Talk:B. Roy Frieden

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Wikipedian An individual covered by or significantly related to this article, B. Roy Frieden, has edited Wikipedia as
Friedenr (talk · contribs)

[edit] Copied from VfD discussion

155 Google hits for "B. R. Frieden Tucson." Looks like original research as well. Another vanity article I couldn't let pass by. - Lucky 6.9 22:49, 10 Aug 2004 (UTC)

  • Keep: I don't understand mathematics beyond division, so I haven't a clue about whether the article is accurate, but the problem here seems to be in the article's name. B. Roy Frieden turns up a lot of hits. B.R. Frieden virtually none. Further, the B. Roy Frieden looks entirely consistent with the article's description of him. I can't say that it's significant or not, but he does have the Fischer chair, etc. Geogre 02:17, 11 Aug 2004 (UTC)
  • Keep. Frieden's "Extreme Physical Information" theory has gotten a certain amount of press. From skimming some websites and newsgroups, it seems to be considered interesting and not crankery. See for example this skeptical book review [1]. The article as it stands is a promo piece, certainly written by Frieden himself (try a reverse DNS lookup on 150.135.248.126). Move to cleanup for NPOV-ification, which might be hard but oh well. Wile E. Heresiarch 07:32, 11 Aug 2004 (UTC)
    • Also the article should be renamed to Extreme physical information theory or something; it's the theory that gets any press -- Frieden himself is not otherwise notable. Wile E. Heresiarch 07:34, 11 Aug 2004 (UTC)
  • Works for me. It was the self-promotional tone and the whacked-out Google search that threw me. Clean and rename. - Lucky 6.9 08:56, 11 Aug 2004 (UTC)
  • Comment: Looks like another article came in from the same proxy. See Extreme physical information. I'm far from a mathmetician, but this could use a look from someone who knows the subject. - Lucky 6.9 19:12, 11 Aug 2004 (UTC)
    • Comment number two: Wile was right about the proxy. It's from the University of Arizona. - Lucky 6.9 19:14, 11 Aug 2004 (UTC)
  • The article needs a lot of cleanup/attention, but EPI is a real (if unlikely) physical theory; Frieden has 39 papers in the Scitation index[2], and other writers cite his work at least occasionally. It's a well-known enough theory that people would reasonably want to look it up- keep. -FZ 13:17, 12 Aug 2004 (UTC)
  • Also delete B Roy Frieden - This is a new attempt to recreate the vanity page under a new title. User acknowledged it is his (and his name) on Wikipedia:Help desk. - Tεxτurε 20:34, 16 Aug 2004 (UTC)

end moved discussion

[edit] B. Roy Frieden's anonymous POV-pushing edits

B. Roy Frieden claims to have developed a "universal method" in physics, based upon Fisher information. He has written a book about this. Unfortunately, while Frieden's ideas initially appear interesting, Frieden's work is highly controversial:

User:Lucky 6.9 was dead right about WP:VAIN. Note that Frieden is Prof. Em. of Optical Sciences at the University of Arizona. The data.optics.arizona.edu anon has used the following IPs to make a number of questionable edits:

  1. 150.135.248.180 (talk · contribs)
    1. 20 May 2005 confesses to being Roy Frieden in real life
    2. 6 June 2006: adds cites of his papers to Extreme physical information
    3. 23 May 2006 adds uncritical description of his own work in Lagrangian and uncritically cites his own controversial book
    4. 22 October 2004 attributes the uncertainty principle to the Cramer-Rao inequality, which is potentially misleading
    5. 21 October 2004 adds uncritical mention of his controversial claim that the Maxwell-Boltzmann distribution can be obtained via his "method"
    6. 21 October 2004 adds uncritical mention of his controversial claim that the Klein-Gordon equation can be "derived" via his "method"
  2. 150.135.248.126 (talk · contribs)
    1. 9 September 2004 adds uncritical description of his work to Fisher information
    2. 8 September 2004 adds uncritical description of his highly dubious claim that EPI is a general approach to physics to Physical information
    3. 16 August 2004 confesses IRL identity
    4. 13 August 2004 creates uncritical account of his work in new article, Extreme physical information
    5. 11 August 2004 creates his own wikibiostub

These POV-pushing edits should be modified to more accurately describe the status of Frieden's work.---CH 21:54, 16 June 2006 (UTC)

For the record: subsequent to my protest, B. Roy Frieden created a user account as noted above. I have exchanged some polite emails with him and he feels that his second book (which I plan to examine) overcomes objections raised by myself and other critiques regarding his first book. We have more or less agreed to reopen the discusssion in sci.physics.research once I have obtained his second book.---20:55, 11 July 2006 (UTC)