Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Fred Alan Wolf

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. — CharlotteWebb 09:21, 2 March 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Fred Alan Wolf

Crackpot without independent sources, most known for his appearances in a few films, most notably What the bleep do we know. He is already discussed in the articles on the films, which, since the films have sufficient reliable and reputable sources written about them, satisfy NPOV. However, there aren't sufficient sources to have an NPOV article on Wolf, and as can be seen, the article currently uses only his website and the WTBDWK website as sources. For a person whose views on physics fundamentally conflict with those of the scientific community, as explained in the WTBDWK article, these sources are not sufficient. Philosophus ^T 09:50, 26 February 2007 (UTC) -- see response below

• • Comment The nomination claims his views on physics "fundamentally conflict with those of the scientific community" but in fact per [1] his book "Taking the Quantum Leap: The New Physics for Non-Scientists" is on a very select recommended list provided by Fermilab, a major U.S. government high energy physics research lab of 26 books on quantum physics for "regular people", right there next to Gell-Mann, Hawking, Feynman, Teller, Lederman, etc., and their only complaint is the writing is bland and stuffy. Not exactly the indices of total crackpotness. So maybe "some" of his views are contrary to the views of many in the physics community would be more accurate and less of a POV personal attack on the author. Inkpaduta 22:12, 26 February 2007 (UTC)
• Strong Keep - his crackpotness is to me a red herring. History is replete with notable loons and weirdos. The article gives solid claims for notability. It's irrelevant if every single person on the planet disagrees with what he says. If he gets enough publicity and airtime, he's notable. --Dweller 09:55, 26 February 2007 (UTC)

• How do you propose to make the article satisfy WP:NPOV or WP:V? We currently don't have any reputable independent sources, and we certainly don't have any sources that allow us to make the article have a neutral point of view. I assert that given the currently extant sources, it is impossible for the article to abide by fundamental Wikipedia policy. Most articles on notable crackpots that I have worked on (Time Cube, BDORT, Masaru Emoto, Christopher Michael Langan, and so on) have had independent sources about them that have allowed a neutral point of view, and most articles on crackpots without such sources that I have worked on (Aetherometry, Anti-relativity, Modern Galilean Relativity, Bios theory, Sorce theory, Karl Schappeller, and so on) have been deleted. Even for the articles that are kept, they are usually focused on the ideas of the person rather than the actual person (BDORT was moved from Yoshiaki Omura, and so on). --Philosophus ^T 10:05, 26 February 2007 (UTC)
  • Happy to discuss. Under which deletion criteria are you arguing this should be deleted? --Dweller 10:09, 26 February 2007 (UTC)
    • Actual nonverifiability and the impossibility of satisfying fundamental policy. This has been used before; for example, it was used as the justification for the Aetherometry deletion. It is a verifiability problem, which is the basis of non-notability deletions — even though the subject may have some presence on the internet and be known to some people, they are not notable enough to have independent sources about them. In this case, it is likely due to all of the sources being about the film, rather than the specific individual in the film. For that reason, I am somewhat inclined to redirect the article to WTBDWK, even though that redirect would be rather unintuitive. --Philosophus ^T 10:16, 26 February 2007 (UTC)
      • Based on Wikipedia:Deletion_policy#Problem_articles_where_deletion_may_not_be_needed, the verification problem is not a great argument. I'd be very surprised if it was impossible to verify his television and film appearances etc. That the article is of poor quality is unarguable, but I struggle to see a good reason for deletion; only for article improvement. --Dweller 10:28, 26 February 2007 (UTC)
        • Those parts of that policy are just examples. This sort of case is something I've been trying to deal with for years, and the normal examples don't apply well. The deleted articles I mentioned are good examples of the sort of issues involved. --Philosophus ^T 11:55, 27 February 2007 (UTC)

• Weak Keep, the least reason for deletion is being at odds with the rest of the scientific community, that is precisely where his notability is derived from. I find it a bigger problem that the article seems to lack secondary sources, therefore a big problem with WP:V Alf photoman 18:10, 26 February 2007 (UTC)

