Talk:Luboš Motl

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Wikipedian An individual covered by or significantly related to this article, Luboš Motl, has edited Wikipedia as
Lumidek (talk · contribs)
Articles for deletion
This page was previously nominated for deletion.
Please see prior discussions before considering re-nomination:

I removed the reference to "flame wars". Lubos/Lumidek, I've seen you in many Usenet debates and you know that I often don't like what you say and/or how you say it. But nothing has ever gone as far as what would traditionally qualify as a flame war. So don't be so hard on yourself! ^_^

-- Toby Bartels, 2004 May 10 (revised May 18)

i remember reading that lubos has an IQ of 150, which according to MENSA is "genius", and on sci.physics.strings he recommends strings over LQG
—Preceding unsigned comment added by 64.63.220.240 (talk • contribs) (Hawk Communications; geolocated in Chicago)

Contents

[edit] Vandalization of Tom Banks

Please have a look at Talk:Tom_Banks

—Preceding unsigned comment added by 87.196.97.73 (talk • contribs) (the net.novis.pt anon; geolocated near Coimbra, Portugal

The sentence He is best known for his discovery of Lubos Motl was added to Tom Banks by 69.236.40.68 (talk · contribs), aka the pltn13.pacbell.net anon, a suspected sock for Jack Sarfatti, an individual who happens to dislike Lubos Motl and who has been permabanned for his bad behavior in the Wikipedia. Sarfatti has made snide comments in articles on various other persons he apparently dislikes, including John Baez and Hal Puthoff. I removed the sentence in question, which I presume is what the net.novis.pt anon was referring to.---CH 11:56, 22 May 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Beliefs

See: http://www.amazon.com/gp/cdp/member-reviews/A1ZDPQA6FLY8XM?ie=UTF8 —Preceding unsigned comment added by 134.139.24.131 (talk • contribs)

So he defines himself as a Christian and an Atheist. However, Category:Atheist scientists "is a category for scientists who identify as atheists and for whom being atheist is relevant to their public life or occupation." That doesn't seem to be true for Dr. Motl, does it? We shouldn't track down the religious beliefs of every scientist and stuff them in categories; that's silly. -- SCZenz 22:46, 26 October 2006 (UTC)
Prof Motl is also interested in politics. Like many people of his age from Eastern Europe, he is not a great fan of the left. Note that he called himself a "Christian atheist" in reviewing a political book by the late great Oriana Fallaci, not in discussing science.
I've added something about his blog, his politics and this label into the article, and removed the categories. My description of his politics is really bad; someone please improve it! CWC(talk) 00:39, 27 October 2006 (UTC)
Are we sure his political views are really notable? He has an article because he is a professor of physics at Harvard; if he blogged without that, I don't think he'd have one. -- SCZenz 03:06, 27 October 2006 (UTC)
"So and so has a blog, and calls himself an athiest christian in an Amazon review..." Encyclopedia Britanica it ain't. Some quality control, please.--GaeusOctavius 03:25, 27 October 2006 (UTC)
It's important to know about his religion, so it is going back in. 4.131.129.117 03:58, 27 October 2006 (UTC)
SCZenz makes a good point, but I still think it's good to have a brief mention of his blog (which is, in fact, mostly about string theory and useful to laymen like me). I wouldn't say it's important to mention his (non?)religious stance, but I think a brief mention makes the article a little more informative (as long as we avoid "undue weight") and linking to that Amazon review makes the article a lot more informative. I've edited the article accordingly. (BTW, GaeusOctavius's last few edits here are violations of WP:POINT. See User talk:GaeusOctavius for some of the background.) Cheers, CWC(talk) 08:57, 27 October 2006 (UTC)

From WP:LIVING Information supplied by the subject may be added to the article if (amongst other things) it is relevant to the person's notability. I think that has to be established here, and I think it has not been established here, certainly on religion, quite likely on politics. Charles Matthews 12:32, 27 October 2006 (UTC)

(<Wikilawyering>Um, doesn't that come from WP:BLP#Using the subject as a source? I don't think we're using Prof M as a source here.</Wikilawyering>)
I completely agree that whatever we say about the non-notable areas of someone's life has to be uncontroversial. However, I fear that the article already has something controversial about Prof M's writings on physics: the paragraph in this article about the Bogdanov Affair strikes me as giving undue weight to Prof M's belated and peripheral involvement in the Bogdanov mess.
I'm not certain what to do about this. Do other editors think this should be fixed? (If so, how?) Cheers, CWC(talk) 06:49, 28 October 2006 (UTC)

