Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Jeremy Dunning-Davies


 * The following discussion is an archived debate of the proposed deletion of the article below. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as the article's talk page or in a deletion review).  No further edits should be made to this page.

The result was   delete. – Juliancolton  &#124; Talk 00:04, 22 June 2009 (UTC)

Jeremy Dunning-Davies

 * ( [ delete] ) – (View AfD) (View log)

The subject is an unnotable academic. He fails WP:PROF although he has some notability as a pseudoscience advocate. Mathsci (talk) 22:45, 14 June 2009 (UTC)
 * Note: This debate has been included in the list of Living people-related deletion discussions. --Erwin85Bot (talk) 00:01, 15 June 2009 (UTC)


 * Comment This is the sort of case I find difficult. He has at least 50 publications in high-quality physics journals and three books (two mainstream, one fringey), which ought to make him notable enough for a Wikipedia article.  This is one of those cases of a scientist who is creative in the mainstream for most of his career but then drifts into fringe topics in old age -- Linus Pauling is the prototype of the phenomenon. Looie496 (talk) 01:39, 15 June 2009 (UTC)
 * Keep Fellow of the RS, author, definitely meets notability. Dunno anything about his relation to fringe science, but there's probably worse out there. Headbomb {{{sup|ταλκ}}κοντριβς – WP Physics} 02:24, 15 June 2009 (UTC)
 * Delete per below (fellow of the RAS, and that is indeed nothing special, my bad).Headbomb {{{sup|ταλκ}}κοντριβς – WP Physics} 04:44, 15 June 2009 (UTC)
 * Comment Ahem, he is not a fellow of the Royal Society, which is quite a high academic distinction in the UK. Anybody, including students or amateur astronomers, can join the Royal Astronomical Society . All members are called fellows. This fact is even recorded in the wikipedia article here. If he were a distinguished academic he would not have remained a mere senior lecturer. In the British university system there are the higher academic ranks of reader and then professor, which he never attained in his career. At present he fails WP:PROF on any kind of academic grounds. Looking at his publication list on mathscinet (29 items, many joint), there are a lot of papers in Santilli's Hadronic Journal, which is not a high quality physics journal; similarly he has published in Progress in Physics. Neither of these journals has a proper peer-review system. Mathsci (talk) 04:00, 15 June 2009 (UTC)


 * Delete. Does not meet notability standards for an academic.  Involvement with fringe science, even if it can be established to WP:BLP standards, does not make the case either.  A.K.Nole (talk) 06:36, 15 June 2009 (UTC)
 * Note: This debate has been included in the list of Academics and educators-related deletion discussions.  -- TexasAndroid (talk) 11:51, 15 June 2009 (UTC)
 * Delete. Allow me to add a few observations to what Mathsci reported. WoS shows precisely 5 publications, only 2 of which are actually "articles" (the other 3 being "letters to the editor"-type pieces). WoS does not show the numerous other pieces referred to above because they do not appear in peer-reviewed research publications. In my opinion, 2 legitimate research publications over an entire career (art. says he's now retired) comes nowhere near satisfying WP:PROF #1. Other info above shows he does not satisfy any of the other criteria either. Respectfully, Agricola44 (talk) 15:32, 15 June 2009 (UTC).
 * Keep. Nothing to add other than the aforementioned 50 publications seems notable to me. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Benson Verazzano (talk • contribs) 23:32, 15 June 2009 (UTC)
 * Waffle : Keep conditional on expansion of content on his career work and the textbooks he wrote, delete if this remains a single-sentence outline of his career with a note on his participation in fringe science (which, as before noted, seems an end-of-career move, so perhaps undue weight to have this without his real work). Awickert (talk) 07:01, 16 June 2009 (UTC)
 * Delete as per WP:PROF below; thanks to Scog for looking into things. Awickert (talk) 17:47, 16 June 2009 (UTC)


