Talk:Zick Rubin

Proposed deletion
There may be a boingboing post that mentions this article, but that in no way changes the fact that Rubin is significant figure in the field of psychology whose work is substantially documented in external verifiable sources. The Internet is often iterative and reflexive: that shouldn't lead to a deletion. The question is have the criteria of significance and verifiability been met? Grhabyt (talk) 00:39, 14 March 2011 (UTC)


 * I would have thought that he would meet criteria 2 and 7 for a notable academic. The fact that boingboing mentions this article does not change that he more than likely meets the criteria. Will remove the proposed deletion unless Hackaday can expand on why they think he does not meet the criteria. Lauchlin (talk) 01:03, 14 March 2011 (UTC)


 * An IP editor removed the prod tag, and I notified User:Hackaday, who originally placed it. With luck, Hackaday won't see a need to place it again. Jokestress (talk) 06:13, 14 March 2011 (UTC)


 * What does being mentioned on boingboing have to do with deleting articles on Wikipedia?81.158.231.242 (talk) 12:20, 14 March 2011 (UTC)


 * Hackaday apparently believed that the BB post was Rubin's only claim to notability. Isaac Rabinovitch (talk) 00:31, 17 March 2011 (UTC)

Proxmire controversy: a tale of two Rubins
Some clarification is needed about the Proxmire complaint. Rubin's work was not awarded a Golden Fleece, though a Harvard study on love was cited as an example by Proxmire in the press at the time. In his 1980 book The Fleecing of America, Proxmire wrote, "This first Fleece Award brought on a certain amount of rebuttal flack which I will describe in another chapter. It came primarily from faculty at the University of Wisconsin (the NSF gave them $260000 and Harvard $121600 for similar studies) in defense of their University of Minnesota colleague, Professor Elaine Walster, a social psychologist." Source: The Fleecing of America (see article for full citation).

There's a possible conflation with another Golden Fleece "winner," psychologist Harris B. Rubin of the Southern Illinois University School of Medicine, who had in 1976 received tentative federal approval to allow male volunteers to smoke fixed doses of marijuana or placebo, and then to monitor their degrees of sexual arousal when exposed to stag films. This study is not related in any way to Zick Rubin's work. It appears that Proxmire himself may have conflated the two Rubins above. A contemporaneous report says that study was funded by NIDA and was a "$121,000 two-year study." Source: University drug and libido study branded as "tax paid debauchery. New Scientist, January 29, 1976, p. 221. Proxmire was among those leading the criticism of this study as well. Jokestress (talk) 06:53, 22 March 2011 (UTC)