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. BJ ^Talk 19:55, 14 September 2008 (UTC) reply

Nassim Haramein (  | talk | history | protect | delete | links | watch | logs | views) ( delete) – ( View log)

Subject failsnotability guidelines for academics and people in general. Since the first time this was AfDed, several editors have made efforts to find reliable, 3rd party sources, and none could be found. Basically all there is on this guy are primary sources (his organization's website, various youtube videos, some discussion forum posts). The first AfD was closed as "Needs cleanup but ... Keep for now," but unfortunately without secondary sources the article remain a mess, and will probably stay that way. Yilloslime (t) 06:23, 10 September 2008 (UTC) reply

• Delete the claims he makes are clearly bogus but there are so few reliable unbiased sources that we are left with nothing to say. Guy ( Help!) 08:16, 10 September 2008 (UTC) reply
• Note: This debate has been included in the list of Academics and educators-related deletion discussions. — John Z ( talk) 11:06, 10 September 2008 (UTC) reply
• Delete definitively non-notable. The book in footnotes 1 and 2 is held by a grand total of two libraries world-wide (per a Worldcat search); it also has no Amazon ranking, meaning no Amazon sales (not normally all that relevant, but perhaps telling in this case). Describing this guy as a "scientist" damages wikipedia's credibility; including him at all has the same result. Nomoskedasticity ( talk) 11:31, 10 September 2008 (UTC) reply
• Delete Does not satisfy WP:PROF. The only notability guideline he might concievably satisfy is WP:CREATIVE, per "originating a significant new concept, theory or technique". If this theory were truly significant, it would be discussed in mainstream peer-reviewed publications and not in a bare smattering of self-published and non-mainstream sources. Until it is, then it cannot confer WP:N on its originator. Ka renjc 12:32, 10 September 2008 (UTC) reply

• Delete As an academic he's non-notable. As a 'guru', perhaps it could remain. But the article should be written to represent that. I would prefer that he not be able to claim that his work is being suppressed. Guyonthesubway ( talk) 13:38, 10 September 2008 (UTC) reply
• Delete Clearly fails WP:PROF. The validity or lack thereof of his ideas is not important here, but more important is that a Google search does not really come up with independent verifiable sources establishing notability. Hence also fails WP:FRINGE and WP:BIO. The main purpose of the article seems to be the promotion of his 4 DVD set, which is mentioned several times. -- Crusio ( talk) 14:10, 10 September 2008 (UTC) reply

As a rejoinder, I think somebody should have a critical look at the related article on Elizabeth Rauscher, too. -- Crusio ( talk) 14:17, 10 September 2008 (UTC) reply

• Delete per nom and the comments of others above. Does not pass either WP:PROF or WP:BIO. No evidence of substantial citability or reviews of his work in scholarly publications; much of his work appears to be self-published; no significant newscoverage. As noted by Nomoskedasticity, the subject's book is only held by a few academic libraries. No other evidence of passing either WP:PROF or WP:BIO that I can see. Nsk92 ( talk) 15:28, 10 September 2008 (UTC) reply
• Delete per above, and delete every biography article linked to in this one (not Einstein perhaps). None of the actual refs look appropriate, though I haven't also looked at everything in the (odd) further reading section N p holmes ( talk) 16:06, 10 September 2008 (UTC) reply
• Delete The subject may be a crank, which is certainly by itself not sufficient to establish notability. At the very least, many of the hallmarks of crankiness are here: a self-trained individual who proposes a major advance in physics that the mainstream research community appears to have overlooked and which it refuses to recognize. Web of Science shows no hits in any academic area (searching on "Haramein N*"). I took a casual look at what seems to be the main result of this new theory ( accessed here on 10-SEP-2008). The paper is filled with many equations found in undergrad science and engineering texts, e.g. definitions of torque, angular momentum, and such. More problematic is the fact that the authors seem to confuse the concepts of torque and energy (e.g. pp 162, where they say the units of torque can be expressed in ergs, which is patently incorrect). These are concepts taught at the undergrad level, suggesting that the paper may be mostly non-sense. Agricola44 ( talk) 16:28, 10 September 2008 (UTC) reply
• Delete not notable Theserialcomma ( talk) 17:26, 10 September 2008 (UTC) reply
• Delete: Patently fails WP:BIO and WP:PROF, wee bit of a WP:COATRACK, no usable sources which would permit construction of a useful, neutral encyclopedia article, and the subject of edit-warring to boot. Previous AfD should almost certainly have been closed as "delete"; many of the same points were raised there, and have not been addressed. MastCell  ^Talk 23:50, 10 September 2008 (UTC) reply
• Keep:FYI on the above reference to Haramein’s calculations, that paper discussed the origin of spin/angular momentum as spacetime torque. Obviously such a paper would have fundamental classical mechanics equations discussing torque and angular velocity as well as tensor equations discussing these classical equations in the context of a tensor form. Haramein’s papers have both, including a group theoretical model for unification of the quantum level. As for the comment on ergs, maybe the editor should go back to undergrad school. Haramein’s paper expresses torque in dyne-cm where 1 dyne-cm = 1 erg, this is clearly expressed on Wiki’s own page on ergs referenced above. He could have expressed it in ft-lbs (unlikely for a physics paper) where 1 ft-lb of torque = 1.3558 x 10^7 ergs.
  
