and easily verified) connection between Boltzmann entropy and permutations than proposed by Sabelli. They are completely different! However, this is not the place to discuss this (user pages, perhaps?).

Galois entropy seems to describe finite state systems. Again I question the aplicability here, where does noise fit in? Can it be applied to data which has real number values an not just integer values.

Coming back to the article: please try to neutralize and clarify the article to address the concerns I have raised.---CH 02:26, 14 May 2006 (UTC)

I have tried to find as many on topic-critiques as I can. Find a verifiable source linking any of the theories you mention to the study of real world (i.e. continuous and noisy) data, and we can begin. Alas the two more general articles on cyclic phenomena have been deleted, which would have been a more appropriate place to bring in this analysis, than here which has to be related to specifically Dewey's work. --Salix alba (talk) 07:47, 14 May 2006 (UTC)
The mention of Sarkovskii's theorum and chaos period doubling is more relevant than the previous stuff by Ball. However it in no way invalidates Dewey's work - rather, it proves that Dewey was observing this stuff *before* the theory was established and not after like everyone else. However the presence of the periods related by ratios of 2 observed in different disciplines is not explained by chaos because chaos has them present in the same thing not different things. In fact the pattern of periods observed by Dewey is not explained at all by chaos but is explained by harmonics theory - see http://ray.tomes.biz/maths.html for details. Ray Tomes 08:56, 17 May 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Foundation for the Study of Cycles

Can someone honestly tell me why this section is here? A simple look at the FSC website will reveal that it is an absolutely outlandish group which has no business being promoted on Wikipedia.

Two reasons. The factual one is that it was founded by Dewey and published much of his work; if Dewey has any intellectual legacy at all (disputed), the FSC is probably it. The procedural one is that in a recent AfD covering several articles on cycles, the consensus was to merge the FSC article to this one. So here it lies, for better or for worse.
As to the "promotion" idea, Wikpedia is an encyclopedia, as much as people persist in the idea that inclusion here is equivalent to "promotion." But it's not; our job is to report verifiable knowledge about notable subjects in a NPOV manner. In this case, the "correct" POV is disputed. Some folks think the FSC are wackos and charlatans, some think they're insightful and underrecognized. In a dispute like this, it's probably not the best approach to just delete material you disagree with; instead , in the interests of NPOV, we try to state their claims and those of their critics clearly and fairly. The problem is that the FSC is so marginal and obscure that they haven't really attracted any critics, so the article gives the appearance of leaning in the pro-FSC direction. (And, of course, they're wackos and charlatans. :) · rodii · 02:59, 18 May 2006 (UTC)

[edit] restructure

Some material has been removed which gave a wrong emphasis to Dewey's work. Some minor expansions have also been made. The notices at the front have been removed because the article is no longer a stubb and contentious material is no longer present. Ray Tomes 19:45, 26 November 2006 (UTC)