 * Delete a quick check myself and reading the above shows that whether or not he has fifty or a hundred publications, he doesn't satisfy our criteria for notability (which are not based on the number of publications). Dougweller (talk) 07:48, 16 June 2009 (UTC)
 * Delete: although he has a number of publications (using ADS, I get 37 publications in refereed journals: ), he has very few citations (< 100 total), and so he clearly fails WP:PROF #1. As noted above, membership of the RAS is not a highly selective honour, and so doesn't satisfy  WP:PROF #3. Since he doesn't appear to satisfy any of the other WP:PROF criteria either, I think we have to conclude that he's not a notable academic. Scog (talk) 12:19, 16 June 2009 (UTC)
 * Keep. I am not among those who would anathematise fringe science and those who graze within its realms from the pages of Wikipedia in the interests of ideological purity. The topic of fringe science has fascinating psychological and sociological features. The subject of the article is most unusual in having contributed both to conventional mainstream science and to journals on its fringes. In WoS I find 56 papers in reputable journals-Nature, Physical Review, American Journal of Physics etc. (in 1998 he changed his name from Denningdavies to Denning-Davies and that has confused some of the editors here: both have to be searched for). Citations are not substantial so WP:Prof notability must be borderline. In his publication list on his web site he gives 130 publications, 16 are in electrical engineering journals (not covered by WoS), 9 on education issues and 4 books. The balance over these is in fringe journals and the physics ArXiv (which contains mainstream and some fringe papers). In GS there are 271 hits for "J Dunning-Davies" and in Google News 1,890. Clearly many of these may be eliminated on further examination but that still leaves some to give WP:BLP. In view of his non-conventional research activities it is not surprising that he was not promoted above associate professor level but these activities may give WP:BLP notability. Xxanthippe (talk) 23:17, 16 June 2009 (UTC).
 * Comment On his home page Jeremy Dunning-Davies lists only 29 papers . Mathscinet lists papers back in the 1960's with the current spelling. Where are the 130 papers that Xxanthippe mentions? There are 30 papers on the arxiv by him, some classified under "general physics". On Spires-HEP, there are 15 entries. In WoS there are 65 papers: many have never been cited; the maximum number of citations is 10 for one paper "What is entropy". WoS includes some electronics papers from early in his career. Mathsci (talk) 01:16, 17 June 2009 (UTC)
 * See here under the CV: http://www.steriwave.com/SteriwaveWeb22-05-09/J_Dunning-Davies.html Xxanthippe (talk) 01:42, 17 June 2009 (UTC).
 * Comment Nice points Xxanthippe. If there is doubt I would err on the side of keeping. Especially when the drive to remove the article seems to stem more from a desire to censor than anything else. I noticed swathes of "unsourced material" that was actually of interest about the man, were deleted rather than tagged for citation requests, leaving the article void of any information actually. Can we not restore the article as it was written, and put up citation requests? Would seem to be more cordial and 'good faith' to me.--Benson Verazzano (talk) 05:26, 18 June 2009 (UTC)
 * Mathsci has edited the Afd 26 times since October 2007 and has engaged in an edit dispute over the AfD with A.K.Nole who he threatened with the possibility of blocking. Xxanthippe (talk) 06:23, 18 June 2009 (UTC).
 * You mean he edited the article, and editing an article is not a bad thing. He did not threaten Nole, he warned him of the consequences of his actions, which in part appear to be an attempt to make Mathsci change his username. The discussion is at ANI here . This apparent personal attack by you on another editor has nothing to do with the merits of the article or with this AfD. Dougweller (talk) 08:07, 18 June 2009 (UTC)
 * I have seen that link on steriwave, which reproduces the list on JDD's university web page. There are 29 entries. Apart from Xxanthippe's unwarranted personal attack, the statement about "fascinating psychological and sociological features" seems to be pure soapboxing. BTW, 26 edits for me is a very small number of edits. Another article that I watch is Europe. My edit count is a lot higher there (in fact I seem to have the highest number of edits on the article, namely 240). I made 231 edits on Plancherel theorem for spherical functions. I have so far made 81 edits on Château of Vauvenargues in the last two days, and that number is likely to increase significantly. Bruno Ely, Director of the Musée Granet and author of the principal source, kindly dedicated my copy  of his fascinating booklet to the English wikipedia. Mathsci (talk) 08:34, 18 June 2009 (UTC)
