Misplaced Pages

Revision as of 01:01, 14 April 2008

Eric Lerner

Eric Lerner (edit | talk | history | protect | delete | links | watch | logs | views) (delete) – (View log)

WP:BIO states that

A person is presumed to be notable if he or she has been the subject of published secondary source material which is reliable, intellectually independent, and independent of the subject.

• If the depth of coverage is not substantial, then multiple independent sources may be needed to prove notability; trivial coverage of a subject by secondary sources may not be sufficient to establish notability.

It is my opinion that Eric has never received such attention never having been the point-of-fact subject of a sourced biography. Sure, he received a limited amount of notoriety from his book, but the sources written about his book criticizing the ideas aren't really about him. I also don't think that his book would satisfy WP:BK and so we shouldn't have an article about that. His company does not satisfy WP:ORG, so we shouldn't have an article about that. What is more, there is no source that I have found which focuses on Eric as a person: no secondary-source biographies written about the gentleman, no film biographies, no autobiographical reviews, and very little in the way of independent sourcing about his life in general. There is only bits and pieces here and there: an article in New Scientist which mentions Eric briefly, a quote from him in a book on Lyndon LaRouche, and brief paragraph-length biographies associated with his alternative cosmology conferences and an interview on Space Show (itself lacking a Misplaced Pages article and perhaps not worthy of one?): hardly enough to warrant notability. I might also refer you to Misplaced Pages:Articles for deletion/Anthony Peratt for a similarly "giant figure" in plasma cosmology whose page was deleted on notability and sourcing grounds. I believe that any content worth including from Eric's biography page is actually better found at plasma cosmology, aneutronic fusion, or nonstandard cosmologies. He, as a person, simply shouldn't have a Misplaced Pages article.

WP:PROF may also be applicable here, but, of course, Eric is not a professor. ScienceApologist (talk) 15:53, 13 April 2008 (UTC)

• Speedy keep, disruptive nomination due to a content dispute as clearly shown in the page history; ScienceApologist actually admits that "The notability of Eric is not in question.". John254 16:06, 13 April 2008 (UTC)

  Your advocacy caused me to look carefully at WP:BIO. I now believe that I was wrong in that assessment. Eric is not notable enough for inclusion at Misplaced Pages. ScienceApologist (talk) 16:08, 13 April 2008 (UTC)

So, um, in the nearly four years you have been editing Misplaced Pages, you hadn't "looked carefully" at WP:BIO? In any event, Eric Lerner's notability is established by

(1) His book, "The Big Bang Never Happened", which was reviewed extensively in some nice reliable sources like The New York Times and the Skeptical Inquirer, as described in Eric_Lerner#Reception_of_The_Big_Bang_Never_Happened, thus establishing a presumption of notability per the general notability guideline

(2) His efforts to use the dense plasma focus to produce aneutronic fusion via a hydrogen-boron reaction, his technical writing, and the awards he has received from the Aviation Space Writers Association, as described in Eric_Lerner#Professional_activities. John254 16:26, 13 April 2008 (UTC)

1. The book did receive some reviews, but as WP:BK#Criteria says, it isn't just good enough to have a minor tussle at NYTimes and Victor Stenger criticize you in the Skeptical Inquirer to establish the notability of the book. By that criteria, Lerner's book is not notable.
2. The Aviation Space Writers Association is not a notable award and his efforts to achieve aneutronic fusion as ignored so much that there was WP:COI and WP:SOAP issues brought up about it. Again, this does not establish notability for Eric.

