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Revision as of 18:11, 10 July 2020 editQuondum (talk | contribs)Extended confirmed users36,961 edits Request for comment: on the notability of the CTMU in 2020 with sources published after 2006 and "unredirect" of this page to Christopher Langan: this claim of notability is a stretch← Previous edit Revision as of 02:51, 11 July 2020 edit undoTim Smith (talk | contribs)Extended confirmed users1,323 edits Request for comment: on the notability of the CTMU in 2020 with sources published after 2006 and "unredirect" of this page to Christopher Langan: repliedNext edit →
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**We don't actually know anything about the peer-review standards of ''Cosmos and History'' (which have been ]); an inquiry at ] might be the right venue to sort that out. But that source is ] anyway. Ideas don't become notable just by being published, no matter what journal publishes them; they have to be ''noticed,'' and a blurb in a pop-science magazine (scarcely a full story) is thin grounds for saying that people have paid serious attention. The ''Popular Science'' blurb could be added to ]. ] (]) 17:24, 10 July 2020 (UTC) **We don't actually know anything about the peer-review standards of ''Cosmos and History'' (which have been ]); an inquiry at ] might be the right venue to sort that out. But that source is ] anyway. Ideas don't become notable just by being published, no matter what journal publishes them; they have to be ''noticed,'' and a blurb in a pop-science magazine (scarcely a full story) is thin grounds for saying that people have paid serious attention. The ''Popular Science'' blurb could be added to ]. ] (]) 17:24, 10 July 2020 (UTC)
***The blurb in ''Popular Science'' is effectively a sidebar to an article about the author, so that article is not about CTMU. Nor does the sidebar talk about the content of CTMU but rather only of the author's approach to it (making it an extension of the interview), a second point against this being about CTMU. So it is a stretch to claim that CTMU itself is covered by ''Popular Science'', irrespective of its (lack of) credibility as a mainstream publication. There is just no way that this can be regarded as "significant coverage in reliable sources" or even contributory coverage of CTMU. —] 18:11, 10 July 2020 (UTC) ***The blurb in ''Popular Science'' is effectively a sidebar to an article about the author, so that article is not about CTMU. Nor does the sidebar talk about the content of CTMU but rather only of the author's approach to it (making it an extension of the interview), a second point against this being about CTMU. So it is a stretch to claim that CTMU itself is covered by ''Popular Science'', irrespective of its (lack of) credibility as a mainstream publication. There is just no way that this can be regarded as "significant coverage in reliable sources" or even contributory coverage of CTMU. —] 18:11, 10 July 2020 (UTC)

::::Regarding ''Cosmos and History'', it is included in Scopus (thereby meeting ]), and also in ESCI , which Clarivate (publisher of ''Journal Citation Reports'') characterizes as "a trusted set of journals" which "contains quality publications, selected by our expert in-house editors for editorial rigor and best practice at a journal level" . Furthermore, per ], {{tq|Primary sources may or may not be independent sources}}. In this case, the journal is indeed independent of the CTMU. Thus, it is a reliable, independent source for the theory's notability.
::::Regarding ''Popular Science'', the CTMU is referenced repeatedly throughout the article, not just in a sidebar. Indeed, the article begins:
:::::He's a working class guy with an IQ that's off the charts. What does he have to say about science? Everything—a theory of everything, that is.
::::Regardless, per ], {{tq|Significant coverage is more than a trivial mention, but it does not need to be the main topic of the source material.}} Additionally, per ], {{tq|Reliable sources on Misplaced Pages may include magazines published by respected publishing houses}}. ''Popular Science'' was published by Time Inc. and has won multiple awards, including the ] award for General Excellence. Thus, it too is a reliable, independent source for the theory's notability. ] (]) 02:51, 11 July 2020 (UTC)

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Notes on re-creation (demerging?) of this article

I did a pretty thorough review of the WP:RS on the CTMU (Google Scholar, Google Books, Microsoft Academic, even a blogosphere search), and I believe there is enough for it to pass the WP:GNG now. For those that are curious, all of the sources I found but deemed not RSy enough for this article are in User_talk:Scarpy/Cognitive-Theoretic Model of the Universe. I suspect this article will be contentious, so let me point out a few things I was careful to do in the re-creation of this article.

