Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Cycle studies

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 to Delete the article. --Pjacobi 11:44, 5 May 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Cycle studies

Delete: There is no recognized field of study called "cycle studies"; this article was created by User:RayTomes, who has created a number of articles pushing his own cranky theories, which derive from the vapid numerological mysticism of one Edward R. Dewey. In his UseNet postings, websites, and WP articles, Tomes attempts to present this material as a respectable mainstream science, which amounts to attempting to mislead our readers. Please see also related past AfDs on Harmonics Theory and Category:Cycles and related current AfDs on Cycle Theory, The Foundation for the Study of Cycles, Cycles Research Institute, Unified Theory of Cycles, and Edward R. Dewey. Be sure to note that all these articles cite only Ray Tomes associated websites and writings. I feel that these sites are neither reliable nor independent sources of information about the numerological mysticism promoted by Tomes. CH 04:13, 29 April 2006 (UTC)

• Keep - harmonic equations are well described. I do think that the guy who's writing this is a crank, or else overemphasises certain things (like a naturopath trying to explain medicine) but it's legitimate enough. - Richardcavell 04:55, 29 April 2006 (UTC)
• Delete It is a truly bizarre article. If we need an article about cyclical things, I think a summary-style article (i.e. sections linking to Main articles) would be a lot better. Ewlyahoocom 04:56, 29 April 2006 (UTC)
• Delete: this article is a very badly-written example of pseudo-science. Martin Gardner wouldn't stand for this rubbish; why should we? --die Baumfabrik 05:10, 29 April 2006 (UTC)

• Comment actually, most of the articles Tomes has contributed seem to be pseudoscience in one guise or another. —porges_(talk) 05:14, 29 April 2006 (UTC)

• Delete per nom. -- Kicking222 06:01, 29 April 2006 (UTC)
• Delete, the article is not coherent enough. And does seem like original research. --soUmyaSch 06:05, 29 April 2006 (UTC)
• Delete. The basis of the article is that there is a single, cohesive study of cyclical behaviour in many different research areas. I don't see any evidence of that, only separate descriptions of cycles in the different fields. Kevin 07:14, 29 April 2006 (UTC)

• Delete per Kevin. —porges_(talk) 07:51, 29 April 2006 (UTC)

• Delete Original research. Beno1000 11:21, 29 April 2006 (UTC)
• Keep of the bunch of related articles this seems to be the one with the best coverage. Currently is does give undue promenance to Dewey but is does document many other important cycles which have been studied through history. The Verdic cycles in particular could do with expansion as this a well known cosmological model. I feel there is a need for an overall page on different theories of cycles. I've redone the page a bit to describe a few other cycles and make it less about Dewey work with a nice quote which pretty much demolishes the buisness cycle theory. --Salix alba (talk) 13:09, 29 April 2006 (UTC)
• Keep and let me explain that further. I usually have a very low tolerance for pseudo-science and I was expecting to go to this article and see a bunch of crap. But reading through it, I have to say it's pretty reasonable. This article doesn't really make any assertion other than complicated systems show periodicity, and people have studied that. This should be prima facie obvious. This is clearly evident in simpler systems like celestial mechanics, and I think that part of the article is eminently reasonable, being a list and description of well-known periodic motions inside the Earth-sun-moon coupled system. Of course, once we get into the social sciences things get pretty vague, but I have to say that this article is no worse of a violator than many current schools of thought in academia in the social sciences (and, of course, social systems are so complex that it always a stretch to apply mathematics to them anyway). Now, if someone rolled into this article and said something like "by studying the cycles in the ancient Mayan calendar, I predict that WW3 will happen in 2015", then we're talking bunk, but there's nothing like that here. In summary, I don't see anything inherently pseudoscientific here. --Deville (Talk) 15:49, 29 April 2006 (UTC)

• Comment per Kevin above, there is no single cohesive study of cycles however, which is the article's premise. The article cites verifiable sources for a couple of facts which are mentioned, but provides no support for the hypothesis of the article itself. Thus, as it stands it is in violation of original research, in that the only way to demonstrate that you are not doing original research is to cite reliable sources. —porges_(talk) 20:36, 29 April 2006 (UTC)

• Delete. It's a mish-mash of things that are better covered in other articles. No particular evidence that anyoen apart from this one group are that interested in drawing comparisons between astronomical, economic and menstrual cycles. The Land 17:48, 29 April 2006 (UTC)
• Delete as it's clearly pseudoscientific WP:OR by a well-known crank. Angus McLellan (Talk) 13:59, 30 April 2006 (UTC)
• Delete per nom. —Ruud 20:27, 30 April 2006 (UTC)
• Delete per the nominator and everybody else saying "delete". The "verifiable sources" are a moot point. If I wrote an article entitled The exact value of pi is 3 and cited a book which defined the integers and another book which defined circles, it would still be crackpot Original Research. Anville 21:35, 30 April 2006 (UTC)
• Delete, per User:TheLand and others. Cycle gives a much better overview of the useful parts of this article, and the rest appears to be a mixture of original research and rambling. --Christopher Thomas 00:02, 3 May 2006 (UTC)
  • Comment Cycle is a disambig page, so no more than a list of links. There is currently no page, which gives a better treatment to a very large field which has been the source of debate and speculation throughout human civilisation. With a bit of claenup cycle studies could become that page. --Salix alba (talk) 07:56, 4 May 2006 (UTC)
• Speedy delete original research or not, it sounds like nonsense if you ask me. M1ss1ontomars2k4 04:47, 4 May 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.