The best you can do is say that some of the things surrounding Eric are notable. Again, I suggest that merging useful content into plasma cosmology (including, perhaps, the tussel in the New York Times regarding the Davies-Lerner-Penzias letters-to-the-editor debate). But this is a biography and it must be notable per WP:BIO to establish the need for a singular article on the subject. I am of the opinion that this article should not exist because the subject of the article has not received the note that is required for a decent biography to be written. We can't even find adequate sources for his political involvement, for example. ScienceApologist (talk) 16:34, 13 April 2008 (

John, WP:BLP has become a lot stronger, and a lot more rigorously enforced, over time. As the debates on the talk page show, there are very few independent reliable sources primarily about Lerner. Kudos to SA for stepping back and checking his perspective - "we need to rebut this kook" is a poor reason for having an article on a barely-notable person who runs a non-notable company and has received a non-notable award from a maybe-but-likely-not-very notable group. For a biography of an individual asserted to be a notably controversial person, we would need good quality secondary analytical sources that discuss the individual and the controversy in detail. I see no such sources. All we have are directory-style biographies and some discussions of his book, some of which give a bit of background information on Lerner. If he was writing mainstream pop science then this would not be a problem, but he isn't. Guy (Help!) 16:41, 13 April 2008 (UTC)

Right. So, basically, ScienceApologist has been editing this article with the purpose of "we need to rebut this kook", by focusing excessively on criticism and unreasonably excluding favorable material, in a massive violation of Misplaced Pages:BLP#Criticism. Do you propose that, instead of banning ScienceApologist from the article, we should actually reward this misconduct by granting his request to have the article deleted in its entirety? John254 17:05, 13 April 2008 (UTC)

• Delete or repurpose as an article on the notable book. Lerner is not a notable academic, and we should not have articles that go to great lengths to describe how much of a kook someone is. Independent coverage is almost exclusively about the book. I'd call this a WP:BLP1E case, basically. Guy (Help!) 16:34, 13 April 2008 (UTC)

Please refactor that comment Guy. You often evince concern for BLP's and that is a good thing, yet you use a derogatory term to describe Lerner. That's completely unacceptable even in Misplaced Pages space and you should know better. Maybe the k word is not a bad word in the UK, but it certainly is in the US. I find it intensely ironic that while ostensibly supporting the deletion of an article because much of the content defames someone you yourself make a point of defaming said person. --Bigtimepeace | talk | contribs 01:01, 14 April 2008 (UTC)

Since it's conceded that the book is notable, deletion is unjustified in any event, as it would be far more efficient to retain the description of the book in Eric_Lerner#Reception_of_The_Big_Bang_Never_Happened than to delete the article and completely rewrite the description. John254 16:43, 13 April 2008 (UTC)

I'm not sure that the book is notable in any case. WP:BK seems to indicate that it probably isn't. We can cover the one-time interest surrounding the book adequately at plasma cosmology. ScienceApologist (talk) 16:46, 13 April 2008 (UTC)

Significant coverage of the book in The New York Times and the Skeptical Inquirer, as described in Eric_Lerner#Reception_of_The_Big_Bang_Never_Happened, establishes its notability per criterion 1 of Misplaced Pages:Notability (books). John254 17:16, 13 April 2008 (UTC)

Hmmm. http://www.google.com/search?q=%22Eric+J+Lerner%22 shows about 850 ghits, most of them about the book. Searching for Eric Lerner gets a lot of hits about other Eric Lerners. Most of the material supportive of Lerner seems to be written by Lerner himself, e.g. on Focus Fusion or Lawrenceville Plasma Physics' sites. First hit on Amazon is another Eric Lerner altogether, but the book is cited by others and is at the 45,000 mark in Amazon's sales rank. I think we can have an article on the book, with sources, but I am much less convinced that we can safely have one on Lerner. I don't think a deletion debate is inappropriate, even if the outcome is to rename, redirect, or refactor. Is the subject, Eric J Lerner, independently notable, is the question here, and I am not convinced, per the "more toruble than it's worth" test as much as anything else. Guy (Help!) 17:07, 13 April 2008 (UTC)

• Weak delete Since Misplaced Pages is not paper, we could include marginally notable biographies, but I'm not even sure Eric Lerner is marginally notable. We don't want articles on all the people that have their own (unsuccessful) company, or that wrote one book that caused some discussion several years ago, or that won some award once. Lerner at least did all of these things, but still, he's just not very important. (Based on secondary sources. Of course, if you personally believe that he will achieve economical fusion or that plasma cosmology will eventually surplant the Big Bang theory, I can understand your frustration.) --Art Carlson (talk) 17:06, 13 April 2008 (UTC)