I've reverted these changes. Please do not make changes like that from "claimed to have observed" to "observed". This is inappropriate in the case of contentious claims. Similarly, the changes to the intro included lots of nonverifiable POV stuff. JQ 22:49, 26 November 2006 (UTC)
I have re-reverted the page. Here are a list of the differences and reasons for them. Please do not change everything without considering each individual point.
I'll try and respond point by point
Thank you that is appreciated.
  • Dewey studied "cycles" not "cyclic patterns"
Fine
  • Added material about how he became interested in cycles
Changed to make more NPOV
I have put back some of the deleted material but I hope done it in a more NPOV way.
  • Removed "father of law student Sam Dewey" as this is not relevant and I doubt anyone knows who Same Dewey is if he exists. It would be more relevant to mention his son who worked for the FSC.
Fine
  • Added extra subjects in which cycles were studied and removed erroneous suggestion that his main work was "war cycles".
OK, but I removed some puff about "distinguished board members"
I put this back without the numbers. The distinguished scientists and industrialists included Sir Julian Huxley, Wesley C Mitchell (NBER), Ellsworth Huntington (Yale), Charles S Elton (Oxford), Charles Greely Abbot (Smithsonian Inst), Charles Gates Dawes (30th Vice-President US), Sir Patrick Ashley Cooper Hudson Bay Co).
  • Added reference to Cycles Classic Library Collection as this is a 4 volume set that has most of his major works in it and is still available in many places.
Fine
  • It is not correct to state that "Dewey claimed to have observed that seemingly unrelated time series often had similar cycles period". He did observe this. The cycles reports unquestionably exist and references to them all all provided in the CCLC above. The reports do show certain common cycles are reported - I know this because I have made a histogram of all the periods reported. Putting in the word "claimed" all over the place because it is not known to you is not justified.
No! You can't justify a claim by reference to your own WP:Original Research. If the cycles unquestionably exist, show this by citation to current scientific literatre
I am not justifying the claim based on my own research. The bibliography in the CCLC lists 1380 cycles reports by scientists, economists etc. and these quite clearly show that certain cycles periods are commonly reported. That is not a matter of opinion.
If the reports "quite clearly show this" cite some physical scientists, economists and so on who have confirmed it. At present we have Dewey's claims and your support for those claims, but nothing else. Speaking as a professional economists, I can say with very high confidence that belief in regular, periodic business cycles is not widely held and that Dewey's claims are not generally accepted.JQ 23:43, 7 December 2006 (UTC)
The volume IV of Cycles Classic Library Collection has 1380 references to reports of cycles. I don't plan to type these all in here. I will mention that (as an example) there are 39 references to cycles of 53 or 54 years. These include cycles in bank deposits, business failures, copper prices, cotton prices, exports of iron and steel, general business activity, interest rates, lead production, lumber production, pig iron production, wheat pricves and others. To give specific references to interest rates for example, they include Dewey 1957, Klemme 1950, Shirke 1960 and 1962. To pick one of these not Dewey Klemme, Carl J, APMA paper read at American Pharmaceutical Manufacturers Association Feb 4 1950 in Chicago. Of ~100 subjects in the subject index of this volume, there is no mention of "business cycles", the nearest thing being "business failures" which I hope you will agree is quite different. To try and label Dewey with "Much of Dewey's work made claims about Business cycles. This subject has been hotly debated;" is not justified by the facts and I shall continue to delete this paragraph until someone proves otherwise. Ray Tomes 01:04, 8 December 2006 (UTC)
  • Added further mention of several other very commonly reported cycles that Dewey mentions that are not part of the pattern of common cycles that he reported.
  • Removed material concerning Phillip Ball and Critical Mass book. I have recently read this book and it has no mention of Dewey in it. Dewey did not specialise in only business cycles, and although the book is interesting, Ball's statements are based only on speculation and not proper statistical examination as Dewey did. This material has no place in this article but is one person's private hobby horse.
  • Added further reference to Burns book which continues the study of cycles in the last decade with extensive bibliography that clearly shows this work is still alive and well and practiced by many researchers within the scientific establishment.
  • Attempts to label Dewey a crank by several people here are totally without foundation. When he established FSC he did so with a number of eminent scientists (including at least one nobel laureat) and leading businessmen
No! Don't delete criticism, even if you think it is wrong.
I deleted it because it is not relevant. Ball's work was not contemporaneous with Dewey and he makes no mention of Dewey. Why should ity be in an article on Dewey. The connection is extremely tenuous.

Ray Tomes 06:10, 4 December 2006 (UTC)

I've tried to leave as much of your work as possible without making this a puff piece for Dewey. JQ 07:52, 4 December 2006 (UTC)
Good. We are getting there I think. I have again removed unrelated material arguing about whether business cycles are real or regular. Dewey noted that many cycles are not regular (the sunspot cycle is an example, but that does not make it unreal). Ball does no statistical tests on the reality of some business cycles (relying on his intuition totally). Certainly there is room for debate on this topic, but it does not belong in this article. Dewey was not an advocate for some model of business cycles. His studies were far wider than this. However he did show that other people's reports of business cycles had the same period and phase as cycles reported from other disciplines. This is an important scientific observation. The KEY POINT here is that the matter that is removed is not criticism of Dewey. It does not mention Dewey. It is Hilman's chain of reasoning from what he read in Ball to why he thinks Dewey is wrong. The trouble is he is arguing with a straw man that he made, not the real Dewey. If you disagree with this then please justify with quotes from Dewey that support Hilman's contentions. I have left some of the other criticisms but suspect that they are of the same type and would like to see an actual quote from Rothbarb that actually mentions Dewey.