[edit] April 2007

I've just WP:BOLDly removed the text about "defend"ing the Bogdanov brothers (because that seems to me to mischaracterize the blog post in question) and trimmed down the politics/religion paragraph. Here's what we had before my edit:

Motl was one of the few physicists to defend the Bogdanov brothers' papers, though he did state about one that "the detailed structure of the paper (and very similar papers published elsewhere) probably makes no sense - at least no one has been able to understand the content of the paper in detail".[1]
Motl keeps a blog mainly about string theory but also discussing general science, politics and events at Harvard. In science, besides talking about string theory, he frequently criticizes research into global warming. In politics, he was one of few Harvard faculty willing to openly defend president Lawrence Summers's controversial remarks regarding women in science. In religion, following the example of Oriana Fallaci, he counts himself "as a Christian atheist" [2], [3] although he notes "how simple-minded and naive Christianity can be" [4] .

Here's the current version:

Motl keeps a blog mainly about string theory but also discussing general science, politics and events at Harvard. In science, besides talking about string theory, he frequently criticizes alarmism about global warming. In politics, he was one of few Harvard faculty willing to openly defend president Lawrence Summers's controversial remarks regarding women in science, and he admires the late Oriana Fallaci.[5]

I think the article is now much more balanced. Cheers, CWC 04:06, 6 April 2007 (UTC)


[edit] Leaving Harvard

This really needs a source guys. And obviously a rewording, but the source comes first. --Theblog 18:53, 14 July 2007 (UTC)