Change to Keep due to the sources found by Inkpaduta Alf^Photoman 01:38, 27 February 2007 (UTC)

• Keep per Dweller, unless I missed a [[WP:CRACKPOT]]-type guideline someplace.  ;-) Whatever one may think of his ideas, Wolf fulfills WP:BIO; he has authored a number of popular books that haven't been published by vanity presses[2] and his media appearances should be easy to verify. I see no reason why the article can't be improved (at the moment, it's virtually a stub). Jim Butler^(talk) 18:22, 26 February 2007 (UTC)
• Keep. The individual in question has been the non-trivial subject of at least one reliable, published sourcee (http://www.wie.org/bios/fred-alan-wolf.asp, originally provided by User:Jim Butler)--there may be more, but I didn't look. In addition, he has published 10 or so books. The article, as it currently stands, is largely verified and/or relatively easily verifiable (see the link). If reliable, published sources consider him a "crackpot" (though I would advise the use of a more neutral term or phrase such as "disagree with him"), then by all means note them so that they can be incorporated into the article. That the article is likely to become the subject of NPOV disputes in the future is not a reason to delete it now or later. -- Black Falcon 19:23, 26 February 2007 (UTC)
  • Additional comment to the nom: The exact wording you use on the article's talk page is: "The article is quite biased in its presentation as it leaves out the fact that his ideas have been rejected by the majority of the mainstream scientific community, that his status as a theoretical physicist is highly controversial, and so on." If sources can be found for this they should be most definitely be incorporated. However, to delete this article on that premise in the absence of such sources amounts to original research. -- Black Falcon 19:32, 26 February 2007 (UTC)
• Weak Keep While his theories may be "crackpot", the man is probably notable enough for an article. An article on his theories would need much better sourcing. I admit I'm not pleased with the level of sources in the article now but I'm fairly sure good WP:RS sources for the man's work and accomplishments can be found. Pig^man_{Talk to me} 20:24, 26 February 2007 (UTC)
• Keep The article now has several independent reliable sources to notability. He is a noted science writer, and has a PhD in physics from a noted university. He haswritten many books published by mainstream publishers such as Harper. His book "Taking the Quantum Leap: The New Physics for Nonscientists" won the National Book Award as science paperback for 1980 from the National Book Foundation. "Fred Alan Wolf" gets 120,000 Google hits. Disagreeing with the theoretical physics establishment is by no means a basis for deleting an article. The AFD process is not a forum for deciding the truth of scientific views but only of noting whether they have multiple independent sources. His many appearances on science programs and his book award are sufficient. His notability is further attested by his books. He may be a crank in the views of some, but clearly he is notable. Inkpaduta 21:17, 26 February 2007 (UTC)

• Comment: Just wanted to say thanks for adding those sources to the article. Jim Butler^(talk) 22:17, 26 February 2007 (UTC)

• Strong Keep he is a VERY notable loon. His looniness does not mean his article should be deleted. Please come up with a reason to delete that conforms to Wikipedia policy before AfDing notable crackpots. Mermaid from the Baltic Sea 06:10, 27 February 2007 (UTC)

Keep: My reasoning does did conform with policy, though admittedly in a non-obvious fashion, and I've listed several other AfDs as precedent above. In general, these sorts of articles are difficult to deal with policy-wise: it is possible to have a subject which is notable enough to have some sympathetic, partially reliable sources about it, or, in many cases, have many minor mentions in reliable sources , and yet be absurdly difficult or essentially impossible to write about while following verifiability, neutral point of view and no original research simultaneously. My personal threshold for this, which I believe stemmed from the arguments Aetherometry article a few years ago, is that for articles where the subject is clearly contentious and conflicts with mainstream science, the subject probably shouldn't have an article if no one has bothered to disagree with the subject in a reliable source. Nearly all notable crackpots and such satisfy this, as I mentioned above. As far as I could tell, after asking in the Pseudoscience Wikiproject and the talk page for the article, and searching around myself, Wolf didn't satisfy this criterion. It still appears that he doesn't, but the article has become more problematic — the article satisfies V reasonably well now, but making it satisfy NPOV will be difficult. In the end, this may end up like the Christopher Michael Langan article, and it may take us quite a while to find appropriate sources for NPOVing. There are also some other issues in this sort of case: for example, as the subject is portrayed in a scientific light, we really should have sources that satisfy the Appropriate Sources principle of the Pseudoscience ArbCom decision. But I can't currently call for the deletion of the article any longer given the new sources (nominating an abandoned article for AfD is a pointy yet effective way of improving the article). --Philosophus ^T 11:55, 27 February 2007 (UTC)