Ray Tomes 02:04, 5 December 2006 (UTC)

Put categories in but would like to add cycles category which will need extensive research first. Removed unsubstantiated criticism based on Ball book. I repeat that Ball makes no mention of Dewey in his book. His criticism of business cycles is only speculation anyway. The statement about Dewey and business cycles was quite wrong and should be substantiated before being put back. Dewey had an extensive scheme for categorising cycles according to regularity and predictability and statistical accuracy. The comments made were ill-informed. Ray Tomes 02:32, 6 December 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Surnames in alphabetic order in categories

Having added Dewey to economists and american economists categories I note that he appears under "E" and not "D" whereas others appear in surname order. I do not know why this is but it needs correction. It does seem that it is correct to have his name as "Edward R. Dewey" and not "Dewey, Edward R." so can someone knowledgable please assist on this? Ray Tomes 02:37, 6 December 2006 (UTC)

Pmanderson removed the categories with no reason given. I have put them back. Please do not remove without a reason. Ray Tomes 20:50, 6 December 2006 (UTC)

The single category now has its sort order fixed. Ray Tomes 02:49, 8 December 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Rothbard criticism section

Rather than just delete this I will debate it here first. The article reads:

"Murray Rothbard critiques Schumpeter’s and Dewey approach in Man, Economy, and State:[2] Any such “multicyclic” approach must be set down as a mystical adoption of the fallacy of conceptual realism. There is no reality or meaning to the allegedly inde­pendent sets of “cycles.” The market is one interdependent unit, and the more developed it is, the greater the interrelations among market elements. It is therefore impossible for several or numer­ous independent cycles to coexist as self-contained units. It is pre­cisely the characteristic of a business cycle that it permeates all market activities."

If this criticism was in the tiniest bit valid it would mean that no single interdependant unit can have multiple oscillation periods. This is quite absurd. Physicists know that simple harmonic motion is only one possibility for a systems oscillation. Many physical systems have multiple oscillation periods. Economic systems are known by economists to have multiple independant factors and so must have multiple natural oscillation periods. It is not at all difficult to make an economic model that exhibits multiple oscillation periods.

Further, Rothbard thinks that a restoring force (market forces) will move to an equilibrium and not oscillate. He clearly has never heard of second degree differential equations. A pendulum displaced from rest has a restoring force that tries to move it back to the centre. This does not produce a state of rest but the momentum carries it out the other side. The same is true of all cycles, economic or otherwise.

I would like to see such really poor quality matetial removed from an article about a man who's work was of a very high quality. This criticism is hardly a consensus view on Dewey and does not belong here. Ray Tomes 02:53, 6 December 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Unsubstantiated criticisms removed

Quoted material was removed. It is unsubstantiated and quite meaningless...

"Much of Dewey's work made claims about Business cycles."

What claims?

"This subject has been hotly debated; for instance Philip Ball in his book Critical Mass: how one thing leads to another[1] remarks:

The truth is that dips and peaks in the economy resolutely refuse to recur in any predictable manner, making attempts to construct cyclic theories of economics look increasingly like Ptolemy's elaborate scheme for predicting the motions of the planets"

Dewey never claimed that all cycles are regular. Philip Ball gives no statistical analysis to support his conjecture (which is being kind to him). Ball never makes any criticism of Dewey and so this does not belong in this article. There are many people who use proper statistics to test whether cycles are regular or real (Dewey included) and these would be much more relevant than this twaddle. Ray Tomes 20:50, 6 December 2006 (UTC)

It's still criticism which applies to Dewey. If you have a better source for the same criticism, do improve the article. Septentrionalis 06:36, 8 December 2006 (UTC)
It depends on how narrowly one defines "subject". I would say that if a work discusses general problems with members of class Q, that it pertains to any member of Q. To take a not uncommon case, a proof of the impossibility of any perpetual motion machine is relevant to any particular alleged perpetual motion machine. In this case, the fact that the comment is general, and not specific to Dewey's theory is relevant, and should be made clear. Robert A.West (Talk) 23:11, 8 December 2006 (UTC)
I have left the cricism by Rothbard because it is relevant even though it displays ignorance on his part (specifically he thinks that a restoring force in the economy will cause a displacement to just disappear - evidently he has never heard of simple harmonic motion which happens from just such a restoring force, and totally failing to grasp the notion of momentum). However the Ball material is not even relevant. He states "Much of Dewey's work made claims about business cycles." ... What claims? Evidence please. Actually much of it did no such thing. In the CCLC (Cycles Classic Library Collection) there is a list of 100 cycles subjects and "business cycles" is not even 1 of them. Also "The whole subject of business cycles has been hotly debated;". So what? The main claim that has been made in support of this is that business cycles might not be regular. Dewey was well aware of cycles being regular or not and I see no evidence that he claimed that "the business cycle" is regular. Ray Tomes 23:42, 8 December 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Categories

If I read the history correctly, the "removal" of categories consisted of

  1. not having both a category and a proper subcategory, which is advised against (Wikipedia:Categories#Some general guidelines – "Articles should not usually be in both a category and its subcategory."), and
  2. placing the surviving category at the bottom of the article, as is customary, rather than at the top.