  1. Langan is not used as a source for any of the information in this version. I did this for several reasons (a) his material is published variously in Noesis, PCID (Progress in Complexity, Information and Design), Cosmos and History (of these three only Cosmos and History has a CiteScore and it's 0.3) in some self-published books, and in one chapter in a book edited by William A. Dembski (b) I didn't want to run afoul of WP:SOAP WP:MISSION WP:PROMO or WP:PEACOCK (c) it's worth noting that the CTMU has a life outside of Langan's material.
  2. As I've said elsewhere, Ben Goertzel and Mark Chu-Carroll are RS as WP:REPUTABLE states, 'source' has multiple meanings. In the citations here, while the blogs themselves are not reliable sources, the authors are confirmed and are reliable sources.
  3. I debated how to include more of the criticisms of the CTMU that Mark Chu-Carroll made, but was at a loss for how to integrate it without breaking WP:NOCRIT and making a criticism section. If you're a better writer than me, feel free to have a go at it.
  4. I realize Klee Irwin is a controversial figure, but the other two authors (Marcelo M. Amaral and David Chester) on the paper from Quantum Gravity Research are legit. Entropy has a CiteScore or 3.7 and is the 87 percentile (8th of 62) in Mathematical Physics journals.
  5. I don't believe either of the PhD theses cited run afoul of WP:SCHOLARSHIP in the context that they're used.
  6. Armein Z.R. Langi is a PhD in Indonesia and a guru besar (professor)

- Scarpy (talk) 02:46, 7 July 2020 (UTC)

I almost forgot - I paid a translator on Fiverr to translate the bit in German in to English. You can see it here. - Scarpy (talk) 03:10, 7 July 2020 (UTC)