 * No personal attack here. Just a record of edit history. It is often useful to know where editors are coming from in these pages in order to decide what weight to give to their views. The number of consecutive edits by Mathsci on the Plancherel theorem for spherical functions article is indeed remarkable. I have pointed out before that it possible to edit in the user's sandbox, and delete when the final version is complete, to avoid overburdening Wikipedia servers with a multitude of versions that increases Wikipedia's costs. Xxanthippe (talk) 11:33, 18 June 2009 (UTC).
 * Cumulative edits are the usual rule for editing very long and difficult articles, even from scratch. That is normally what happens in mathematics and for that matter most serious articles Your remarks seem quite unhelpful, uninformed (what on earth do you mean about costs?) and possibly intended to cause offense. Mathsci (talk) 20:11, 18 June 2009 (UTC)
 * No offence was intended. Every byte stored on WP costs money because WP needs to purchase mass storage devices to store that byte. If everybody edited and saved an article many times more than needed to produce a final version then WP's costs would be increased commeasurably. The solution is simple, as I have already explained. Consecutive edits which, as you say, are particularly needed for the complicated mark-up of mathematical topics can be done in the user's sandbox and, after being copied into article space when ready, can be deleted. Alternatively, editing can be done off-line. Xxanthippe (talk) 03:39, 19 June 2009 (UTC).
 * These comments are the opposite of wikipedia policy. If you were to make more unhelpful edits of this kind, I imagine you could be topic banned from mathematics articles. Please stop trolling. Mathsci (talk) 06:51, 19 June 2009 (UTC)
 * Which particular WP:Policies is Mathsci referring to? The edit of mine that he refers to was an (unsuccessful) attempt to encourage the improvement of a poorly written mathematical article, of which there are many. Xxanthippe (talk) 23:42, 19 June 2009 (UTC).
 * The subsequent edits on the article reveal that you, Xxanthippe, seem to have no familiarity at all with representation theory, which is what underlies the theory of spherical functions. In this kind of circumstance when you are evidently out of your depth, why even try to edit or express an opinion? Your unhelpful edit was reverted and ignored.
 * Edits in user space use up just as many kbs as in project space, so your other reasoning is also extremely hard for me to follow. You seem to spend a huge amount of time reverting edits rather than adding significant amounts of sourced namespace content to this encyclopedia. Mathsci (talk) 00:12, 20 June 2009 (UTC)
 * Sandbox edits are not retained after deletion. In principle this can reduce the profligate use of WP resources. Mathsci changes the subject so often I find it hard to keep up with him. I missed the response to my question about which particular WP:Policies he was referring to. Xxanthippe (talk) 04:31, 20 June 2009 (UTC).
 * WP:DFTT. Mathsci (talk) 04:35, 20 June 2009 (UTC)
 * Obdurate discourtesy deserves no reply. Xxanthippe (talk) 01:33, 21 June 2009 (UTC).
 * If your edits were better or you had created substantial articles yourself, you might have been taken more seriously. Mathsci (talk) 08:50, 21 June 2009 (UTC)
 * Comment. User:Mathsci and I actually agree that this article should be deleted.  Any comments on my or Mathsci's behaviour are not appropriate here.  If worth making at all, take them to Administrators'_noticeboard/Incidents.  A.K.Nole (talk) 17:17, 18 June 2009 (UTC)
 * I did not make a personal attack on Mathsci. I noted the verifiable facts of his edit record. If I had referred to him (which I didn't) as "unhelpful", "uninformed", "trolling", "no familiarity at all", "out of your depth" that would indeed have been a personal attack. Xxanthippe (talk) 23:42, 19 June 2009 (UTC).
 * I fail to see the difference between a threat and "pointing out the consequences" other than the latter is a euphemism--Benson Verazzano (talk) 05:19, 20 June 2009 (UTC)
 * I fail to see how someone can write such an inaccurate BLP as Benson Verazzano tried to do here . Dunning-Davies was born in Barry in Wales where his father was headmaster of a primary school. He attended the local grammar school, then obtained an undergraduate degree in mathematics at Liverpool University, followed by a Ph.D. at the University of Wales in Cardiff, etc, etc. In his unsourced and WP:OR edits, Benson Verazzano described Dunning-Davies as born in England (!!!) and a "full professor" in Santilli's Institute for Basic Research in Science, a non-existent institute. The part on research was pure invention and synthesis on his part - some of the worst writing on wikipedia I have seen to date. Benson Verazzano's worst act however was the unsourced claim that he is "honorary full professor" at the University of Hull. This is a complete fabrication: did the fairies at the bottom of the garden whisper this into his ear?  Mathsci (talk) 09:17, 21 June 2009 (UTC)


