Talk:William A. Tiller

Untitled
Tiller has been tagged :Category: Pseudoscientists but surely he is only half of one. His career work in Materials Science at Stanford is not pseudo, only his work in pseudoscience is pseudoscientific. GangofOne 00:17, 11 April 2006 (UTC)

Agree, it is POV. Any objections to delete this catagory?--RichardMalter 11:22, 20 June 2006 (UTC)

Doing some legitimate scientific work does not exclude one from being a pseudoscientist, just as being a dentist does not exclude one from being an author. Tiller is both. It would be more accurate to leave the "Pseudoscientists" categorization, but also add "Scientists". Greenie2600 13:46, 22 June 2006 (UTC)

Sufficient Plausibility
I undid the pseudoscience text about lacking sufficient plausibility. To label a well-known scientist as a pseudoscientist, you better actually be able to show his methodology is bogus. I've read his papers. They are not easy to understand. He's a terrible writer. But to dismiss them any more than one would dismiss another obscurely dense scientific writer is nothing more than imposing one's personal POV against the topic. --Mbilitatu (talk) 01:19, 6 April 2010 (UTC)

I undid user Stacyshaelo again. She did not make any effort to respond to the concern I raised here. --Mbilitatu (talk) 02:16, 16 April 2010 (UTC)

Tiller is a premier investigator in his field. To call him a pseudoscientist is cheap shot. It would be like dismissing all Christians that do science research because they believe in Virgin Birth. Stanford University thought it fit to make him a professor emeritus, not merely a professor. Criticisms of any scientist's work belongs in the commentary section of the journals they have published in, not from the peanut gallery of cyberspace. JosephCampisi (talk) 02:12, 16 June 2010 (UTC)
 * I think the lack of notable, reliable sources which cite his work is very telling. It's plainly clear that he is not a notable researcher and that the field of his research is not notable. --Salimfadhley (talk) 15:44, 17 March 2012 (UTC)


 * A professor emeritus is merely a retired professor. (JosephCampisi : "Stanford University thought it fit to make him a professor emeritus, not merely a professor") Rgelpke (talk) 00:08, 5 April 2012 (UTC)

Delete proposal by 86.** IP
I've tried to tidy up this article, however I'm also left with the conclusion that there are no valid sources for this subject which meet the WP:BLP standards. --Salimfadhley (talk) 00:12, 20 March 2012 (UTC)


 * For the record: after the "Keep" decision of the deletion discussion of 28 March 2012, the article text was radically shortened by two editors on the following day. The deletions included:
 * (with edit comment: "WP:UNDUE. This is not the mainstream view."): a referenced statement by theoretical physicist Amit Goswani, and
 * (with edit comment: "Stubbify, barring discovery of WP:Reliable Sources") the entire list of Tiller's book publications including also his book on crystallization published by Cambridge University Press.
 * In my view, to include at least that one book again should be a no-brainer; for the rest it is somewhat of a gray zone. --Chris Howard (talk) 20:30, 29 March 2012 (UTC)
 * There's no source for the book list, though. If it can be soucred (and the bar's fairly low, admittedly, for relatively uncontroversial information), then sure. The problem is that the keep votes are based on claims of notability that have nothing to do with the lack of sources, so about all we can do is trim out the unsourced parts. 86.** IP (talk) 22:02, 31 March 2012 (UTC)
 * It turns out there he actually two books on crystallization, both on www.cambridge.org. The indicated publication dates refer to the dates as printed in the book, see the Google preview.
 * William A. Tiller: The Science of Crystallization: Microscopic Interfacial Phenomena, Cambridge University Press, 1991 (reprinted 1995), ISBN 978-052138-827-6
 * William A. Tiller: The Science of Crystallization: Macroscopic Phenomena and Defect Generation, Cambridge University Press, 1991, ISBN 978-052138-828-3
 * --Chris Howard (talk) 14:23, 1 April 2012 (UTC)
 * These, as well as his books on non-mainstream topics, can also be found for ex. on Amazon: Books by William A. Tiller, with links to full bibliographic data including ISBN numbers. Most were already present with ISBN in the older version of the article, and following the ISBN links for ex. to Google search yields the full bibliographic details for each book. --Chris Howard (talk) 14:41, 1 April 2012 (UTC)
 * I saw soneone has re-inserted the books list. I'll add the second one on crystallization. For the rest (the "what the bleep" source), I intend to keep out of the debate. --Chris Howard (talk) 18:26, 3 April 2012 (UTC)

