Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Harold Aspden

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 delete. —Cryptic 04:13, 7 January 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Harold Aspden

Harold Aspden (edit|talk|history|links|watch|logs)

Fails the (note: proposed) Wikipedia:Notability (academics) tests. Aspden's fringe ideas, which make up the bulk of this article, are not even known, let alone recognized as "expert" by independent sources. For non-experts reading this AfD, it's important to note that many of the claims made in the article (e.g., that he has debunked Einstein or is being oppressed by the mainstream scientific establishment) are simply silly. The "groundbreaking" ideas focused on by the article that make an implicit claim to notability appear to all be self-published on his webpage. Sdedeo (tips) 00:08, 2 January 2007 (UTC)

This discussion has been added as a test case to the proposed guideline Wikipedia:Notability (science) Sdedeo (tips) 00:10, 2 January 2007 (UTC)

• Delete - Aside from the author not being notable, the author's ideas (which feature prominately in the article) do not withstand the criteria outlined by WP:FRINGE or WP:SCI either. --ScienceApologist 00:11, 2 January 2007 (UTC)
• Keep: I am one of the editors of the mentioned article Harold Aspden and this is my comment: redacted to talk
• Very weak keep. His equation for the fine structure constant is referred to in several sources, mainly (probably solely) as an illustration of the problems caused by Eddington's application of numerology to physics. That being said, I see no compelling reason to keep this article. Tevildo 02:06, 2 January 2007 (UTC)
  • His equation: Aspden, H., Eagles, D. M., Aether Theory and the Fine Structure Constant, Physics Letters, v. 41A, pp. 423-424 (1972): 108π(8/1843)(l/6) or 137.035915 predicted in 1972; in 2002 CODATA presents the measurement value of 137.03599911(46) !? Thanks --Utad3 02:09, 2 January 2007 (UTC)
    • Indeed. It may be churlish of me to point it out, but the experimental results do, in fact, falsify his theory; but that's not really relevant to his notability. Tevildo 02:20, 2 January 2007 (UTC)
  • Simply producing an incorrect prediction for the fine structure constant does not seem to be a sufficient criteria for notability -- there are thousands upon thousands of scientists who have worked on this problem. Sdedeo (tips) 02:25, 2 January 2007 (UTC)
• Keep. Yet another attempt at removal of interesting content, and the article was just brought to attention, today, on the vote page for deletion of another article. Let's not forget that the arguments being used for removal of this content are only 'proposals', and not yet a guideline, and that these proposals are being created by the same people attempting to remove the content. -Ionized 02:23, 2 January 2007 (UTC)
  • Can you give the criteria you are using to establish the subject's notability? Sdedeo (tips) 02:26, 2 January 2007 (UTC)
  • Whilst the criteria for academics may be a proposal, our Wikipedia:Criteria for inclusion of biographies are not, and have been in regular use for many years. Similarly, our Wikipedia:No original research policy is not a proposal, either. Please explain how this person satisfies our criteria for the inclusion of biographies, and how xyr theories are not original research. Uncle G 04:07, 2 January 2007 (UTC)
  • There are no agendas nor rules to remove content which may be interesting, just that where the subject is not notable. Just being interesting is not reason to retain an article. Ohconfucius 23:57, 6 January 2007 (UTC)
    • Indeed you point out actual criteria which are not proposals. However, the first argument made for removal was based on proposals, along with WP:FRINGE, which are being contributed to from the nom and SA. What usually happens is that a not-so-valid reason is first given simply to get the ball rolling, and with time actual criteria are then accumulated. I will not waste my time explaining how the article satisfies actual criteria, because it is likely that either 1) even if it does, I wouldn't be able to convince anyone and my vote is one keep out of many deletes 2) it doesn't satisfy the actual criteria. My initial point remains valid, deletion of an article should not be based solely on proposed criteria, especially when the people who are defining the proposed criteria are the same ones attempting to delete the article. Now that actual criteria have been stated, I will remain silent if success is achieved, however I will not retract my Keep vote, as it still stands that the article was initially attacked without solid warrant. -Ionized 00:44, 3 January 2007 (UTC)

If you are not going to explain why you think the subject is notable, you should probably not be in a discussion about whether the article is notable! Sdedeo (tips) 02:06, 3 January 2007 (UTC)

