Wikipedia talk:Requests for comment/Elerner

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Ryan Delaney talk wrote in an Outside view: This is a content dispute, not a user conduct RFC. That may be true on Big Bang, but on Plasma cosmology the problem is less the content than the fact that Elerner and Reddi are reverting edits without any attempt to discuss them on the Talk page. --Art Carlson 18:46, 22 November 2005 (UTC)

As Ryan Delaney seem to be able to tell ... this is a content dispute, not a user conduct RFC. The content on the Big Bang and Plasma cosmology has been twisted, IMO, by Joke137, Joshuaschroeder, and (to a lesser extent) Art Carlson (along with Christopher Thomas at the BB article) ... there seem to have neen a clique formed, IMO, to POV articles (mainly according to a BB POV) and attack other contributors (this same clique filed a RfC on me .... are they talking elsewhere, through mail, IRC, etc? I do not know though ...). No one should respond to individuals that troll (eg., pushing a POV) and attack other editors (and this has been explicitly shown by Joshua in reguard to me). Elerner has also tired to keep some scientific integerity to the articles. ... Sincerely, JDR 19:28, 22 November 2005 (UTC)

Then the discussion should center on whether plasma cosmology is believed widely enough to merit mention under the NPOV policy, not on whether plasma cosmology is right. The 11% statistic was reached only by Googling "plasma" and "cosmology" separately. Art LaPella 19:35, 22 November 2005 (UTC)

It's in many books on the universe and cosmology (look on google.book). Art LaPella, I understand that you are also against Plasma cosmology ... but to advocate that Wikipedia remove a topic that are contained in tomes of knowledge about the universe is preposterous. JDR 19:44, 22 November 2005 (UTC)
Correction - I don't have an opinion about the truth of plasma cosmology. This is about Wikipedia process. Art LaPella 21:29, 22 November 2005 (UTC)

Regardless of the content dispute, which I do not deny, there is clear evidence of unacceptable user conduct. Nothing I put in the RfC argues about content. The issue on big bang is not over content, but the fact that the same changes are continually reinstated, despite objections from me, from User:Joshuaschroeder, from User:Pjacobi, from User:Christopher Thomas, from User:Jitse Niesen, from User:DV8 2XL and from User:Art LaPella. There has been no attempt to accommodate other users, despite substantive objections to the changes as they are from many different users, as summarized (somewhat neutrally, I hope) by the article content RfC. –Joke137 19:42, 22 November 2005 (UTC)

I second this comment by Joke137. --Christopher Thomas 20:50, 22 November 2005 (UTC)

Contents

[edit] Content dispute, versus a user conduct RFC

At what point does a Content Dispute become a User Conduct RFC? As is clear from the Plasma Cosmology dispute page, I have what I consider to be a running dispute with Joshuaschroeder. I think the problem stems from two points:

  1. There is no accurate definition of Neutral Point of View as it applies to articles that present a point of view. The two options are:
  1. Ensure that an article on a specific point of view in balanced by describing other recognised points of view
  2. Ensure that an article on a specific point of view is written in a neutral manner, acknowledging that there are other points of view.
I've described this point more fully in a section Article point of view vs general Neutral point of view on the NPOV Talk page. It seems the editors are adhering to different definitions here.
  1. At what point do "discussions" break down. If an editor (or two) does not accept any evidence presented to them, from third party input, peer-reviewed references, and other sources, then what?
--Iantresman 08:57, 23 November 2005 (UTC)

Although I'm not sure I agree with the specifics, I agree that the content part of the dispute has to do with the core of the NPOV policy. The NPOV policy is a helpful policy as far as it goes, but in this case it hasn't offered much of a guide. However, nobody involved in these disputes is even bothering to talk about this any more, except to accuse others of violating NPOV, which seldom seems to be productive. –Joke137 15:17, 23 November 2005 (UTC)

NPOV is very important for both sides. Right now I would tend to vouche for the defendant because his story seems to make a lot more sense. I think it would help some of you if you read over the WP:NPOV. In particular I think the section good research. I'm sure the defendant has properly sources his information. Good "facts" should be mentioned to maintain the NPOV of an article. Also might I suggest you read over WP:NOT#Wikipedia is not a democracy or an Anarchy. There should be no Wikipedia:Straw polls --CyclePat 20:06, 26 November 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Comments moved from main page

Response from User:Joke137 included on User:Ryan Delaney's talkpage:

Hi Ryan, thanks for your input on the RfC. NPOV issues can be subtle, especially when trying to neutrally decide what to include and exclude in a long article about a vast subject, such as the big bang. In this case, it is clear that the major editors (myself included) all have strong feelings about this. I earlier wrote a content RfC, at Talk:Big Bang#RfC. If you haven't read it already, I would encourage you to look at it before concluding that Elerner's edits are unambiguously NPOV. There has been substantial discussion of this on talk. Thanks. –Joke137 18:41, 22 November 2005 (UTC)


I find Ryan's comments to be myopic and underinformed. Has he read the talkpages? The weasel-wording of points about the Big Bang on the Big Bang page needs to be avoided for the same reason that they are avoided on the evolution page. --Joshuaschroeder 17:47, 23 November 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Request for documentation on added evidence

The following was added by User:ScienceApologist on 14:54, 5 February 2006:

As User:200.83.204.54 now making threats regarding the membership status of various Wikipedia members and continuing to wholesale revert without discussion on Plasma cosmology and Talk:Plasma cosmology.

This is a serious accusation. It would be useful to include both a link to the IP address's contributions (simplest method: {{user|200.83.204.54}}, which gives 200.83.204.54 (talk · contribs)), and a link to either plausible statements from the IP poster and/or User:Elerner, or from an admin who ran checkuser, verifying that they are the same person. --Christopher Thomas 08:34, 6 February 2006 (UTC)

Oh yes - links to specific threat diffs would be nice, too. In theory I can grind through all of the histories/user contributions to find it, but in practice, you probably had something specific in mind, and have already done the grinding. --Christopher Thomas 08:38, 6 February 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Comments from Jonathanischoice on WAS 4.250's outside view

Can someone please explain to me how anyone is supposed to complete a PhD (an original piece of research) at any reputable university that contradicts most of mainstream thought on the subject? This point is pretty much irrelevant. Einstein was a patent clerk, all other comparisons aside. At least he can spell. Jon 22:57, 8 February 2006 (UTC)

Easy - do the PhD on parts that are straightforward to test and don't claim to invalidate vast tracts of present theory. Looking for the filaments Lerner proposes exist would be a great place to start. Looking for more precise measurements of the magnetic field within and around the galaxy would be another great place to start. Even a null result (not finding what you're looking for) would advance the state of research, and the results are useful enough to mainstream cosmology and astrophysics that they'd get funded. If you find results inconsistent with mainstream models, then you get to propose a new model with data that's backed up by (and duplicatable by) mainstream researchers. Eric Lerner does not appear to have taken this approach. Yes, I am a PhD candidate (graduating 2008 or 2009, depending on how long I can convince my professor to continue funding interesting experiments). --Christopher Thomas 04:53, 9 February 2006 (UTC)


[edit] Integrity non existent

I am beginning to think that the issue of integrity and honesty of ScienceApologetic needs to be examined here. And by that I mean the comments below made by SA clearly show that he is a big bang advocate. So what makes him think he is qualified to edit plasma cosmology from a neutral point of view? He may and always does claim neutrality, but in reality he isn't neutral at all. And to go around editing out others borders on dishonesty. It is dishonest in the scientific sense.

from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:Big_Bang/Archive3

"If you read the opening sentence it clearly states that the "Big Bang is the scientific theory that describes the early development and shape of the universe". No other idea from inside or outside the scientific establishment that has been put forward does that. The now discredited steady state model doesn't do it, and neither do the protestations of Halton Arp, et al. or the plasma cosmology folks. The Big Bang is a paradigmatic formalism in cosmology, similar to the way in which Maxwell's Equations as "the set of four equations, attributed to James Clerk Maxwell, that describe the behavior of both the electric and magnetic fields, as well as their interactions with matter". Even though there are those people who think some parts of Maxwell's Equations are wrong (magnetic monopoles for example, may exist), we still use the definitive article because that is the way science works. You can peruse the science pages here on wikipedia for myriad more examples. True scientific theories, by definition, don't lend themselves to concessions of plurality because there can be only one theory available that describes the observations. In the case of the Big Bang, it (and nothing else) is the one theory available that describes the observations. This has nothing to do with being "neutral", it has to do with reporting the facts about a scientific theory and its applicability to the natural universe. Joshuaschroeder 14:00, 30 May 2005 (UTC)"

Found by Tommy Mandel 02:46, 17 March 2006 (UTC)

[edit] compare to Eric Lerner

Found this too:

Dear Dr. Krauss,

I read your recent op-ed "Equal Time for Nonsense," and I'd like to comment on it. You correctly argue that the scientific method allows experiment and observation to arbitrate truth, and that when this method is tossed aside, nonsense flourishes. But there is something important left out here. Scientists themselves do not always use the scientific method in their own work, and when they abandon it, they open the door wide for creationism and pseudo science in general.