The sourcing is incredibly thin. I do not believe that GNG is anywhere near satisfied here, and there certainly isn't enough to substantiate a whole article separate from Christopher Langan. Dembski is a creationist, not a reliable source about anything scientific. Entropy is a journal with ... issues and shouldn't be relied upon for anything even approaching the fringe. The "International Conference on Information and Communication Technology for Smart Society" is not going to have high standards for writing about metaphysics, and even there, Langan gets barely a passing mention. The thesis by Schofield mentions the CTMU exactly once, giving it half a sentence in a footnote (and misspelling Langan's name). The thesis by Fusco is about theology and shows no indication that it was even proofread by a scientist — and since the CTMU is being sold as a scientific revolution, that matters. XOR'easter (talk) 20:51, 7 July 2020 (UTC)
You will need to gain a much larger consensus than this. Please start a WP:RfC rather than acting unilaterally. jps (talk) 20:52, 7 July 2020 (UTC)
ජපස the "consensus" you're talking about in this edit summary was 14 years ago before any of the sources that were cited in this version of the article were published. It doesn't apply, replacing the redirect with out consensus on the new article in this talk page strikes me as ANI worthy. I'll add I spent 40+ hours and my own money researching and writing the new version of article. An WP:RfC makes absolutely no sense here as there's no expectation that the editors from 2006 when the decision was made are currently active and the content they were disputing in 2006 is entirely different. I'm going to restore the article. If you revert again will take this to ANI. - Scarpy (talk) 03:38, 8 July 2020 (UTC)
XOR'easter I only see one issue raised with Entropy in the links you sent. If there's a problem with it the place to raise it would be in the WP:RSN. The rest of your objections I believe I addressed in my first post, save for the bit about "selling" the CTMU, which is a straw man here. Perhaps some CTMU-related sources claim it's a "scientific revolution," but none of them are used as sources this version of the article and none of the text in the new version describe is as anything like that. I believe if you'll honestly compare the sources to the information that accompanies them in the article you'll see this. - Scarpy (talk) 03:38, 8 July 2020 (UTC)
Sorry you spent a lot of time and money(!) to write a poor article that doesn't even mention the person who authored the proposal in its lede, but there you go. Get consensus that this is worth spinning off. Maybe start by adding to the article on Christopher Langan and do the proper WP:CFORK. I don't think you've got a leg to stand on here. jps (talk) 03:53, 8 July 2020 (UTC)
ජපස I addressed mentioning Langan as little as possible in this version of the CTMU in the first comment in this thread. It's not a content fork, so WP:CFORK does not apply - Scarpy (talk) 03:58, 8 July 2020 (UTC)
It's not a content fork because you did not follow the procedure and add content you thought was relevant to the appropriate article. The idea is Langan's. It is not anyone else's. jps (talk) 04:00, 8 July 2020 (UTC)
ANI Notice - Misplaced Pages:Administrators'_noticeboard/Incidents#User_Redirecting_Cognitive-Theoretic_Model_of_the_Universe_to_Christopher_Langan_without_consensus_on_talk_page. - Scarpy (talk) 04:32, 8 July 2020 (UTC)
The links regarding Entropy demonstrate that they've published garbage repeatedly. I've seen the occasional paper by respected scientists there, but their peer-review process seems to be about nil, and anything there should be regarded as something like an arXiv post, i.e., basically self-published. The fact that the sources have to be scraped from the bottom of the publishing barrel is a solid indicator that the CTMU is not a notable proposal. Nothing has been published in a reputable scientific journal about it since the previous consensus was established, so there is no reason to take that consensus to no longer be in effect. XOR'easter (talk) 04:12, 8 July 2020 (UTC)
Moreover, the blog posts by Chu-Carroll are scathing. Merely saying that they claim he material published on the CTMU uses terminology and neologisms in a way that makes it difficult to understand seriously misrepresents their contents and, by not summarizing them accurately, violates NPOV. Chu-Carroll says things like, What does he conclude from this pointless exercise? That playing word-games doesn’t tell you anything about the universe? No, that makes too much sense. That naive set theory perhaps isn’t a great model for the physical universe? No, still too much sense. No, he concludes that this problem of word-games means that set theory is wrong, and must be expanded to include the contradiction of the largest thing being both smaller than its powerset and larger than its powerset. Yes, the solution is to take an unsound mathematical theory, and make it doubly unsound. This isn't just a complaint about neologisms. XOR'easter (talk) 04:19, 8 July 2020 (UTC)