Since the article has at least one valid category, I removed the tag. Robert A.West (Talk) 14:55, 7 December 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Philip Ball based criticism

I have repeatedly removed the material that stated: "Much of Dewey's work made claims about business cycles. ..." and others have put it back. I have also repeatedly given my reason which has never been disputed. Please answer these comments and consider rephrasing anything that you want to put back or leave the irrelevant material out. The reasons are:

1. What claims? You cannot reasonably criticise unstated claims - that is nonsense. Produce evidence that Dewey made claims about business cycles by showing actual quotes.


2. Prove that much of Dewey's work even concerned "business cycles". In the CCLC there is a subject index with about 100 subjects. "Business cycles" is not one of them. Therefore it is quite wrong to make that statement. Dewey was an interdisciplinary cycles researcher and studied cycles in hundreds of different things.

This discussion of Dewey, apparently written by you [2] includes numerous references to cycles in business, industrial production and so on, including a claimed link between sunspots and industrial production, dating back to Jevons - maybe we could link to this and find some criticism, since this idea is generally regarded as having been refuted. In fact 'sunspots' are economic jargon for irrelevant variables which may be correlated with a cycle because economic actors co-ordinate on them. [3]JQ 00:00, 10 December 2006 (UTC)
As far as I know, the original suggestion of sunspot connections with the economy dates back to Sir William Herschel who said that wheat or corn prices were related to sunspots. Interestingly, my study of wheat prices (over a long period of time) finds that they have a 5.54 year cycle compared to the 11.08 year cycle in sunspots or exactly half. See [[[4]]. I think that some of the work around Jevon's time relates to relatively shorter time series and that they were comparing a 9+ year cycle to 11 year sunspots. With only 30 years data these can look like good correlations that disappear over longer periods, which is I think the case in what you are saying. However I do not think that Dewey has made such a mistake, so such things belong with Jevon or whoever. The industrial production example of Dewey which correlates with first difference of sunspots is an interesting case because even the cycles are similar in shape and irregularities. See [[[5]] - this reference is preferred to the obne that you gave above as my web site has moved. I am not aware of any subsequent findings in this series to check whether this correlation has held up.
William Stanley Jevons mentions the sunspot link, William Herschel does not. Please accept my assurance that this idea has been completely rejected by the economics profession. More importantly your citation of Dewey on this indicates that he did talk about business cycles, unsurprisingly since he was an economist.JQ 11:02, 10 December 2006 (UTC)
Please see [[6]] for the Herschel story. It really should be mentioned in wikipedia also, because it is an important part of cycles history, but there is a concerted effort to remove cycles related material from wikipedia. When you say "this idea has been completely rejected by the economics profession" you need to be specific what "this idea" refers to. The Jevons article mentions a "connection between commercial crises and sunspots" and I would agree that that has been discredited because they do not actually have the same period. However this is not true of every association between economic data and sunspots. It is now well established (with articles in peer reviewed journals) that: the sunspot cycle affects the number of cosmic rays reaching earth; that cosmic rays affect the formation of clouds; that clouds are a source of rain; that rain is weather and affects crop yields; that crop yields affect crop prices; and that crop prices are partt of the economy. I hope that you will agree that one mistake by Jevons does not make a whole area of study automatically wrong, and it does not make Dewey's claim regarding industrial production being related to sunspots wrong. Ray Tomes 22:45, 10 December 2006 (UTC)
As regards business cycles and Dewey I should clarify my position. Dewey studied very many cycles in many things. Certainly he studied cycles in business. This does not fit with Rothbard's claim that there is only "one business cycle" which he calls "the business cycle". I prefer to label the various business / economic cycles by their names or periods e.g. Kondratieff cycle 53 to 54 years and so on. The statement that I take most offence to is that Dewey made claims about business cycles and that these are then attacked. There needs to be a specific statement of the claims so that it can be seen whether that statement has in fact been discredited. Also, if a specific statement is found to be discredited and another hundred are not, then for fairness and balance the other hundred should be mentioned too. Ray Tomes 22:52, 10 December 2006 (UTC)

3. The related Rothbard material talks about "*the* business cycle" and makes the claim that there can only be one cycle in business because the whole economy is only one system. This is quite absurd. The whole solar system is only one system too, and each planet has its own orbital period. Go figure that out. There is much research concerning a variety of economic cycles to the extent that many of the cycles have names -- Kondratieff, Juglar, Kitchin, Kuznetts and Brucker. The fact that none are named after Dewey shows that this is something that extends far beyond him.