As a holistic thinker, my personal notability criteria is far more lax than those of Wikipedia, and as such you would likely find any arguments I make concerning notability to be inapplicable here. As a Wikipedian, my contributions are bound by guidelines put forth by the founders and community, whether or not I agree with them from a scientific standpoint, and as such I have always stayed just within the boundaries of Wiki and cited my work as per the older guidelines. Indeed I do think that most, not all, topics concerning physics, whether mainstream or not, deserve mention. Many years ago on Wikipedia, I was under the impression that it is for the reader to decide what is noteworthy, that was the whole point of writing articles with NPOV intent. However it appears that over the years notability has been incorporated further into Wikipedia guidelines than it was in the past, and the recent Pseudoscience arbcom case and its subsequent outcomes demonstrate this. Wikipedia has changed over the years, notability has become far more strict, as evidenced by the current proposals being put forth to further restrict content to only orthodox views. In my opinion, it has gone too far, but that is just my opinion, hence not noteworthy per the standards.-Ionized 03:55, 3 January 2007 (UTC)

my personal notability criteria is far more lax than those of Wikipedia --> Then you should try to affect consensus at notablity rather than circumventing the consensus standards as they are applied here. --ScienceApologist 04:37, 3 January 2007 (UTC)

I appreciate that comment. But given the precedents and recent and past happenings here on Wikipedia, I very much feel that my attempts to affect notability standards would be a personal waste of time. However I am still considering at least giving my opinion on the matter at the associated discussion page concerning the newest proposed guidelines, and will perhaps do so soon. -Ionized 22:04, 3 January 2007 (UTC)

• Keep. First, let me say that this sort of nomination on the spur of a moment is never a good idea. If the article contains inaccuracies, remove them. If the sources are unreliable, remove them. From an outsider's perspective, I see a pretty good article that asserts notability of the subject, with multiple sources. --- RockMFR 03:01, 2 January 2007 (UTC)
  • Can you please point to what makes this subject notable? Sdedeo (tips) 03:08, 2 January 2007 (UTC)
    • But I can and will clarify this point you raise about 'notability':

      The mentioned author of the biographical article is a known and notable British physicist in scientific community worldwide already for about half a century; it has published over one 100 scientific articles since 1951, many of them in peer-review journals (eg. 9 papers in @Physics Letters A since 1972; 24 papers in Europhysics Letters, former Lettere al Nuovo Cimento since 1975; etc.), has several Brithish and U.S. patents one of them under research since May 2006 supported by DARPA and the Aviation and Missile Command in the U.S. [1], has several earlier physics books since 1966 published and his work has been mentioned in several occasions in mainstream physics publications, for e.g.:

      • 1985: R. S. Van Dyck, Jr., F. L. Moore, D. L. Farnham and P. B. Schwinberg in Int. J. Mass Spectrometry and Ion Processes, 66, p. 327.
      • 1985: B. W. Petley in The Fundamental Constants and the Frontier of Measurement (National Physical Laboratory, UK).
      • 1996: Department of Electromagnetic Theory, Lund Institute of Technology, Sweden, in Longitudinal electrodynamic forces and their possible technological applications
      • 2005: University of Turku, Department of Physics, Finland & Royal Institute of Technology, Sweden, Two Extended New Approaches to Vacuum, Matter & Fields
      • 2006: The Journal of the Acoustical Society of America, Unconventional thermoacoustic heat engines
    • The editor who purposed the deletion, and a few others, are attempting to supress a valuable publication which carries data that goes against their beliefs: As editor Ionized mentioned the main biographical article Harold Aspden was just brought to attention, today, on the vote page for deletion of another article and a few editors have taken the abusive action of tagging both articles, Aspden's physics and cosmology book Creation: The Physical Truth and this one, for deletion. --Utad3 03:52, 2 January 2007 (UTC)
      • This is a biographical article, about a person. That someone has written a lot of papers is not sufficient reason to have a biographical article. There must be things written about the person, not by the person, in order to support a biographical article. All of the citations in Harold Aspden#References are either not about Aspen, or are autobiographical, having been written by Aspen himself. The primary criterion in our Wikipedia:Criteria for inclusion of biographies requires that there be multiple non-trivial published works about Aspen written and published by people that are independent of him. Please cite some. Uncle G 04:19, 2 January 2007 (UTC)
      • Ignoring your continuous accusations of bad faith -- the average scientist will be a coauthor on at least a hundred papers over the course of a career. My old advisor, who is mid-career and I love him but don't think he is "noteworthy" by wiki standards, has 163 peer-reviewed papers to his name; Rashid Sunyaev, a clearly notable scientist, wrote 731 [2] over his career. Sdedeo (tips) 04:48, 2 January 2007 (UTC)
• comment I do not think you are right there--it varies from subject to subject, but 100 true refereed papers is way more than the average. The average for a successful academic scientist in most subjects is one a year. Notability is not attained by multiplying minor papers. DGG 06:29, 2 January 2007 (UTC)