 * What are you talking about? I didn't write anything. I just reverted the article so it actually said SOMETHING about the guys work. You on the other hand deleted so much that the article says nothing at all. And now you propose to delete the entire thing. Got an axe to grind? --Benson Verazzano (talk) 20:24, 21 June 2009 (UTC)
 * Your unsourced synthesis and WP:OR is completely unacceptable. What you are trying to include in the article makes no sense at all. Why are you attempting to make this kind of summary of humdrum research in mathematical physics without using secondary sources? This would seem to undercut any kind of argument you are trying to make here. This sentence that you invented yourself hits an all time low: "His extensive work produced more than 100 pubblications on Thermodynamics, Electronic Engineering and Mathematical Reports."  My only point of view is that inexpert POV-pushers should not edit BLPs like this. You wrote that Dunning-Davies was born in England and an honorary full professor at the Univeristy of Hull. What you wrote was a LIE on your part which I think you would be extremely hard pressed to explain. You could be blocked if you continue adding false facts to this BLP and in general being disruptive. Mathsci (talk) 21:07, 21 June 2009 (UTC)


 * Delete. Passes neither WP:PROF nor WP:BIO. Just to add to what Agricola44 and Scog already said, the subject seems to have around 150 entries on Google Scholar (with maybe a few false positives), an h-index of 5, and the most widely cited paper has only 31 citations. His most widely held book in libraries is Concise thermodynamics, published in 1996 and available in only 144 libraries worldwide (WorldCat’s figure). The Amazon.com sales rank of this book is 5,214,301. Bottom line: The subject is just not notable enough for WP, even though he may have very insightful ideas and a prodigious output. Number of pubs is not a good measure of notability; citations is a much better one.--Eric Yurken (talk) 02:17, 17 June 2009 (UTC)
 * Delete. The truly notable theoretical physicicists tend to have extremely high Google scholar citation counts, compared to other fields. The fact that his are so low is very telling. Therefore, he does not pass WP:PROF #1, and there is no evidence that he passes any of the other criteria. —David Eppstein (talk) 14:10, 19 June 2009 (UTC)
 * "The truly notable theoretical physicists tend to have extremely high Google scholar citation counts, compared to other fields." Can you source this claim? My own (unsourced) impression is that experimental physicists have higher citation rates. Not that the matter affects the present AfD. Xxanthippe (talk) 23:42, 19 June 2009 (UTC).
 * Just a personal impression rather than anything sourceable, but I tried searching Google scholar for a few of the people in Category:Theoretical physicists and in most cases found many several-hundred-citation papers. —David Eppstein (talk) 03:22, 20 June 2009 (UTC)
 * Thanks. The situation may be different for the famous stars (Dirac, Witten, Hawking, Feynman etc.) than for the borderline cases we deal with on these pages. The data is out there somewhere but hard to get at. Xxanthippe (talk) 04:31, 20 June 2009 (UTC).

DELETE: Anybody who belongs to a known crackpot organisation (e.g. ones which claim that perpetual motion or anti-gravity are already possible) should be systematically deleted. This is an urgent matter in the case of those people who are still employed, at the expense of taxpayers, to teach accepted conventional science. In the case of dead academics such as Eddington, Laithwaite, etc., their espousal of lunatic ideas should be mentioned - in a very unfavourable and cautionary tone - as a side-effect of 'personal failings'. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 86.171.83.107 (talk) 14:33, 21 June 2009 (UTC)
 * It seems that you simply don't like the organization itself.  Jamie ☆ S93  17:01, 21 June 2009 (UTC)
 * So should we delete any references to Hitler because we hate Nazis? Or should we put as much information on Wikipedia as possible so that people can be educated as to what "crackpot" opinions are out there. Deleting a person because of affiliation seems like serious thought-control/information management rather than the free exchange of information Wikipedia could and should be. If someone happens on a Jeremy Dunning-Davis quote in one of his many publications, shouldn't there be a Wiki article that casts some light onto the mans reputation - however tarnished or respectable it may be - so that the said reader can make up their own mind? --Benson Verazzano (talk) 20:24, 21 June 2009 (UTC)
 * Please stop this soapboxing. The organization of Santilli, the Institute for Basic Research in Science is a web organization, recognized by no mainstream scientific institutions. If you are claiming that wikipedia should somehow recognize such organizations, in this case set up by self-promoting fringe scientists, this is probably not the encyclopedia to edit. Have you tried Encyclopedia Dramatica? Mathsci (talk) 21:26, 21 June 2009 (UTC)
 * This BLP is not the only place where Benson Verazzano has recently suggested edits contravening core wikipedia policies. Mathsci (talk) 23:48, 21 June 2009 (UTC)
 * The above discussion is preserved as an archive of the debate. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as the article's talk page or in a deletion review). No further edits should be made to this page.