4. There is a proper statistical test for whether cycles are present or are just chance fluctuations. It is called Bartel's test. Dewey used it and generally only reported on significant cycles. People like Ball who state "looks more like the random static of a detuned radio signal" than a cycle is not working from a proper statistical basis. However he went on to say about this "Yet the business cycle is a part of standard economic dogma" which makes it clear that he was not talking about Dewey but about standard economics. This should be moved to "business cycles" if it is to be kept, not here. However having no proper anaysis done it would be better to be consigned to a round metal container. Ray Tomes 05:01, 9 December 2006 (UTC)


Whatever Rothbard may say, the text that Ray keeps removing says "business cycles", and adds an assertion that peaks and troughs have no pattern. Ball's statement therefore denies the multiple cycles of Dewey as much as the single cycle.

In his book Ball says "Yet the business cycle is a part of standard economic dogma, and the very term betrays a desire to impose order on the chaos." which refers to "the" cycle and is an attack on standard economics not Dewey. He then goes on to criticise in turn Schumpeter, Elliott, and "Kitchin cycles, Juglar cycles, Kuznets and Kondratieff cycles. The last of these are particularly notorious." In the case of Elliott there is some justification for his criticism. His statements about the Kondratieff cycle are quite silly because Kondratieff predicted the 1930s depression and if you add 50 years, the 1980s one too. He never mentions Dewey. He also fails to understand that when there are multiple cycles the timing of peaks is then irregular. Dewey had a classification scheme for cycles depending on regularity and consistency and he did not claim that irregular cycles were regular. Does Ball say that the sunspot cycle does not exist because it is not perfectly regular and predictable? Because that follows from what is said here and is quite silly. Ray Tomes 06:39, 12 December 2006 (UTC)

The discussion whether there is one cycle or many, which Ray is spending so much time arguing, is distinct, and so far missing. It should be sourced and included. But it has nothing to do with this (sourced) criticism. Septentrionalis PMAnderson 16:13, 11 December 2006 (UTC)

It has much to do with Rothbard's criticism. He is the only one who mentions Dewey and his argument is that Dewey must be wrong because in a single system there can only be one cycle. That is really a very silly statement. So far I have left the Rothbard statement intact beacuse he does mention Dewey. However Ball does not, and no-one has actually shown a statement of Dewey's that Balls statement disagrees with. Therefore there is no good reason to have Ball's stuff in this article. Ray Tomes 06:39, 12 December 2006 (UTC)
Ball's statement clearly denies the existence of any cycle or complex of cycles and asserts chaos instead. Septentrionalis PMAnderson 21:21, 13 December 2006 (UTC)
And yet this is done on the basis that a graph of national per capita output "looks more like the random static of a detuned radio signal" than a cycle. He has done no analysis and is only guessing. Perhaps you would care to show a reference to where Dewey claims that national per capital production has a cycle in it? You can see a number of examples of Dewey's and Schumpeter's presentation of cycles analysis on the page http://ray.tomes.biz/dewey.htm including a clear 9 year cycle in wholesale prices from USA, Britain and Germany that shows the same phase and regular 9 year cycle for all three countries. Perhaps you would care to explain why this is wrong based on Ball's speculation on different data? Ray Tomes 22:46, 13 December 2006 (UTC)
You keep putting in the phrase "Much of Dewey's work made claims about business cycles." but you repeatedly ignore my request to show evidence of this with a case that is actually refuted by Ball. Please if you must put something back make it based on real facts and not woolly statements. Ray Tomes 22:49, 13 December 2006 (UTC)

[edit] mediation?

I find it disappointing that the text "Much of Dewey's work made claims about business cycles. The whole subject of business cycles has been hotly debated;" keeps get put in this article. I have repeatedly asked "what claims?" and this has been repeatedly ignored. I point out that this phrase is under the heading "criticism" and if you are going to criticise someone then you should at least quote them or give a reference to what they said that you consider wrong. It seems that perhaps none of those involved actually know what Dewey said or why it is considered wrong! If you are unwilling to actually say what is being criticised then I suggest that we seek mediation.

I do not consider John Quiggin's statement that I am in a minority is at all relevant to what is good practice. It is good practice mentioned under NPOV that the article should be "presenting each point of view accurately" and that cannot be said for "Much of Dewey's work made claims about business cycles" because it is a very imprecise statement. What claims? Ray Tomes 00:21, 14 December 2006 (UTC)

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