At the risk of sounding aggressive and rude -- you are wrong, at least in physics, as is demonstrated by my evidence above (you are welcome to click Sunyaev's link -- those are all indeed "true" referreed papers.) Sdedeo (tips) 17:53, 2 January 2007 (UTC)

Oh, and I forgot the rule -- "kooks lie". I checked, and Aspden has forty referreed papers over the course of his career, the last in 1988 [3], not one hundred. Sdedeo (tips) 18:46, 2 January 2007 (UTC)

I am not the deceiver or the lier here! All I have stated above was in good faith and the best accurate to my knowledge: Dr. Aspden published about 145 papers (not including books and patents) distributed through some of the most notable peer-review journals and in alternative non-mainstream journals (see [4])! In spite of all current technology and the intellectual advancement of the last century, You are doing here exactly what the middle ages dogmatic Church did toward the forefathers of Science (except the [physical] death penalty, that would be improper of our advanced society...). Goodbye. (Utad3) 22:07, 2 January 2007 (UTC)

Of course Wikipedia editors won't kill him - but he should watch out for particle physicists. On a more serious note, the Pseudoscience ArbCom decision precludes the use of "alternative non-mainstream journals" as sources for scientific topics. Also, I would recommend for your sake that you not make the stereotypical crackpot arguments like comparing us to the church in the middle ages. We've heard most of them before, many of them more creative than yours, and they will just make editors lose respect for you and view all of your arguments with distrust.

• Delete - Ideas that have been "suppressed from the academic curricula" are almost always so suppressed with good reason. Wikipedia is not a soapbox, nor is it a place to right the wrongs in this world. --EMS | Talk 03:56, 2 January 2007 (UTC)
  • Comment Plate tectonics was supressed for a long time. And Piltdown Man should now be up for deletion? We're not in charge of judging science, just reporting about things that our readers may come to us for information about. If Harold Aspden is a fringe scientists or even a quack, who gets over 10,000 hits from a google search, people are seeking information about him, and they should be able to come here for that information. KP Botany 21:50, 6 January 2007 (UTC)
• Delete - Page has become nothing but a soapbox for fringe nutjobs who are subverting the neutrality principles of wikipedia to make the article massively unbalanced (on a personal note, does anyone get psycho vibes (martyr complex) from the way these people address you in Talk pages and such .... eeeeeeeee!). Jonathan Williams 04:24, 2 January 2007 (UTC)
  • Comment Then edit the article. A bad article on Flower should be nominate for deletion because its bad? No, if the subject is noteworthy enough it belongs, I'm sure even Creation Science has an article. KP Botany 21:50, 6 January 2007 (UTC)
• Delete per nom. FeloniousMonk 05:48, 2 January 2007 (UTC)
• rewrite from a NPOVThis is one of the most difficult cases in pseudoscience--when a scientist with definite conventional credentials in a subject adopts what would generally be considered highly unusual views. The "definite credentials" refers not only to his degrees, but to the journals where some of the work as been published, which are as reliable sources as can be imagined. But there are no references to the acceptance of the theory by any other scientist. The article with the greatest number of citations as shown in Web of Science is no.3, to which there are 23 citations. However 21 of those 23 are in later papers by Apsden himself, which is fairly clear evidence that nobody else thinks him worth citing, even to refute.