Please do not restore sources which are not reliable. IRWolfie- (talk) 09:34, 3 April 2012 (UTC)

Concerns about selected papers section
Could somebody explain the basis for the current selection? We have a number of mainstream papers (which may have been widely cited and considered important in the relevant field), along with Tiller's esoteric papers which from what I can tell have no importance at all. I think this selection gives a misleading impression of the importance of Tiller's later publications by including them in a list alongside publications which arguably are important. --Salimfadhley (talk) 23:08, 3 April 2012 (UTC)


 * Yep, by all accounts he's not notable for his esoteric papers and no reliable sources discuss them. Until reliable sources discuss them they seem undue. IRWolfie- (talk) 15:00, 4 April 2012 (UTC)

Guggenheim Fellowship
The guggenheim fellowship is a grant of around $40k awarded to around 200 people a year based on around 4k applications. Hardly something that would be mentioned in a biography unless you can get a secondary source to mention it and give it some due weight. IRWolfie- (talk) 15:15, 4 April 2012 (UTC)

Strong concerns about use of self-published sources in a BLP article
I note with some dismay that links to tillerfoundation.com have been re-added. It is never acceptable to use self-published sources in a WP:BLP article. --Salimfadhley (talk) 23:14, 6 April 2012 (UTC)


 * Did you actually read WP:SELFPUB? It says that Self-published and questionable sources may be used as sources of information about themselves, usually in articles about themselves or their activities, provided they are not unduly self-serving or "exceptional" in nature. Everything you have removed meets these criteria to be included, for the very reason that you have used to justify removing them. --EPadmirateur (talk) 02:57, 7 April 2012 (UTC)


 * The material in the source is unduly self serving, such as claims that "the field of psychoenergetics which will very likely become an integral part of "tomorrow’s" physics". Considering that is his claimed field of study it is self serving against Clause 1. The idea in mind with the WP:SELFPUB guidelines is for non-contentious information, not for links to fringe claims which aren't directly related to the individual. IRWolfie- (talk) 12:45, 7 April 2012 (UTC)


 * I think we can use the self-published sources to establish what the subject has said. We cannot use these self-published sources to establish credentials or scientific "facts". Given that The Tiller Foundation seems to exist for no purpose other than to promote the idea and career of the subject we should be be very cautious about how it is used--Salimfadhley (talk) 19:23, 7 April 2012 (UTC)

Concerns about the introduction
Currently it reads: "William A. Tiller, Ph.D. is the author of Science and Human Transformation, which proposes the existence of subtle energies" - this seems bizarre to me. Surely he is most notable for his early work which received wide citation in peer-reviewed journals. The book 'science and human transformation' received no such recognition. I propose that we make the introduction lead with is most notable works. --Salimfadhley (talk) 23:24, 6 April 2012 (UTC)


 * This reasoning also fails because notability applies only to the article topic itself, not the content of the article, per WP:NNC: Notability guidelines do not limit content within an article. Actually this book did and does receive recognition, namely in the book on parapsychology noted earlier and in the What the Bleep movie. --EPadmirateur (talk) 03:02, 7 April 2012 (UTC)


 * EPadmirateur, I think you misread my statement above. I was not arguing that this information should be excluded from the article, only that we should mention his most notable works in the introductory paragraph. Are you suggesting that his entire scientific career is less notable than the very limited coverage his parapsychology has received? --Salimfadhley (talk) 19:29, 7 April 2012 (UTC)

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