You are completely correct about Mark Chu-Carroll and this was the third point I mentioned in my first comment I debated how to include more of the criticisms of the CTMU that Mark Chu-Carroll made, but was at a loss for how to integrate it without breaking WP:NOCRIT and making a criticism section. If you're a better writer than me, feel free to have a go at it. it's also worth contrasting Mark's response with Ben's response.
I believe you are less correct about Entropy. The links you've provided show that they may have made a mistake publishing one article about glyphosate but not that they regularly publish poor articles. Their CiteScore speaks otherwise on this point. - Scarpy (talk) 04:39, 8 July 2020 (UTC)
The links regarding Entropy are not just about the glyphosate incident. The third recalls the glyphosate business and also argues quite thoroughly that the very paper cited as evidence of the CTMU's notability is bunkum. I could point to other examples of their failure as a peer-reviewed publication . As for the CiteScore metric, it's just a metric: it doesn't indicate respectability. Garbage papers in marginal journals can elevate it, for example. (It's also rigged in favor of Elsevier, but that's a matter for another day.) XOR'easter (talk) 04:57, 8 July 2020 (UTC)
It's also worth noting that a Google Scholar search for "Cognitive-Theoretic Model of the Universe" finds only 57 results, many of them by Langan himself, and the others either preprints (random PDFs on the web that GS happened to scrape) or "published" in fake journals like NeuroQuantology. Contrast this situation with an actual physics theory, a minority view but one taken seriously, like Relational quantum mechanics. There you get over 800 results, by a variety of authors, the majority of them peer-reviewed. There's just no notability case to be made for the CTMU. XOR'easter (talk) 05:10, 8 July 2020 (UTC)
XOR'easter You may have a point about Entropy and usefulness of CiteScore. But if you look at Misplaced Pages guidelines, e.g. WP:SJ it specifically mentions in the section "Searching for good sources" For scientific journals, you can find good journals at https://www.scopus.com/sources This free service allows you to put in the subject area of research (e.g., genetics) and see a list of ranked journals. You can also check the CiteScore percentiles and SCImago Journal Rank ("prestige") of any already-cited journals by switching the search to title or ISSN and searching for the journal you want to review. (For these metrics, bigger numbers are better, so a journal with a CiteScore percentile of 60% is cited more often than 60% of journals in that subject area.) ... so, look, you may be right about CiteScore, but you would also be contradicting WP:SJ. What you're saying here and whether or not Entropy should be considered a reliable source seems outside of the scope of this discussion.
I tend to use things like CiteScore because you can't quantify a journal's reputation from articles in scienceblogs, retractionwatch, etc. The idea behind something like CiteScore is that no journal is perfect, but that some are better than others and it's nice to have metrics to rank them in terms of reliability. I have no doubt that Entropy's reputation isn't perfect, but the question is relative to other journals how bad is it and how can you quantify this? - Scarpy (talk) 05:31, 8 July 2020 (UTC)
As I mentioned above, I went through every single one of those Google Scholar results (and then some) see User_talk:Scarpy/Cognitive-Theoretic Model of the Universe. I read much of each of those Google Scholar results too and I didn't include the nonsense from journals like NeuroQuantology. But you're talking about something different than Misplaced Pages guidelines. WP:N doesn't say "if something is talking about metaphysics it should be at least as popular relational quantum mechanics and can't have been brought up in a journal like NeuroQuantology." What WP:N is talking about is coverage reliable secondary sources. What's in the new version is coverage in secondary sources that normally pass WP:RS. Perhaps Entropy is debatable, but it's te kind of journal you would use following the aforementioned logic in WP:SJ. The other way to look at something like this is that it's slowly been gaining notability over the last 10 years (as most of the citations are from 2010 or later) and it has met this threshold. Notability isn't saying that something is scientifically valid (or we wouldn't have articles on irreducible complexity) and nothing in the new version of the article is claiming that it is. - 05:31, 8 July 2020 (UTC)

