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Revision as of 01:39, 13 May 2006

Bios theory

This is a non-notable pseudotheory. As discussed on the talk page, all papers are by the same set of authors. Google returns only 259 hits for "bios theory", and 186 with "bios theory" -wikipedia. However, many of these refer to computer BIOS's, and removing those results has proven somewhat difficult. "bios theory" -wikipedia -computer -linux returns 92 total results with only 19 unique results, but this may be too highly selective. Philosophus 09:33, 12 May 2006 (UTC)

• "Bios theory: little quoted theory" = Delete. Vizjim 10:28, 12 May 2006 (UTC)
• delete - non-notable gobbledegook William M. Connolley 10:44, 12 May 2006 (UTC)
• Delete. Would Misplaced Pages be better with or without this article? I'm confident that we're better off without. The article uses a lot of terminology from dynamical systems, but in such a way that I, and even more importantly, editors like User:XaosBits whom I consider to be very knowledgeable on this subject, cannot understand them. There has been a lot of discussion about bios theory (see for instance Talk:Chaos theory and its archives), but it has not been possible to come to a clear explanation about what the main concepts (novelty and bios) mean. This makes the whole article unverifiable. I admit that this also makes it hard for me to judge the theory on its merits, and there are some papers published on this theory, but in my opinion these are too few and too new to make the theory notable. The combination of unverifiability (because it is unclear, despite lots of effort) and probably unnotability suffices for me to advocate deletion. -- Jitse Niesen (talk) 12:15, 12 May 2006 (UTC)
• Keep - Xaosbits is the only one that actually tried to improve the article (at least with very constructive critiques). Most other people just complained without trying to edit Bios theory, and actually tried to disaprove it, which is not the job of wikipedia editors. I don't think that because something is new it should be excluded from Misplaced Pages. Unclear does not mean unverifiable. Verifiable means that what is in the article can be found in the published papers. I understand that there are mathematicians here who like rigor a lot. However, Bios theory emerged from the social science oriented group, and people there do not use same rigor as do people in mathematics and physics. Bios theory has been published in Nonlinear Dynamics, Psychology and the Life Sciences among other journals. I think that it is arrogant to claim that people publishing in these journals are pseudoscientists just because they have different approach to science than hard science researchers. World is not just what we know. Knowledge is not just what we consider knowledge.Lakinekaki 13:20, 12 May 2006 (UTC)
• Delete. Article is incoherent. Despite lengthly conversations with the page author (Lakinekaki), a meaningful article was never arrived at. To rebut the above commentary: while lack of rigor may be acceptable in the social sciences, this article was making claims about mathematics and about medical science, where rigor is required. What I found particularly disturbing were claims made connecting bios theory to biological sciences, while demonstrating an utter (and willing!) ignorance of prior literature connecting chaos theory and the life sciences. I know damned little about such things, and was displeased to learn I knew more than the author. As to arrogance: this article and its author made the arrogant claim that bios theory was the king and leader of chaos theory, which was all the more galling given the protestations about rigor, clarity and hard science. linas 14:20, 12 May 2006 (UTC)
• Keep Some users have claimed this to be gobbledegook, however we have at least 7 articles in peer review journals, 1 book published by a respectable publisher (World Scientific). One of the contributors to the theory is L. Kauffman, a notable mathematican who made important contribution to Knot theory (see Kauffman's CV at http://www.math.uic.edu/~kauffman/LKVita.ps to verify that he had indeed contributed to this study). To me this seems like more protoscience than psuedoscience. Sabelli et al are trying to find metrics which can destinguish between the patterns in heart rate and purly chaotic systems. Their concept of novality is one attempt at a metric which does seem to detect some patterns. The article does require a lot of work. --Salix alba (talk) 14:36, 12 May 2006 (UTC)
• Delete all "little quoted theories" (this gets around 250 ghits). Why delete little quoted theories? For the same reason we deleted Aetherometry: it's not sufficiently widely discussed that we have a decent pool of secondary sources from which to write a neutral and verifiable article. Just zis Guy you know? 15:12, 12 May 2006 (UTC)
• Weak delete. Google hits are not a litmus test of notability. But it looks like this has been through several sorts of cleanup. A theory about brontosauruses or butterflies or ytterbium is one thing, and I might not presume to judge it nonsense because I did not understand it. A theory about "systems" is another thing entirely, and when its explanation seems to involve strings of abstract Latinate nouns that never seem to touch the ground, I'm much less inclined to be charitable. I have very little tolerance for this kind of writing in business related articles. This reads like the same sort of cruft, and it seems it's been given time to develop into something that reads better, and gone no further than this. Smerdis of Tlön 15:21, 12 May 2006 (UTC)
• Delete. This seems to be an ill-written article on an ill-defined topic. I get no sense of what "bios" is as something that distinguishes itself from chaos, either as a seperate entity or a well-defined subset of chaos. To me, the lack of mathematicians running to the defense of this article is most telling. If this was an accepted part of chaos theory, they would be here opposing this action. I also am disturbed by the defense of this article by Salix alba is saying that "Sabelli et al are trying to find ...". Misplaced Pages is not a research journal, nor is it a crystal ball. Unless it is highly notable, Misplaced Pages should not be reporting on ongoing academic research. --EMS | Talk 16:36, 12 May 2006 (UTC)
• Delete. Pseudoscientific gibberish and probable original research. KleenupKrew 20:30, 12 May 2006 (UTC)
• Delete This is probably original research, it's also pseudoscience, and it's a "little quoted theory" meaning that it admits it has little notability in the article. Beno1000 21:02, 12 May 2006 (UTC)
• Abstain but comment -- a significant mathematical discovery, but no publication in mathematical publications? Cited only by a limited set of authors? You have to buy the main author's book to get the CD-ROM with the algorithm? Seems a borderline case, if we count the existing publications on the plus side. Unfortunately the article doesn't describe it's subject very clearly. The article quality should be deciding point. --Pjacobi 22:02, 12 May 2006 (UTC)
• Delete per many of the contributors above. -- Kicking222 23:39, 12 May 2006 (UTC)
• Speedy delete as unknown, non-notable, ridiculous piece of randomcrapcruft. M1ss1ontomars2k4 23:42, 12 May 2006 (UTC)
• Strong delete:

1. Results of a literature search and Google by User:XaosBits strongly suggest that "bios theory" (sic) is so obscure that deletion is amply warranted on grounds of non-notability alone,
2. I have listed serious problems with every sentence of the first paragraph alone, showing that the article is not only very misleading (for example claiming for "bios theory" insights which should properly be abscribed to chaos theory), to the extraordinary extent that virtually every caption and every sentences in this article is misleading and/or scientifically dubious,
3. the author of the article, User:Lakinekaki (aka the ameritech.net anon from Chicago, IL) has concealed from the WP community the fact that in real life he is one Lazar Kovacevic of Chicago, IL (note the listed email handle in the ARIN record for this website), who is employed by an organization called Chicago Center for Creative Development (CCCD), whose website is registered to one Linnea Carlson-Sabelli of Chicago, IL, and which promotes the ideas of Hector Sabelli, who is described in the article as the author of "bios theory"; Kovacevic has further failed to disclose that he is a coworker of Hector Sabelli and author of the first paper he cites (apparently very obscure), so that this article violates WP:VAIN,
4. Kovacevic has also concealed a hidden agenda of his employer which has nothing to do with science; for example from the CCCD website claims This provides a mathematical metaphor for God compatible with contemporary science, which violates various proscriptions in WP:WIN.

All in all, this is one of the most disturbing examples of deceptive promotion of a very obscure crank theory which I have yet encountered in the Misplaced Pages. This article should be deleted without delay.---CH 01:39, 13 May 2006 (UTC)