  In any case, the article as it stands is also wholly unacceptable. It assumes the truth of his theories, and--while admitting there are criticisms--goes on in a manner as if here were none. I think a NPOV article could be written, but he and his supporters would find it highly unsatisfactory, for the plain honest presentation of the material shows it not accepted. The edit history reveals that his supporters have resisted any critical comments. I can see no basis we can refuse to include an article. However I do not see how one could be written. I certainly would not attempt to do so against the expected reverts. DGG 06:29, 2 January 2007 (UTC)

  • Comment Good point. Charles Darwin adopted some serious fringe views and nobody is nominating him for deletion. KP Botany 21:50, 6 January 2007 (UTC)
  • If you can "see no basis we can refuse to include an article" on a theory that you yourself state has "no references to the acceptance of the theory by any other scientist" and that hasn't been addressed (even to refute it) by anyone, then I suggest that you refresh your memory of our Wikipedia:No original research policy. This is an encyclopaedia, not a library. We actually have a duty to exclude ideas that have not yet gained traction in the world outside of their creators and become part of the corpus of human knowledge. Uncle G 12:35, 2 January 2007 (UTC)
• Delete per nom. Anomo 06:50, 2 January 2007 (UTC)
• Delete per nom. POV, soapbox, OR, etc. Fan-1967 13:40, 2 January 2007 (UTC)
• Delete, as nonsense or hoax. The claims made in the article are not believable. linas 16:35, 2 January 2007 (UTC)
• Delete per nomination. Certain kinds of kookery merit a place on the Wikipedia, mostly because they become notorious enough that we can talk about them even though they flamboyantly contradict well-established facts. If this fellow's claims had the media presence of Richard Hoagland's Face-on-Mars fluff, then they might merit encycopaedia coverage. In my judgment, the Heim theory defense does not apply here, and the article should go. Anville 16:49, 2 January 2007 (UTC)
• Delete per nom. Edison 17:35, 2 January 2007 (UTC)
• Delete. The keep arguments are utterly unconvincing. If some aspect of his work is notable and can be written about, then an article on that is appropriate. Fails WP:PROF and his books don't cut it for him as an author. Mangojuice^talk 19:36, 2 January 2007 (UTC)
• Delete as non-notable. HEL 20:20, 2 January 2007 (UTC)
• Delete. I'm fond of cranks, but they have to be notable cranks (like Gene Ray) to be on Wikipedia. I've seen nothing that establishes notability here, so delete. Oh, who am I kidding? I'm a servant of the academic scientific community bent on SUPPRESSION of the truth! So my vote is strong suppress, and quantum salt. — coelacan talk — 03:17, 3 January 2007 (UTC)
• Delete. There aren't proper sources per the Pseudoscience ArbCom decision to treat the topic as scientific, and there aren't enough media or popular sources to treat the topic as a popular pseudotheory. There are thousands of pseudotheories like this. --Philosophus ^T 18:27, 4 January 2007 (UTC)
• Strong Keep He's obviously generated a lot of publicity for himself, and has written a number of books--this isn't notable? Our readers deserve to be able to come here first for a neutral and accurate and verifiable article about him. KP Botany 21:50, 6 January 2007 (UTC)
• Weak keepNeutral: What matters not is whether his debunking of scientific theories is "accepted wisdom", after all, the earth was held to be flat unti somebody came along and proved otherwise. Einstein's theories are only theories, and even this great man could have got some of his calculations wrong. What concerns me is whether he fulfills WP:BIO. I am totally unimpressed by the arguments advanced by principal author of redacted to talk, which make it sound like some sort of conspiracy theory aginst the subject. Aspden's 333 unique Ghits are a pretty mixed bag, but among those are a number of wiki mirrors, book links, many blogs forum and personal website hits, but also a number of sites where he is directly involved in creating content; the other relevant hits indicates that he may indeed on the esoteric fringes of science, and may be below borderline notability. His book appear to languish in the upper two-millionsths per Amazon (with none appearing above 2.318 millionsths. However, 'Physics without Einstein' is kept in 13 UK libraries (not many universities amongst these), and 92 (mostly university) libraries in the US, so it would appear not to be completely non-notable. Ohconfucius 23:19, 6 January 2007 (UTC)
  • opinion revised after review of Ghits. Ther are very few, if any, which are from reliable sources. Ohconfucius 23:57, 6 January 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.