Talk:Ninovium

Name notability, potential merge w/ Victor Ninov and/or oganesson
As discussed on Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Chemistry, "ninovium" is in my view not itself notable. I can't find a notable source that even uses this as the name for the element; the ones listed in the article only name it as "element 118". "Ninovium" seems to be a later invention from Internet discussion of the scandal, and never seriously proposed as the name (which would be extremely unorthodox; chemical elements are almost never named for their discoverer, and the formal naming of new elements is a lengthy international process).

To reiterate my points on the WP:Chem talk page, it seems like the article's author is unclear as to what a chemical element actually is, with phrases like "ninovium was a synthetic element", "its exact characteristics remain lost media" (itself a strange way of referring to scientific data), and "ninovium's existence as a valid element remains unsubstantiated", which seems to me to suggest that "ninovium" is in some way different from what we now call oganesson. The alleged decay chain and its product are distinct from the method used to produce oganesson, but that doesn't make the two distinct "valid elements".

It seems to me that this page should be mostly merged into Ninov's page, with maybe a footnote on the page for oganesson detailing the scandal in greater detail. If it warrants its own page at all, it should probably be moved to something like element 118 falsification controversy.

you first raised the issue on the WP:Chem page, I am unsure if you have anything else to add here. Fishsicles (talk) 16:10, 25 June 2024 (UTC)


 * With a bit more digging, Google Scholar shows two books referencing the name "ninovium" as a proposal by Ninov's team, but it's unclear where they got the name, as this contradicts Berkeley's own reporting which proposed the name "ghiorsium" after Albert Ghiorso. There's nothing I can find in scientific literature.
 * I've put the general notability template on the article, as at this point I'm convinced the name is not. Fishsicles (talk) 16:04, 26 June 2024 (UTC)
 * It looks like most of this article is derived from a YouTube video essay, which was (correctly) removed by an earlier editor, but that leaves us with a page with only incidental references to the actually cited sources. I've taken a whack at fixing some of the sentences, but I'm increasingly convinced this page is not only non-notable, it's not even sure what it's talking about. Fishsicles (talk) 18:06, 27 June 2024 (UTC)
 * Support: this is a non-brainer, if there is something notable from this page it should be merged into Victor Ninov article, the rest should be removed and this page could be converted into a redirect to Victor Ninov.--ReyHahn (talk) 09:45, 27 June 2024 (UTC)
 * To keep it short and simple; I understand. I just created this article as a means of explaining the elusiveness of this element. I understand that it can be merged into another article, but I recommend merging it with oganesson the most as this element is its predecessor. Merging it with Victor Ninov would be confusing, as he’s only a physicist and not a chemical element. Bennett1203 (talk) 01:23, 29 June 2024 (UTC)
 * "Ninovium" is not a chemical element, or "predecessor" to oganesson. Even if it were called ninovium - do you have a source for the name? It seems like the primary suggestion of Ninov's team before the fraud came out was to name it for Ghiorso - it's just the contents of a false claim, which are very easy to make and have little bearing on the elusiveness of a real discovery. Pganesson isn't even the most elusive of the superheavies, an honour which goes to tennessine - and had no false discovery claims prior to its 2010 discovery. The falsification of data is on the whole more notable in reference to Ninov's career than it is to oganesson. Fishsicles (talk) 17:09, 3 July 2024 (UTC)
 * Oh. Alright. I didn’t notice that. Thanks for informing me. For now, I will leave this conversation to the people who nominated this page for deletion. Bennett1203 (talk) 18:41, 3 July 2024 (UTC)