The comparison to Relational quantum mechanics is relevant because it shows what coverage in reliable sources looks like for ideas on the outer frontiers of physics. It's not what the coverage of the CTMU looks like.

I have no doubt that Entropy's reputation isn't perfect, but the question is relative to other journals how bad is it — It's published by MDPI, so the answer starts at "not great" and can only go downhill from there. The other sources are worse. If all that has accumulated over an entire decade is a smattering of mentions in gray literature by people who are not subject-matter experts in the subjects necessary to evaluate an idea, it's not a notable idea. Maybe in another 10 years it'll be the new irreducible complexity or the new EmDrive, but not yet.

The proposed article begins, The Cognitive-Theoretic Model of the Universe (CTMU) is a metaphysical theory of reality — and this is already a POV statement, since it is far from universally agreed upon that the CTMU is even coherent enough to be called a "theory". The seminal paper published on the CTMU is likewise highly charged. Intentionally or not, all of the content is written as though intelligent design were a legitimate scientific theory and the CTMU a helpful elaboration upon it. This is trying to spin moldy straw into gold. XOR'easter (talk) 05:44, 8 July 2020 (UTC)

XOR'easter there's no reason all coverage on things that are in "the outer frontiers of physics" should look the same. I also wouldn't place this in the outer frontiers of physics. It's more philosophy/theology.
It's published by MDPI, so the answer starts at "not great" and can only go downhill from there. Again, this may be correct but there's nothing in WP:SJ about "avoid things published by MDPI." The guidance there is to look at things like the CiteScore. Maybe that guidance sucks, but it's what Misplaced Pages's guidelines currently are.
The bit about the seminal paper on the CTMU is my attempt at paraphrasing the German (translated as) "In several writings, mainly in a 56-page paper, Langan presents the CTMU." It goes on to discuss that it's placed in "an essay in a Christian American creationist anthology." I'm open to changing that, but it's faithful to the original source. This is the translated bit of the section I paid for but I'm open to rewording it.
and this is already a POV statement, since it is far from universally agreed upon that the CTMU is even coherent enough to be called a "theory" two points here (1) that's the language the the sources use and (2) you're talking about a Scientific theory, and no one is claiming the CTMU is a scientific theory. Ben made this pretty clear, and it could be mentioned in the article. "As Langan himself affirms, what he’s putting forth is a philosophy, not a scientific theory."
Intentionally or not, all of the content is written as though intelligent design were a legitimate scientific theory and the CTMU a helpful elaboration upon it. That's bizarre to me because (a) that's not at all what I intended or how I read the proposed version of the article and (b) if you've listened to how I quote Christopher Hitchens among friends, I doubt I ever sound like a proponent of intelligent design.
But if that's at all how it came across then I believe would benefit from your input on that point so it's not misleading to others. - Scarpy (talk) 06:13, 8 July 2020 (UTC)
WP:SJ is an essay, not a guideline (and certainly not a policy). It is in no way binding. (I don't think I've even heard it invoked before.) It does have some good advice to offer; for example, Even the best physics journal is an unreliable source for statements about politics, and top-quality political journals are poor sources for statements about physics. So if the CTMU is "philosophy" instead of a scientific theory, then we shouldn't be looking in journals that purport to be about mathematical physics, should we? Likewise, it advises, There is no "magic" or "good" number for impact factors. And, Even the most prestigious and highly reputable journals have published embarrassingly bad papers, and many disreputable journals have published good quality papers by reputable researchers. Finding journals with good reputations is only part of the work in deciding what sources to use when you are building articles.
I picked Relational quantum mechanics as a comparison point because, as an interpretation of quantum mechanics, it spills over into philosophy and/or metaphysics. It's in the same range of things that the CTMU is trying to enter, unlike theories that lie within physics more narrowly construed, like massive gravity or the Georgi–Glashow model (to pick a couple examples that sprang to mind).
As for the rest, well, what can I say? It read like it took Intelligent Design as a scientific theory, and that the CTMU was too (a "theory of everything" means a scientific one). If that's not the impression you wanted to convey, then another round of revision would have been required. XOR'easter (talk) 06:26, 8 July 2020 (UTC)
XOR'easter That's a fair point WP:SJ is an essay, not a guideline, and it's true that a math and physics journal would not be a best source for a philosophy article (but it also doesn't mean that it would be irrelevant).
If that's not the impression you wanted to convey, then another round of revision would have been required. yes I think that's clear now.
Maybe I can frame this another way. When people Google CTMU, who do you want to explain it to them? Of course, if the CTMU is non-notable, then not Misplaced Pages. But I think even removing some of the sources this still passes the WP:GNG. Maybe we can agree on a few points as a way forward.
(1) The CTMU is not a scientific theory and shouldn't be framed in the article like one.
(2) It shouldn't leave the reader with an impression that it's advocating intelligent design.
(3) We remove the material referenced by the Entropy article, Dembski and Schofield and re-write.
(4) We include more material from Mark Chu-Carroll.
How does that sound? - Scarpy (talk) 07:09, 8 July 2020 (UTC)


Nevermind. I give up. I've sank to much time and money in to this article. Sunk cost fallacy and all. This is all going off my watch lists. - Scarpy (talk) 09:00, 8 July 2020 (UTC)
I may come back to this someday. - Scarpy (talk) 20:16, 9 July 2020 (UTC)

Request for comment: on the notability of the CTMU in 2020 with sources published after 2006 and "unredirect" of this page to Christopher Langan

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In 2006 two articles were written on the Cognitive Theoretic Model of the Universe (CTMU). They didn't pass AfD at the time. One was Misplaced Pages:Articles_for_deletion/Cognitive_Theoretic_Model_of_the_Universe (without the hypen) and the other was this one Misplaced Pages:Articles_for_deletion/Cognitive-Theoretic_Model_of_the_Universe (with the hypen). The result of the later discussion was a redirect of this page to Christopher Langan, the author of the CTMU. Since 2006 more as been written about the CTMU and there are now more several secondary sources discussing it. There was a "2020 version" of the Cognitive-Theoretic Model of the Universe this article posted this week in place of this redirect but that has since been replaced with a redirect to Christopher Langan again. This RfC is to see if there if consensus can be generated on the notability of the CTMU with the WP:RS published since 2006, and if deemed notability should the redirect be replaced with a new version of the article along the lines of the one posted this week? - Scarpy (talk) 05:53, 8 July 2020 (UTC)