  The difficulty I see with this article seems to be a lack of complete understanding of Haramein’s work to begin with, and a negative knee-jerk reaction to any alternative material he refers to, which further clouds any real understanding of his physics. I will vote that Notability can be established with his papers published at the Noetic Journal (which has NO affiliation with IONS, by the way). Many reputable physicists consider his work acceptable and valid [1]. Also, articles published by Elisabet Sahtouris mention Haramein’s work in numerous publications cited in the article. She is a scientist of note and is featured in Wiki as such. However I realize that for now the article is on thin ice, and may be appropriate when Haramein is published in further, more diverse publications. Avsav ( talk) 01:10, 11 September 2008 (UTC) — Avsav ( talk • contribs) has made few or no other edits outside this topic. reply

• comment publishing papers is insufficient to establish notability; they need to be widely cited and/or attract attention in other ways. The web site you link to ("The Resonance Project", with "testimonials") is not effective in this regard: looking at their "personnel page" we see that Haramanian is first on the list. Nomoskedasticity ( talk) 07:47, 11 September 2008 (UTC) reply

• Please allow me to respond to the above comment from Avsav, because I think it is illustrative of how some work fails to pass for legitimate scholarship. Several points need rebuttal: (1) "Obviously such a paper would have fundamental classical mechanics equations discussing torque and angular velocity..." – This is patently false. Research papers rarely, if ever will repeat well-known equations, but instead will cite other sources for such equations, usually a standard text in the field. Referees immediately flag this sort of thing in any submitted papers (I myself have done so), precisely because the equations are well-known and because journals cannot afford the column-inches to repeat established knowledge. With all due respect, this assertion suggests the commenter does not really understand how research is vetted and published. (2) "As for the comment on ergs, maybe the editor should go back to undergrad school. Haramein’s paper expresses torque in dyne-cm where 1 dyne-cm = 1 erg". This issue is much more serious and reflects a basic ignorance of mechanics. Specifically, torque is a vector entity, having units of force*distance (dyne-cm, if you like). While energy also has the same kind of units, it is a scalar product. So, for example, a torque displaced through a unitless rotation would then give you energy, and would only then have units of ergs. I'll refer the commenter to Wikipedia's own page on this point, which gives a good layman's explanation. I'm afraid this discussion gives further weight toward deletion. Respectfully, Agricola44 ( talk) 15:50, 11 September 2008 (UTC) reply

• Comment: The units of torque relative to the stress energy tensor are dealt with appropriately in Haramein and Rauscher’s paper on page 160. The statement on page 162 is taken out of context. Having said that, this delete page is not the appropriate place for this discussion, rather this should be taken up directly with the authors. By the way, Google Scholar thinks he’s notable enough to list [2]. Avsav ( talk) 01:36, 13 September 2008 (UTC) reply

• I hope I will be indulged one last response on this entry. Avsav is clearly very passionate about this article, which I think is commendable. I doubt that anyone in this forum has any intention of taking up mistakes in this paper with the authors. That job will fall to future referees, should the paper ever get submitted to a mainstream physics journal. (The paper is highly relevant to the debate on this article, because the subject's claim to notability appears to rest entirely upon the results presented in it.) I do not know how Avsav proposes to speak for the authors regarding their intent on pp 162. The paper says "The units of torque are dyne-cm or gm cm^2 / sec^2 = ergs". The context is very clear – the authors believe that torque can be expressed in units of energy. Avsav concurs, according to a comment above: "where 1 ft-lb of torque = 1.3558 x 10^7 ergs". No amount of argument will make this true. I think what is now established is that this paper has fundamental problems and is unlikely to ever be submitted to the physics community for proper scrutiny. Consequently, I don't see that the subject of the article has any real notability. Respectfully, Agricola44 ( talk) 05:39, 13 September 2008 (UTC) reply

• Keep on the grounds that it passed AFD with a keep decision only about 6 weeks ago. The closing admin said pending cleanup, but it's too soon to renominate even on that basis. Articles must not be renominated repeatedly until a desired outcome is reached. 23skidoo ( talk) 01:48, 11 September 2008 (UTC) reply