Today, cosmology in general and the Big Bang theory is a case in point, particularly because it is in a field with a high popular profile. By the criterion of the scientific method, by the criterion of observation, the Big Bang has been falsified many times over, yet it remains a widely accepted theory. Each time its prediction have been falsified by observation, the theory has been modified with ad-hoc additions, rather than being rejected as untenable.

In the 1970's, theorists realized that the Big Bang theory did not, as had previously thought, predict an isotropic black body cosmic background radiation(CBR), but that points only a few degrees apart in the sky would never have been in causal contact and therefore could not have come to the same temperature. Rather a Big Bang would produce a CBR that was chaotic on scale of a degree or more. Yet this fundamental contradiction did not shake the theory, and indeed was ignored for the most part until an ad-hoc modification was introduced--inflation--which accounted for the isotropic CBR.

Yet inflation had its own contradictions with observation, since it predicted a density for the universe 10-100 times above that observed. Again a fundamental contraction did not cause an abandonment of inflation, and thus of the Big Bang, which now rested on it. Rather a second ad-hoc modification, non-baryonic dark matter , was introduced to fill the gap between the observed density of the universe, (and the density required by Big Bang nucleosynthesis), and the predictions of inflation.

In the past few years, the contradictions have multiplied. The theory obviously predicts that objects in the universe must be younger than the age of the universe as determined from the Hubble constant. Yet observations that limit H to above 65km/s/Mpc indicate a universe that is at most 10 Gyr old, much younger than globular clusters that are at least 14Gyr old. Again, this is a clear cut contradiction of predictions, and again there is no rejection of the theory. Rather a third ad-hoc modification, the cosmological constant, has been added. Of course, no independent evidence for inflation, non-baryonic dark matter or a cosmological constant has ever been adduced.

The Big Bang predicts the abundance of He3, He 4, D and Li7. Yet increasingly accurate measurements of the abundances of these isotopes has led even Big Bang supporters like Gary Steigman to conclude that no value of the density of baryons can simultaneously account for the observed abundance of these isotopes. Again, the failure of this fundamental prediction has not led to the abandonment of the Big Bang, but to a fourth ad-hoc modification. It is now assumed that there is a 10Mev tau neutrino which decays in just about 10 seconds, in order to adjust the predictions to fit observations.

Even with all these ad-hoc modifications, which severely weaken the predictive power of the theory and its claim to even be a falsifiable theory, there remain additional contradictions with observation. For one thing, the theory demands large scale homogeneity and a constant average density of the universe. Yet observations have shown that, out to a distance of 1,000 Mpc, there is no average density, but the density falls with increasing distance, as would be expected from a fractal distribution of matter. In the same manner, larger and larger concentrations of matter occur as observations penetrate farther out. It is also impossible to allow enough time within the Big Bang scenario to form such gigantic concentrations.

Clearly, the scientific method is not being adhered to here. If the Big Bang is to be treated as a falsifiable scientific theory, it has been abundantly falsified. If it is on the other hand, simply modified with new physical laws and phenomena every time a prediction is falsified, then there is no combination of observation that can ever falsify it, and it is therefore a religious faith, not a scientific theory.

Unfortunately, as my colleague Tony Peratt put it, creationism intramures in the form of the Big Bang and its unscientific support has strengthened creationism extramures in the form of creation theory. Until scientists clean their own house, they will have weak arguments against the creationists at the gate.

Sincerely yours, Eric J. Lerner

Observations showing that galaxy density is a fractal of dimension 2 (Physica A, v.226, pp.195-242).

Tommy Mandel 02:47, 17 March 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Integrity of science at stake here

Of course science has nothing to fear from the likes of Wikipedia. What science needs to fear are those who claim to state the scientific view when actually what is being presented is, in a scientific sense, a political view dressed in the clothing of science. The big bang is ike that, the prevailing view which resists any and all attempts to. This is nothing new, as it has been discussed in detail in Thomas Kuhn's book "The Structure of Scientific Revolutions". American science in particular has become a political tool, and because of this, science itself has become questionable. What has this got to do with Wikipedia? Well, amazingly, what is going on here is going on in science in eneral - witness the refusal of resources to Halton Arp. So what is the end result of all this? Again, Arp simply went to another country. So will true science. Hence the connection to the security of our country. If science here is limited to what is widely accepted only, then research will go elsewhere. Simple as that. And suddenly we will find ourselves in the same situation our manufacturing base is in, the skilled workers do not exist anymore here in America.

The above statement is by Tommysun/Tommy Mandel. Here's another representative quote from that champion of integrity of science: "I have never seen "easily" used an a scientific publication." Art LaPella 04:34, 17 March 2006 (UTC)