Striking "weak". I guess I should have read WP:BIO before I voted. I can't find any criterion under which he would qualify. --Art Carlson (talk) 17:23, 13 April 2008 (UTC)

• Weak delete. Based on the letter of the policy it would appear that this individual would count as non-notable, but the book that they authored may. It seems to me a fairly good plan to delete the article and have a minimal amount of bio info at an article about the book. Jefffire (talk) 17:18, 13 April 2008 (UTC)
• Keep as repurposed article on the book, at least. With reviews in both the New York Times and The New York Review of Books, as well as Science & Society, Sky & Telescope, and Skeptical Inquirer, his book is most certainly notable. Probably keep an article about Lerner himself as well, as he seems to be a fairly prolific pop-sci author. InfoTrac shows many articles in Laser Focus World and Aerospace America, at least one in Discover and New Scientist, and several in Esquire. Besides the NYT kerfluffle about his book, it generated controversy in Skeptical Inquirer and New Scientist, and there was a second back-and-forth in the NYT regarding J. Richard Gott Jfire (talk) 17:27, 13 April 2008 (UTC)
• Note: This debate has been included in the list of Academics and educators-related deletion discussions. —Jfire (talk) 17:47, 13 April 2008 (UTC)
• Delete. I hate to see a guy abused on Misplaced Pages, so personally I'd rather see it deleted. Guy/JzG is right that only the book, according to the source we have, is notable. The article can be re-created as about the book. I'm willing to be convinced otherwise on this, and will change my vote if this happens. So send me an email or talk page. It's all about the sources. But I urge you to think about exactly what purpose putting Lerner -or his book- on WP has. To me, it may serve some good purpose in warning people against the book, if the book is wrong (I have no idea). Yet, Misplaced Pages will not give it a neutral or open-minded evaluation, because the sources probably don't. Thus, we can't. ——Martin ☎ Ψ Φ—— 18:00, 13 April 2008 (UTC)

The rationale for deletion you suggest would have the effect of rewarding ScienceApologist and JzG for their WP:BLP violations. Not all reliable sources concerning Eric Lerner's work are negative -- the problem here is that ScienceApologist insists on blanket reversions to remove most favorable material with factually incorrect edit summaries -- see, for example, , which falsely asserts that there was "no indication on talk why John did this", even though I provided a detailed explanation of the edits at Talk:Eric_Lerner#Van_Allen_review. Other inappropriate removals of favorable content include , which incorrectly removes material attributed to peer-reviewed journals, including The Astro­physical Journal, which even ScienceApologist acknowleges is a reliable source, as described on Talk:Eric_Lerner#Description_of_Eric_Lerner.27s_research. This exclusion of well-sourced positive material, and excessive focus on criticism, violates WP:NPOV and Misplaced Pages:Biographies_of_living_persons#Criticism, the latter of which provides that

The views of critics should be represented if they are relevant to the subject's notability and can be sourced to reliable secondary sources, and so long as the material is written in a manner that does not overwhelm the article or appear to side with the critics; rather, it needs to be presented responsibly, conservatively, and in a neutral, encyclopedic tone.

Rather than rewarding ScienceApologist for his disruption by granting his request to destroy the article completely, I would ask editors here to assist in the effort to bring this article into compliance with our biographies of living persons policy. John254 18:26, 13 April 2008 (UTC)

Given me one really mainstream source just to establish Lerner's notability beyond the book, and you have a cut and dried case. ——Martin ☎ Ψ Φ—— 19:48, 13 April 2008 (UTC)

He has written a number of articles and papers appearing in mainstream publications -- see, for example, his articles Laser Focus World , Discover Magazine , and Esquire: "Radio radiation threat breeds controversy" (May 1985) and "Mending marrow with magnetism" (Jan 1985) (excerpted from InfoTrac search results provided by Jfire). John254 20:34, 13 April 2008 (UTC)