Deleted for the moment. No way WP can publish vague rumours about people's careers. Charles Matthews 19:36, 14 July 2007 (UTC)
Apparently one of LM's more bitter enemies has been trying to spread these rumours for months now. Sigh. CWC 01:50, 15 July 2007 (UTC)
LM is no longer listed on Harvard Physics faculty list [6]. I think this indicates that he has indeed left Harvard. I couldn't find any reliable sources on the circumstances of what has happened, though. Andris 05:17, 15 July 2007 (UTC)
While this: [7] is probably true, it is not a reliable source. I would say that a post on his own blog on the subject would be acceptable, but as a comment on another blog, that doesn't fly. --Theblog 06:12, 15 July 2007 (UTC)
There are a few blogs where commenters' identities are checked, but mostly it's easy to for a commenter to pretend to be someone else.
Some physics bloggers have mentioned the name Sarfati in connection with these rumours. Sigh. CWC 12:44, 15 July 2007 (UTC)
I have no knowledge of anything going on, I'm just trying to enforce WP:BLP policy, and as I said, the blog comment is not a RS. --Theblog 16:58, 15 July 2007 (UTC)
Clarification: Theblog is quite correct. Apologies if I seemed to be disagreeing. CWC 20:34, 15 July 2007 (UTC)
I'm completely confused now. Motl's own webpage says "Assistant professor (*) of string theory (*) at the Jefferson Laboratories (*) Scholar in the Physics department (*) of Harvard University (*)". "Jefferson Laboratories" links to High Energy Physics group at Harvard which still lists him as an assistant professor and "Scholars" part of Harvard Physics website is not accessible from outside Harvard.
That web page has since disappeared. His name is still on the HETG group member page (but not on the department faculty page), but the link to Motl's webpage now gives a redirect to a 404 error. 128.118.174.92 15:52, 10 August 2007 (UTC)
I can't figure out what this means but he might still have an affiliation with Harvard. I propose that we keep any reports of him leaving Harvard out of the article, until someone presents us with a reliable source. Andris 18:52, 15 July 2007 (UTC)
I think someone is staging a hoax. CWC 20:34, 15 July 2007 (UTC)
Peter Woit has a blog at Columbia (http://www.math.columbia.edu/~woit/wordpress/). He has posted that Lubos Motl is gone from Harvard (in a top level 'article (?)', not an anonymous post. Here: http://www.math.columbia.edu/~woit/wordpress/?p=573). Does this count as a source? --Mark Roulo
I don't think so. It's possible that Woit was taken in by Sarfarti (who is indeed the source of these rumors[8]). FWIW, (1) Motl is still in Harvard's phone directory and (2) a search for posts in 2007 containing "Harvard" on Motl's blog found no mention of him leaving. Cheers, CWC 11:03, 7 August 2007 (UTC)
Motl isn't listed at the Harvard physics department list of faculty. What do people think about that as a source? -- SCZenz 12:10, 8 August 2007 (UTC)
(1) That's WP:OR, not a source. (2) I think he'd be classified as a Research Scholar (Page not accessible outside Harvard Network), not faculty. Sigh. CWC 23:29, 8 August 2007 (UTC)
(1) The official Harvard physics department list of faculty is the most reliable and authoritative source of who is faculty in the Harvard physics department. (2) Motl was classified as an Assistant Professor (here). He no longer is. As you note, a Research Scholar is not faculty. Academics are very picky about titles. It is possible that Motl is still employed by Harvard in some research capacity (though I doubt it, given the other evidence), but he is no longer an assistant professor or faculty member of the physics department. The entry should therefore note this (but not claim that he is no longer affiliated with or employed by Harvard). 128.118.174.92 15:38, 10 August 2007 (UTC)
I don't think it's original research actually; not if you used it as a source to state that Motl wasn't faculty at the physics department currently, at least. But I admit it's a stretch, and if different pages conflict, that's no good. -- SCZenz 05:16, 9 August 2007 (UTC)
Come on people, this is not so hard to believe. He's no longer listed on the Harvard physics faculty page, but the Internet Archive Wayback Machine shows that he used to be. This is not original research, this is a de facto statement by the department! Maybe they haven't gotten him off all the auxiliary pages yet (I know departments that still have remnants of employees lingering around years later), but universities don't screw around by "accidentally" removing professors from their official list of faculty. It's conceivable that he still retains some Harvard affiliation, but he's no longer a professor. On top of that there's also the Dorigo blog post above talking about leaving academia in 2 weeks, his own blog shows that a few weeks later he sold off his furniture and bike and returned to Czechoslovakia, and [Removed irrelevant comments and speculation. -- SCZenz 13:25, 10 August 2007 (UTC)] but being removed from the departmental faculty page is prima facie evidence which, if anything, is *more* authoritative than a blog post by Motl. Anyone would accept an official faculty department web site listing as sufficient evidence that someone is a professor there, you should accept explicit removal from such a page as evidence that they no longer are. It would go too far to say that he's no longer affiliated by Harvard, but it's perfectly acceptable to refer to him as a former professor. 72.72.203.216 12:15, 10 August 2007 (UTC)
He has not stated he is no longer a professor at Harvard on his blog, has he? Nothing else you mention is a reliable source. We need very good sources for biographies of living persons, period. Whether we believe it is irrelevant to the article. -- SCZenz 13:18, 10 August 2007 (UTC)
I have indeed given a reliable source: his employer, who demonstrably used to list him as faculty, but now no longer does (coinciding, of course, with all the other circumstantial evidence of his departure).
And why would his statements on his blog be a "reliable source" anyway? He can say (or refrain from saying) anything he wants, true or not. He could post on his blog that he's a distinguished professor at Caltech, but no one here would allow that to be reflected in his Wikipedia entry without actually checking Caltech's faculty list. And why is that? Because the latter is more authoritative than his blog. The official faculty listing of the Harvard department of physics is a reliable source of who, in fact, is employed as a faculty member of that department.