  • No and no. For reasons detailed above, the smattering of new sources accumulated since the previous consensus was established do not amount to a case for notability. Moreover, the new version of the article violated WP:FRINGE and WP:NPOV and would be a poor starting point even if notability were agreed upon. XOR'easter (talk) 05:56, 8 July 2020 (UTC)
Comment I put a lot of work in to giving the material WP:DUE weight, and I don't see any violations of WP:FRINGE or WP:NPOV but am of course open to re-writing or rewording anything I may have missed. - Scarpy (talk) 06:22, 8 July 2020 (UTC)
I believe that the portion of WP:FRINGE that this violates is "A Misplaced Pages article should not make a fringe theory appear more notable or more widely accepted than it is." You may find my essay at WP:1AM to be helpful. --Guy Macon (talk) 13:15, 8 July 2020 (UTC)
Thanks Guy Macon. I'm more well-acquainted with WP:FRINGE now than I was when I was researching the article and understand these criticisms. This was the first time it was relevant to anything I've written from scratch before.
You may not have intended here, to my ears (eyes?) the tone and content here wasn't as helpful as the suggestions from but XOR'easter and PaoleoNeonate. They had similar concerns but took the time to point out specific wording in the article that they took issue with.
WP:1AM is a helpful essay. What I find more illuminating is Special:WhatLinksHere/Wikipedia:1AM. I often see pattern in the pages where it's linked that a similar cast of characters are involved for a similar class of issues on Misplaced Pages in a way that follows a routine. When things become routine, they become depersonalized. While your essay is somewhat a counter-balance to this, it's also a bit of a symptom of depersonalization in the sense that it's part of a stock/boilerplate/routine response. I think of essays like WP:DTTR and WP:DTA in the sense that they both advocate for a more personalized approach to help create a more congenial environment. I get that many admins (and probably others) believe that the founding values of Misplaced Pages have compromised its success and may take harder line, especially on WP:FRINGE issues. My constructive criticism is that the hard line approach should be less of a default and to take things on more of a case by case basis. There's a point of diminishing returns when the 'M' becomes so many more times larger than the '1' that it seems to be less about the goals of creating encyclopedic content and more about schadenfreude. - Scarpy (talk) 21:53, 9 July 2020 (UTC)
Comment If the primary concern is the WP:FRINGEiness, a rewrite can address that. For people saying this does not pass the WP:GNG. Removing the sources contested by XOR'easter, we have 4-5 independent, reliable, sources giving the topic significant coverage. David Redvaldsen, Menzler, Goertzel, and Chu-Carroll and I believe we can count Fusco since this is not a scientific theory. yes, it's not the list of Hillary Clinton 2016 presidential campaign non-political endorsements but it is multiple WP:RS. - Scarpy (talk) 08:01, 8 July 2020 (UTC)
Again, no. Three of those are blogs (two of which are by the same person and thus constitute one source for notability), and then there are a few paragraphs in two books. Just create a section of his page specifically for CTMU and redirect this page to that. --tronvillain (talk) 03:52, 10 July 2020 (UTC)
  • No. It's a one-man theory with no credible evidenbce of wider acceptance. The sources remain terrible. Self-published exposition by Langan, and larglely self-published critique. There is no "there" there. Guy (help!) 08:43, 8 July 2020 (UTC)
  • No. Judging from the last incarnation of the article, this is just a description of what space the theory occupies (a sort of meta view of the topic), and the cited sources that I looked at largely talk (with a degree of dubiousness) about whether aspects of the "theory" can make any sense and whether it is even a theory, and put a lot of focus on Christopher Langan. In all, this is really about Christopher Langan's expression of something quirky, not about the topic described by the title. A better title for the real topic here would have been "Christopher Langan's CTMU" or similar. The topic itself (the content of the theory) is less notable than the existence of the theory (people discussing whether it has any merit). All this makes me think that this belongs in a section of Christopher Langan, and no way should be an article in its own right. —Quondum 11:58, 8 July 2020 (UTC)
  • No - Looking through the references on that recreated article, it doesn't even come close to achieving notability for a fringe theory. As far as I could tell, the only ones explicitly about the theory (rather than offhand mentions) were three blogs, two of which were about how it was nonsense (from the same person). Now, you can achieve notability based on criticism, but that's not in any sense sufficient coverage. --tronvillain (talk) 12:29, 8 July 2020 (UTC)