• Keep How can someone with so many references from so many different sources, including at least two different online biographical statements, not be notable? In my mind, this guy is way past the minimum threshhold for notability. Nyttend (talk) 18:05, 13 April 2008 (UTC)
• Delete The case laid out above by Guy and SA seems to me both clear and unequivocal. Eusebeus (talk) 18:42, 13 April 2008 (UTC)

Only to the extent that "please delete this article because there's some resistance to turning it into an attack page and a coatrack for criticism" is considered to be a valid argument. John254 19:19, 13 April 2008 (UTC)

• Unsure This appears to be a difficult case and I'd appreciate more sourced information, especially from those advocating "keep". It seems that the book "The Big Bang Never Happened" is clearly notable. I am not sure about notability of Eric Lerner himself. One possibility is to consider him under WP:PROF. However, he never completed a doctoral degree and never held what is generally understood as an academic position. A GoogleScholar, WebOfScience and Publish-or-Perish searchers under his name produce very little, with h-index seemingly around 6-7 or so. On the other hand his position at Lawrenceville Plasma Physics could be characterized as a research position and he appears to be frequently referred to as a "researcher" in connection with reviews of his book. So one could try to make a case that he is an academic with a highly non-standard academic career. Still, I have not, so far, found much in the way of citations of his work in scholarly publications. His book and his views did receive a fair amount of coverage in conventional mass media, but it would appear that this coverage is mostly negative rather than positive and that his opinions are mostly cited as those of an "anti-expert". So it is not clear to me that he satisfies WP:PROF. I think that a stronger case could be made that he satisfies WP:BIO, if there is a substantial amount of coverage related to him in conventional media. (I disagree with the ScienceApologist that a full blown biographical article in the newsmedia or in a scholarly journal is required to satisfy WP:BIO. Significant amount of nontrivial coverage related to him specifically would be enough.) However, when I tried to do various searchers, I did not find very much here either. A GoogleNews search (all dates) under "Eric J Lerner" returns 22 hits. A GoogleNews search for "Eric Lerner" returns 193 hits but almost all appear to be false positives. Further filtering such as "Eric Lerner" cosmology or "Eric Lerner" physics return hits in single digits, with "Eric Lerner" big bang scoring 16 hits . I am quite perplexed by these low results as I had expected many more hits, especially since he is said to have written up to 600 popular science articles in conventional media (where are they, by the way? and why don't they come up when doing these searches)? All this makes me suspect that this is essentially a BLP1E case, but perhaps I am not looking in the right places. Nsk92 (talk) 19:45, 13 April 2008 (UTC)

Well, you could try an InfoTrac search, as described in the comment by Jfire above. John254 20:01, 13 April 2008 (UTC)

Here's more details based of an InfoTrac search:

• Contributing editor to Laser Focus World:
• Discover:
• NY Review of Books:
• Skeptical Enquirer:
• Esquire: "Radio radiation threat breeds controversy" (May 1985) and "Mending marrow with magnetism" (Jan 1985) Jfire (talk) 20:16, 13 April 2008 (UTC)

OK, I just did an InfoTrac search, but the results were not substantially different from my earlier searches. I found 18 hits in "academic journals" (several are articles by Lerner and the rest are reviews of his book), 10 hits in "magazines" (3 articles by Lerner and 7 reviews of his book) and 9 hits in "news" (1 false positive and the others are the NYT review of his book and NYT letters to the editor regarding that review). If anything, these results reinforce the BLP1E impression. For me the real issue here is if there is enough coverage of him other than the reviews of his book. The Discover and Skeptical Enquirer articles mentioned above are certainly valid references but they do not appear to be sufficient. The NYT Review of Books reference is a review of his book. I would also like to know where the 600+ publications figure is coming from, if the figure is valid and if yes, what kind of publications we are talking about. One of the claims to notability is as a prolific popular science writer and I'd like to be able to verify the "prolific" part. Nsk92 (talk) 20:38, 13 April 2008 (UTC)