• Comment: Philosophus, I'm trying to understand your comment that subjects like Wolf are "essentially impossible to write about while following verifiability, neutral point of view and no original research simultaneously", and I'm just not grokking it. I'm sympathetic to your desire not to portray Wolf as representing some sort of majority or consensus view among physicists. But really, what is the big deal about people dicking around with metaphysics? It happens all the time. Surely wikilinking to physics and metaphysics a/o philosophy is enough to clarify matters for the curious but science-naive reader. Have we come to the point where it's OR to label something as metaphysics, or to say that Academies of Sciences aren't in the business of endorsing metaphysical views? regards, Jim Butler^(talk) 20:51, 27 February 2007 (UTC)

• I've had problems with that sort of writing before, yes. But hopefully it will be possible in this case, especially since there are no single-topic editors involved. --Philosophus ^T 05:40, 28 February 2007 (UTC)

• Comment I'm not sure I follow Philosophus's reasoning either. It sounds like you are giving two reasons: (1)The article is hard to police for NPOV and (2) No real scientist has gotten in a big enough huff over this crackpot to write an article explaining why his theories aren't science. Reason #1 is not deletion criteria. Policing a hard-to-police article is done every day at Wikipedia. Reason #2 is not going to be especially relevant in many cases. A lot of fringe science stuff is so kooky that no real scientist wants to treat it as important enough to even deserve a debunking article; for example, you'll never find a National Geographic article that debunks Flat Earth theories. Mermaid from the Baltic Sea 03:45, 28 February 2007 (UTC)

• Consider a theory that the moon is made of cheese (a typical example of clear pseudoscience). Suppose the theory is mentioned in quite a few reliable sources, possibly in a somewhat humorous or passing manner, but enough that it is verifiable and thus suitable for inclusion per WP:V. How can an NPOV article be written about the topic? It clearly conflicts with obvious evidence, but pointing that out would be original research. My point is that it is possible for more obscure pseudoscientific topics to have every reliable source be biased. This was the case, for example, with CTMU. It was certainly verifiable, and mentioned in many reliable sources because of its connection with Christopher Michael Langan. But there were no scientific sources, and the sources that existed were all sympathetic or mentioned the theory briefly while talking about Langan for other reasons. The article was deleted; otherwise, we would have been in a situation where to follow NOR and the letter of NPOV would have meant writing about the theory as if it were wonderful, without any criticisms. In this case, the situation is somewhat similar, though I misjudged the topic, due to my inability to find more independent sources. It is also likely that it will be possible to use WTBDWK sources as material for keeping a serious point of view in the article. I must say that I am quite surprised at the questioning of this reasoning, considering that it has been used many times before. --Philosophus ^T 05:38, 28 February 2007 (UTC)

• I don't get the problem. In your analogy, it would be easy to refer to a plethora of scientific sources that deal with the theoretical structure of the moon, as well as the factual geological work that's been done on moon rock. --Dweller 10:08, 28 February 2007 (UTC)
• In that case, you just write the article as "so-and-so says such-and-such." It's possible to write a pseudoscientific article in the same tone that is used when describing the contents of a novel: without writing as if everything that has been printed on a page is literally true. No original research required. Mermaid from the Baltic Sea 01:48, 1 March 2007 (UTC)

• Keep the article is well sourced now. - Peregrine Fisher 07:18, 27 February 2007 (UTC)
• Keep, but this article needs to be expanded and more citations given, to show the whole picture. Smee 10:05, 27 February 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.