Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Tom Van Flandern

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 was keep. WjBscribe 05:15, 1 April 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Tom Van Flandern

Tom Van Flandern (edit|talk|history|links|watch|logs) – (View log)

Here we have a scientist who dissents from the mainstream view of gravitaiton and dark matter - a relativity dissident. There is precisely one external source, which discusses him along with other dissidents. There are no cited independent sources of which he is primary subject. He seems to be mildly popular with certain pseudoscience proponents and fringe bloggers, but that is about it. The subject seems to be one of the few who is well-informed on the subject, and has resorted to editing himself as user:Supergenius66. Guy (Help!) 22:43, 26 March 2007 (UTC)

*Keep . This guy appears to be a minor celebrity among the pseuodoscience crowd, weighing in especially on relativity, GPS, and the face on Mars. He seems to be enough of a celebrity to get a couple of paragraphs of coverage in several articles at salon.com [1], American Spectator (no link), Wired [2], Omni [3], and a few trade publications [4]. When he's not pursuing this sort of fringe stuff, he seems to be actively publishing work on meteor activity, such as this moderately well-cited article in Earth, Moon, and Planets (33 cites) [5], which has received brief coverage in Independent (UK) [6] and the Economist (no link). Irene Ringworm 19:19, 27 March 2007 (UTC)

• Keep. He is a well known controversial figure. There may be problems with the article, but that doesn't mean that it must be deleted just because his ideas are not widely supported in the scientific community. E.g. almost all of the few Global Warming skeptics who have almost no support for their points of view in the scientific community have their own wiki article here. Count Iblis 19:24, 28 March 2007 (UTC)

• Keep. I just found this article after finding his theory on the instantaneous propogation of gravity on the Internet. It adds information by giving me more information on the credibility of his article (which is not great). —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 12.28.124.214 (talk) 22:48, 28 March 2007 (UTC).

• Keep. Managing to get a book published is an objective standard of notability. Whosasking 05:39, 29 March 2007 (UTC)

• Comment I have always considered TVF to be a very minor figure in astrophysics with questionable notability. This article as-is is little more than a stub of a biography, and relfects his relative lack of impact on science. I for one would love to see this article deleted, but doing seems to require raising the bar on notability somewhat. So I will not vote to delete at this time, but I would love to see articles on people of this calliber go. --EMS | Talk 04:01, 30 March 2007 (UTC)

• Query Could we possibly merge them all into a junk bin entitled Relativity dissidents or, better yet, Physics crackpots? Anville 14:46, 30 March 2007 (UTC)

• Comment I understand that you're kidding about the POV junk bin pages, but the above discussion is irrelevant to notability. The discussion is not about whether this guy impacts science nor is it a judgment on the correctness of his research. The discussion is whether the man is notable. For his bizarre brand of science he gets a fair amount of press in verifiable sources, as demonstrated above. There is certainly room for discussion about whether these sources are relevant or whether the sources reflect sufficient depth of coverage for notability but you can't toss the guy out just because he's a nutjob. He might be a notable nutjob. Irene Ringworm 15:54, 30 March 2007 (UTC)

• Reply Of course. I put enough work into WP:FRINGE to know that.  ;-) However, silly POV article names aside, I think merging articles on "marginal" topics can be a viable option, depending upon circumstances. Maybe not here (it's a case-by-case thing), but it's probably something we should keep in mind. Anville 16:52, 31 March 2007 (UTC)

• Comment - TVF's most notable "achievements" have been in taking of the establishement over the issues of the Face on Mars and the speed of gravity. However, do note that TVF is not mentioned in the articles on those topics. --EMS | Talk 18:26, 31 March 2007 (UTC)

• Keep Meets standards for notability. Personal taste is (thankfully) no grounds for deletion. --KharBevNor 10:48, 30 March 2007 (UTC)

• I'm undecided, but most likely with EMS here. At least vanFlandern is a notable crackpot. Unfortunately WP:BLP restricts us in being explicit about his degree of crankishness and his score at Baez' test. Whether it is a good idea to bundle junk phyics in a summary article is also unclear -- at least the attempt at Alternative physics lloks more like a enter your own homepage web directory. --Pjacobi 21:26, 31 March 2007 (UTC)
• Rewrite and keep. This person's activities are notable, but the current version of the article doesn't make it clear that his views are not endoresed by the scientific community. Even with WP:BLP, it should be possible to make this clear. Not doing so gives a misleading impression. --Christopher Thomas 21:50, 31 March 2007 (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.