  • No. It has the expected depth and quality of sourcing for a fringe theory, which is to say: not enough for a standalone article. We should maintain the redirect to Christopher Langan. GorillaWarfare (talk) 15:15, 8 July 2020 (UTC)
  • No - I read the proposed version and looked at its sources. It's still suboptimal and lacks deserved criticism (if reliable secondary sources don't abound for that, it's an indication of lack of notability). The current version also uncritically asserts as facts claims like "As the CTMU indicates, creation occurs through a self-replicating feature of the universe"... Then it falls in apologetics like yes it's religious, but not necessarily the god you know... And uncritically goes on with the role of language as proposed (as opposed to concepts of the mind to apply to reality assessment, reality must somehow be derived from it, rather than our conception of it). The sources are generally suboptimal (and I have the impression that the linked Nils Melzer would be another person)? —PaleoNeonate16:18, 8 July 2020 (UTC)
  • No - One man = one pet theory = one Misplaced Pages article. GPinkerton (talk) 05:17, 9 July 2020 (UTC)
  • Yes to the notability of the CTMU and a new version of the article. The theory has appeared in peer-reviewed journals (e.g. and has received coverage in the mainstream media (e.g. ). This does not mean it is accepted by most experts, but per WP:FRINGE, Just because an idea is not accepted by most experts does not mean it should be removed from Misplaced Pages. The threshold for whether a topic should be included in Misplaced Pages as an article is generally covered by notability guidelines. These guidelines require the topic to have received significant coverage in reliable sources that are independent of the subject. Since this is true of the CTMU (see above), it is notable. The new draft by Scarpy could serve as a starting point for further development. Tim Smith (talk) 02:47, 10 July 2020 (UTC)
    • We don't actually know anything about the peer-review standards of Cosmos and History (which have been disputed); an inquiry at WP:RSN might be the right venue to sort that out. But that source is WP:PRIMARY anyway. Ideas don't become notable just by being published, no matter what journal publishes them; they have to be noticed, and a blurb in a pop-science magazine (scarcely a full story) is thin grounds for saying that people have paid serious attention. The Popular Science blurb could be added to Christopher Langan#Ideas and beliefs. XOR'easter (talk) 17:24, 10 July 2020 (UTC)
      • The blurb in Popular Science is effectively a sidebar to an article about the author, so that article is not about CTMU. Nor does the sidebar talk about the content of CTMU but rather only of the author's approach to it (making it an extension of the interview), a second point against this being about CTMU. So it is a stretch to claim that CTMU itself is covered by Popular Science, irrespective of its (lack of) credibility as a mainstream publication. There is just no way that this can be regarded as "significant coverage in reliable sources" or even contributory coverage of CTMU. —Quondum 18:11, 10 July 2020 (UTC)
Regarding Cosmos and History, it is included in Scopus (thereby meeting WP:JOURNALCRIT), and also in ESCI , which Clarivate (publisher of Journal Citation Reports) characterizes as "a trusted set of journals" which "contains quality publications, selected by our expert in-house editors for editorial rigor and best practice at a journal level" . Furthermore, per WP:PRIMARY, Primary sources may or may not be independent sources. In this case, the journal is indeed independent of the CTMU. Thus, it is a reliable, independent source for the theory's notability.
Regarding Popular Science, the CTMU is referenced repeatedly throughout the article, not just in a sidebar. Indeed, the article begins:
He's a working class guy with an IQ that's off the charts. What does he have to say about science? Everything—a theory of everything, that is.
Regardless, per WP:GNG, Significant coverage is more than a trivial mention, but it does not need to be the main topic of the source material. Additionally, per WP:FRINGE, Reliable sources on Misplaced Pages may include magazines published by respected publishing houses. Popular Science was published by Time Inc. and has won multiple awards, including the American Society of Magazine Editors award for General Excellence. Thus, it too is a reliable, independent source for the theory's notability. Tim Smith (talk) 02:51, 11 July 2020 (UTC)
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