I submit that his employer is the most reliable source *possible* regarding his employment status. Why do you include Motl's web site as a "reliable source" concerning his employment, but discount the web site of his actual employer?
Note, too, that the vast majority of professors with entries on Wikipedia do not have blogs. If they have not stated on their (nonexistent) blogs that they are employed at that institution, how can any Wikipedia entry say that they work there? Because their institution officially lists them as faculty there, of course. Independent of any statements or lack thereof on personal blogs, the faculty listing of their institution is universally accepted on Wikipedia as a reliable source giving sufficient evidence who is employed there. One must conversely accept that if the institution does *not* list them as faculty, that is a reliable source giving sufficient evidence that they are not faculty there.
If any other faculty member left their institution, nobody would insist on a personal blog post as "proof"; the departing faculty might not even have a blog. Instead, Wikipedians would go by the institution's faculty list. You are demanding a higher standard of proof than is extant for any other faculty member on Wikipedia, for no justifiable reason.
If Motl had actually denied leaving Harvard, there would be a debate: you could ask whether his employer is falsifying his employment status, or whether Motl himself is. (And even in that case, his employer is still the more reliable source of the two!) In the absence of any such denial, there are no legitimate grounds to disregard Harvard's faculty listing as "unreliable".
Motl's silence on the matter on his blog is not reliable evidence of his continued employment there, and Harvard's explicit removal of Motl from their faculty list is reliable evidence of their termination of his faculty status. 128.118.174.92 15:17, 10 August 2007 (UTC)
You're missing the point. Removal from some (not all) Harvard faculty lists (as discussed above/below) is not the same as a direct statement from Harvard that his employment status has changed. The latter is a reliable source, while the former is speculation and original research done by Wikipedians using directory pages. University directory pages are unreliable, because they are intended for internal use, have glitches, and are sometimes updated slowly. Again, Wikipedia has the highest standards of verifiability with regard to the biographies of living persons.
Try reading the links; they'll shed light on what we're asking for. Our ideal source would be a newspaper article or official press release, not a blog at all. -- SCZenz 17:55, 10 August 2007 (UTC)
No, you're missing the point, which is that "a direct statement from the university, a newspaper article, or an official press release" is not the standard used by Wikipedia for verifying a professor's affiliation in any other case. In every other case, except for here, university directory pages *are* considered reliable enough to verify that a professor is or is not at a given institution. No one demanded an official press release from Harvard to verify his employment when Motl came there in the first place; there is no reason to demand it now when he's left. I'm calling for uniform standards here; you're making up new notions of "reliability" which are not used elsewhere on Wikipedia.
I reject your "intended for internal use" argument (the departmental web site is the *public* image of the department; deparments may have their own, different internal staff listings), as well as the "updated slowly" argument (which would explain an absence of his listing after being hired, but not the removal of his listing after leaving).
Departments do not generally offer press releases or statements when assistant professors leave. Given that, what reasonable procedure do you offer for removing a departed professor's affiliation from Wikipedia, other than verifiable objective evidence of his removal from the official public faculty listing?
You seem to insist that in order to change a professor's affiliation in Wikipedia, one must contact that professor personally. If so, why do we not similarly have to personally verify each professor's arrival? If that were the standard, affiliations would effectively never be added or removed from Wikipedia. The fact that Motl has a blog has no bearing here; what is sufficient evidence for a professor without a blog should be sufficient evidence for a professor with a blog.
I've read the links. The Wikipedia "reliable source", "original research" and "biographies of living persons" make do not support the standards you are claiming. Nowhere do they assert that departmental employee lists are unreliable sources of employment information; that is merely *your* assertion. To the contrary, they are primary sources of employment information, which are widely used in Wikipedia.
It doesn't matter what an "ideal" source is, it matters what a *sufficient* source is. Wikipedia does not demand press releases or personal statements to reliably verify an employee's employment status, within or outside of academia.
If Motl suddenly reappears on the physics faculty list, the Wikipedia entry can be amended. Unless that happens, you have no justification for why that list should be considered unreliable, and your interpretation of his removal from the list as a "glitch" is conjectural interpretation. What is not conjectural is the list reflecting the faculty of the department. 128.118.174.92 19:53, 10 August 2007 (UTC)
The statement (or implication) that Mr. Motl has left Harvard might be considered defamatory if it's false. Therefore accuracy is paramount. I've protected the page; you can click the link at the top to request unprotection if you think I've gone beyond policy. -- SCZenz 20:36, 10 August 2007 (UTC)
SCZenz's rationale is beyond weak as a justification for keeping a demonstrably false statement in a WP entry.
128.118.174.92 pointed out -- accurately -- that universities do not release statements to the press when they let their junior faculty go. Generally they do exactly what Harvard has just done: drop the name quietly from their faculty list.