• Keep the book reviews are sufficient, combined with the authorship of the articles, and the awards for technical writing in the archives of the article. The history of this article in its archives, and some related pages Misplaced Pages:Requests for arbitration/Pseudoscience , User talk:Elerner gives reason to think there might be some personal animus involved here. DGG (talk) 20:56, 13 April 2008 (UTC)

and now a current request for Arbcom, . Deletion of the article is not the solution to this sort of content/personality dispute. DGG (talk) 21:04, 13 April 2008 (UTC)

Indeed, after writing a statement claiming that my request for arbitration was completely without merit, Nick restored the request on purely technical grounds. Since consideration of the matter is now active again, I invite editors to review my description of the WP:BLP violations by ScienceApologist and JzG at Misplaced Pages:Requests_for_arbitration#ScienceApologist.2FJzG. John254 21:25, 13 April 2008 (UTC)

This is a breach of WP:CANVASS and I invite you to redact your comment forthwith. Nick (talk) 22:05, 13 April 2008 (UTC)

Nope. The request was mentioned by DGG in the comment above, so I'm afraid that editors viewing this discussion already know about it. Moreover, the fact that the comment was only posted to one page, and that this is a relatively neutral forum (not all editors here agree with me by any means) both weigh in favor of a finding that this does not constitute disruptive canvassing. Sunlight is the best disinfectant -- the current disposition of the case must be quite incorrect if my single comment at AFD could alter it. John254 22:18, 13 April 2008 (UTC)

• Delete per WP:BIO1E and WP:PROF — a regular academic with a single possibly-notable published work would not be kept, and I don't see why we should hold fringe scientists to any lower standard. —David Eppstein (talk) 21:09, 13 April 2008 (UTC)

Eric Lerner has written a great deal of work in printed in mainstream publications, as described above. Also, the book is clearly, and not merely possibly, notable due to the extensive reviews published by reliable sources, as previously described. John254 21:25, 13 April 2008 (UTC)

You've expressed your opinion already. Repeating it after every other comment here comes across as tendentious. —David Eppstein (talk) 21:34, 13 April 2008 (UTC)

• Keep when I scrolled over that article history, I see the Science Apologist guy had edited it. If you partook in making the article but now you want to delete it, I'd like to impeach his motive and suspect he is trying to retaliate against people who did not like his edits. Chimeric Glider (talk) 22:09, 13 April 2008 (UTC)
• Keep, or at the very least move most of the content into The Big Bang Never Happened (the book easily passes the notability criteria for books by being the subject of multiple reviews). Lerner wrote what is probably the single most well known book arguing against one of the more famous scientific theories in human history - I think that combined with the coverage in secondary sources makes him notable. Yes, I know, most people in the field do not respect the book and it is considered dated, but it created a significant splash at the time. Part of the additional criteria at WP:BIO is "the person has made a widely recognized contribution that is part of the enduring historical record in his or her specific field." Even works in a given field which are generally believed to be wrong, but which had enough impact to be discussed, are a contribution and are "part of the enduring historical record" whether we like it or not. I would note that Lerner's current political activities on behalf of immigrants have also been covered in multiple independent sources (more sources than those that were listed in the article in past versions per a Nexis search). ScienceApologist deleted the political activities section because other editors, including myself, thought it a violation of WP:UNDUE to include a mention of Lerner's involvement with a Lyndon LaRouche group. Lerner's involvement with the NJ Civil Rights Defense Committee adds to this individual's notability, but I don't think we'll be able to mention that since ScienceApologist does not want it in the article. I strongly encourage the closing admin to investigate ScienceApologist's massive conflict of interest with this article when evaluating the various arguments. SA was in an on-Wiki dispute with the real-life Eric Lerner which went to arbitration. SA also added inaccurate and defamatory information about Lerner into the article without bothering to do enough homework to learn that the information was questionable. ScienceApologist strongly disagrees with Lerner's scientific ideas and personally I think he has no business editing this article at all given his past conflict with Lerner on Misplaced Pages. Under the circumstances, it's extremely difficult for me to assume good faith with respect to this AfD nomination, but aside from that I feel Lerner passes the notability guidelines at WP:BIO.--Bigtimepeace | talk | contribs 00:52, 14 April 2008 (UTC)

• AfD debates (Biographical)
• AfD debates