6 weeks is quite enough to add some sources if there were any sources to add. Moreover, looking at the previous AfD, the closing admin's decision clearly went against the consensus for deletion. I am surprised that it was not taken to DRV back then. There were two delete, two weak delete !votes, plus the nominator's delete !vote and one keep !vote. Even a dedicated inclusionist like DGG !voted delete back then and that is saying something. The only keep vote was increadibly weak in terms of giving any kind of a policy-based reason for a keep argument. To have a few or even a lot papers published in peer-reviwed journals was never considered enough for passing either WP:PROF or WP:BIO. To pass WP:PROF one basically needs to demonstrate either evidence of high citability of Haramein's research in publications of other scientists or a significant number of papers where his work is discussed in detail. For passing WP:BIO one would have to show some substantial coverage of him personally by independent reliable sources. None of this was available then and none is available now. Nsk92 ( talk) 02:50, 11 September 2008 (UTC) reply

To second Nsk93, I don't think this is a case of if-only-editors-would-give-it-more-time, but rather a case of there-simply-aren't-any-secondary-sources. Six weeks is plenty of time, and it's been tagged with {{notability|academics}} for the last 4+ of them. In those 6 weeks, 80+ edits have been made to the article by 9 distinct editors (excluding bots and IPs); and with 110+ edits by 10 separate editors (not counting bots and IPs), the talk page has grown by 70,000 bytes. On top of that, threads have been started on the talk pages of two separate admins. ( 1& 2). A strong, good faith effort has clearly been made to salvage this article. Simply put: without sources, dozens of editors could put months of work into the article and the same problems would remain. This is exactly why WP requires that the subject of a BLP "has been the subject of published secondary source material which is reliable, intellectually independent and independent of the subject" Yilloslime (t) 04:42, 11 September 2008 (UTC) reply

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03:43, 11 September 2008 (UTC)Mynameisstanley
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• Delete unless sources are presented which meet NOTABILITY. —— Martin^phi ☎ Ψ Φ—— 04:38, 11 September 2008 (UTC) reply
• Delete - Just not notable and hence fails WP:BIO, WP:PROF for starters. Shot info ( talk) 06:10, 11 September 2008 (UTC) reply
• Delete per the great many above, Nsk92 refutes the only really reasonable argument (23skidoo's) in favour of keeping to my satisfaction. Pete.Hurd ( talk) 15:25, 11 September 2008 (UTC) reply

• Weak Keep - I really can't believe how this has blown over to such a big deal. Nassim is by no means a pseudoscientist and I do not understand why some citations are not worthy enough for mention (see Concolour and Avsav's arguments on talk page although the ratio of editors totally outweighs the supporters). Wikipedia isn't paper: there are countless articles some of which deserve to be more scrutinized. So much time and energy has been put into this one (someone said the creator had scary motives?). Nobody noticed this page until I led them to it, and it gave the desired results of a debate until it blew into an edit war; however, I'm glad that I got the chance to witness the conversation on the talk page which I will be keeping and spreading for future reference. In any case, I concede that the article still doesn't meet notability guidelines which is why I'm making it a weak keep. Ace blazer ( talk) 23:34, 12 September 2008 (UTC) reply

since notability is the criterion for inclusion for a bio on wikipedia, your 'weak keep' should probably be a 'weak delete'. Theserialcomma ( talk) 00:19, 13 September 2008 (UTC) reply

I'd let Ace speak for himself about what conclusion his arguments come to. If someone thinks an article that he thinks might almost make the guidelines is a keep, there's nothing wrong with him saying so. DGG ( talk) 00:26, 13 September 2008 (UTC) reply

Its not a big deal, its just a borderline spam article probably presented by people involved with the subject, who were using wikipedia to sell DVD's. The last AfD should have ended in delete, and this one certainly will. Guyonthesubway ( talk) 11:58, 13 September 2008 (UTC) reply

• Delete I am only a "dedicated inclusionist" for articles potentially worth keeping, and i am equally dedicated to getting rid of nonsensical articles and pure public relations for nonentities and imaginary scientific hypotheses. I probably speedy-delete several times as many articles as i even try to keep. As I said before, no presence in ArXiv = no notability as a physicist--they'll include even the non-conventional if there is any scientific merit whatsoever. True, I don't like over-rapid renominations, but the previous close though worded in a non-standard fashion-- "keep for now" was a non-consensus, not a keep, in the hope of additional material--which has not been forthcoming. As I said before, even the most absurd pseudo-science can be notable, if anyone has noticed it. For an article where one of the references in "personal letter from [the subject]", it's clear nobody has--in spite of whatever publicity exposure in Wikipedia might have afforded them. DGG ( talk) 00:26, 13 September 2008 (UTC) reply
• Note: This debate has been included in the list of Living people-related deletion discussions. -- Erwin85Bot ( talk) 20:12, 13 September 2008 (UTC) reply

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.