SCZenz has failed to state when asked under what conditions -- barring a direct statement from Harvard that Motl has been terminated, which will never happen -- he would consider Motl's termination to be "reliably" established.
And SCZenz has failed to identify a single line in WP's rules that would indicate that a University's own faculty roster was not a reliable source for information about the composition of their own faculty!
At the same time, SCZenz has stated -- against WP rules and standards -- that an individual's own blog should be considered a reliable source (indeed, the *only* reliable source!) for information about their own controversial employment status.
Since SCZenz has failed to provide any remotely plausible standard here for keeping the article as is in the face of changing circumstances, I will wait a period of a few days and update Motl's entry to reflect the new situation.
Additionally: I have contacted the Harvard theory group directly and they have verified that Motl has indeed left the department. I would urge any Wikipedians to do the same -- the theory group's contact information, as well as that of the Physics department and the university provost, are easily available online -- before engaging in wild conspiracy theories.


One last thing: Since Harvard has decided to accept Motl's resignation or whatever events led to his no longer working there, it could be considered "defamatory" to the Harvard Physics Department to state that Motl is still employed by them! So SCZens's bizarre rationale for forcing WP to claim that Motl is still a Harvard professor is completely inoperative. --Authoritative Information Source

Motl is listed as "Ass. Prof" in the High Energy Theory Group at Harvard. [9] This was not hard to find using Google. RonCram 04:57, 9 August 2007 (UTC)

No - but notice that his profile page has been removed. It takes time to update everything. But i agree that its premature to conclude anything. --Kim D. Petersen 23:46, 9 August 2007 (UTC)

If the rumour that Motl has left Harvard gets confirmed (I don't view it as confirmed yet), shouldn't the appropriate text be "He was an assistant professor in Harvard from ... to 2007" rather than "He is a former assistant professor..."? We don't generally use the phrasing "former professor" in bios of other academics. Andris 16:30, 11 August 2007 (UTC)

There seems to be a faction here who is trying to game the system in order to protect Motl's precariously tottering reputation. The rules exist to guarantee accuracy of Wikipedia's articles -- SCZenz and the rest are using them to guarantee *in*accuracy. This is a blatant abuse of the rules. The Czech Got Bounced 22:04, 12 August 2007 (UTC)

No, this is not "abuse of the rules" or "gaming the system" - its exactly according to WP:BLP rules. Please read them. Personally the circumstantial evidence has me convinced, but i also recognize the importance of the WP:BLP rule - and why this cannot go into the article before its officially confirmed by a third party source (or Motl himself), and i can't say that i've ever agreed with anything that Motl has said that i've read - so i'm hardly out to protect "Motl's precariously tottering reputation". Find a good reliable resource, that states this - and it can go in. Before that .... sorry. --Kim D. Petersen 22:41, 12 August 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Full protection

There appear to be an individual or individuals who are extremely keen to add information about Dr. Motl's employment status to the article as quickly as possible, without reliable sources. Whether I believe this rumor is true is irrelevant. My opinion on Dr. Motl and his reputation, which I have no interest in discussing here, is irrelevant as well. I will say, however, that I do not like Wikipedia being used by someone with a grudge, or with any motivation other than providing a high-quality encyclopedia. Policy tells us how to do that and, and the policy on the biographies of living persons is extremely clear.

I am blocking usernames which insult Dr. Motl as I see them, and the page will be fully protected until further notice. There is a link at the top of the article for how to appeal this decision. -- SCZenz 07:13, 13 August 2007 (UTC)

OK, so he has left Harvard - so what? Even if it's true it should be left out unless the reasons aren't trivial.

79.67.103.209 01:49, 19 August 2007 (UTC)

[edit] WikiProject class rating

This article was automatically assessed because at least one WikiProject had rated the article as stub, and the rating on other projects was brought up to Stub class. BetacommandBot 09:59, 10 November 2007 (UTC)

[edit] co-founder of M-theory ?

I think the following sentence is at least an exageration:

Together with Robbert Dijkgraaf, Erik Verlinde, and Herman Verlinde, he is a co-founder of matrix string theory, a nonperturbative definition of string theory.

Please take a look at the M-theory wikipedia page: there is no mention of Motl's contribution ...

Moreover, most of Motl's publications on M-theory are in collaboration with his advisor Thomas Banks, who is a co-author of the seminal paper M Theory As A Matrix Model: A Conjecture (by Banks, Fischer, Shenker and Suskind ... none of them are in the citation !!!).

This is the reason why I am going to replace it by the following one:

He made an important contribution to matrix and nonperturbative string theory, under the impulse of his advisor T.Banks. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 82.67.59.93 (talk) 11:04, 3 January 2008 (UTC)

Moreover, it does not seem standard (and polite) to forget the names of co-authors in the bibliography.

You may have missed the distinction between "M-theory", "Matrix-theory" and "matrix string theory". These are different but related topics. "M-theory" was founded as an effort of several people including Witten, Townsend and other. Subsequently Matrix-theory was founded by Banks, Fischer, Shenker and Suskind in the paper cited above, but "matrix string theory" was a further development in which Motl was involved e.g. hep-th/9701025 which is prior to any of his joint publications wth Banks. 80.177.110.122 (talk) 21:15, 22 January 2008 (UTC). I am Weburbia (talk) 21:18, 22 January 2008 (UTC)