Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Luis González-Mestres


 * 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. -- Cirt (talk) 07:26, 1 June 2011 (UTC)

Luis González-Mestres

 * – ( View AfD View log )

Given the information in the article, Luis doesn't appear to meet WP:PROF. I looked around quite a bit more on google, and I still can't find evidence that his accomplishments meet WP:PROF or the GNG. (As a heads-up, there has been a lot of persistent sock or meatpuppetry on this and related articles recently, which will probably pop up again here.)  Kevin (talk) 05:27, 25 May 2011 (UTC)


 * STOP THIS PROCEDURE. The so-called Kevin is directly concerned by the last article published by Indépendance des Chercheurs in his Médiapart blog :

http://blogs.mediapart.fr/blog/scientia/240511/how-wikipedia-administrators-investigate-and-punish-dissident-editors

How Wikipedia administrators "investigate" and punish "dissident" editors

On May 24, Jared Keller, an associate editor for The Atlantic and The Atlantic Wire, publishes in The Atlantic an article entitled « Is Wikipedia a World Cultural Repository ? » concerning the Wikipedia application to be recognized by the United Nations as a world heritage site. Keller does not criticize Wikipedia, but he points out that the Wikimedia Foundation does not seem to need extra money and « raised more than $21 million from November 2010 to January 2011 in the service of new initiatives ». He concludes that UNESCO « should better focus its resources on heritage sites facing more immediate challenges ». However, is this the only real problem with Wikipedia ? An article by Kevin Rawlinson in The Independent presents Jimmy Wales as pledging to « resist pressure to censor entries ». But is Wikipedia actually opposed to censorhip ? Selected worldwide information spread through a virtual encyclopedia can also be an influence tool, especially if unwanted information and editors are blocked by a nebula of mainly anonymous administrators with no public editorial board. Will Wikipedia become an official « unique encyclopedia » propagating a « unique thought » ? On May 24-25, Jimmy Wales is participating to the e-G8 (internet G8) together with representatives of the most influential corporations in the field. As The Washington Post emphasizes, Nicolas Sarkozy has opened the e-G8 with a « call for selective government regulation of Internet ». What will be the role of Wikipedia in such an institutional scheme ? Examining the censorhip and inquiry procedures currently used by the Wikipedia administrators against « dissident » editors and net users can be very enlightening from this point of view. And very worrying for the future of free internet. According to Jimmy Wales, governments should just stay away (Reuters). But his « solution » actually amounts to private internet police.

(...)

Actually, the user was just reacting to systematic deletion without previous deletion and to obviously agressive templates that look very much like a personal attack against a member of our collective in « response » to our articles disavowing the campaign against the Bogdanoff brothers.

Just after our first articles against the anti-Bogdanoff campaign, the French Wikipedia biography of Luis Gonzalez-Mestres was suppressed at the initiative of a Wikipedia administrator (Alain Riazuelo) personally involved in this campaign. After it was pointed out that the article in English on the so-called « Bogdanoff affair » contained wrong statements and misleading references, the Wikipedia article in English on superbradyons (describing and original idea by Gonzalez-Mestres) was also suppressed.

There have been several complaints against such Wikipedia practices without getting any answer, as Wikipedia claims to have no editorial board.

(...)

(end of quote)

Furthermore, all 'dissident" users (Jaumeta, Haeretica Pravitas, Indépendance des Chercheurs...) have been blocked.

Luis Gonzalez-Mestres is well-known for at least two original ideas that have generated worldwide important research activity : the luminescent (or scintillating) bolometer and the suggestion of a possible suppression of the Greisen - Zatsepin - Kuzmin cutoff by a violation of Lorentz symmetry at the Planck scale.

The conflict of the Laboratoire de Physique Corpusculaire at Collège de France was also reported by the main French medias, and evoked in written questions to the Government from French deputies and senators. This was reminded in a recent version of the biography :

http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Luis_Gonz%C3%A1lez-Mestres&oldid=430643629

Although it is true [42] that González-Mestres had to face strong institutional pressure, not only because of his research subject but also due to the conflicting situation,[45][46] of the Laboratoire de Physique Corpusculaire at Collège de France, it is unjustified to state that he was actually prevented from making his work public in due time. The existence of the arXiv electronic archive and of other e-publishing sites, as well as some important international conferences abroad, allowed González-Mestres to disseminate his results and ideas.

Gonzalez-Mestres was among the "dissident" participants to the November 1996 public hearing of the nuclear energy amplifier project (presented by Carlo Rubbia) organized by the French Parliament [47]. Rubbia's project was criticized by several members of the Laboratoire de Physique Corpusculaire, but also later by a Parliament report [48].

In the period 1997-99, there were several public written questions addressed to the French government by members of the French Parliament concerning the situation of the Laboratoire de Physique Corpusculaire of Collège de France and the difficulties met by Gonzalez-Mestres and other "dissidents" from this laboratory [49]

^ a b Remnant site of the Intersyndicale of the Laboratoire de Physique Corpusculaire of Collège de France (in French), http://pagesperso-orange.fr/intsynd-lpc/

^ COMMUNIQUE SUR LA SITUATION DU LABORATOIRE DE PHYSIQUE CORPUSCULAIRE DU COLLEGE DE FRANCE (5 Juin 1998), http://www.lagauche.com/gauche/lghebdo/1998/1998-22-03.html

^ "La Gauche" (Gauche Socialiste), http://www.lagauche.com/gauche/lghebdo/1998/1998-22-03.html

^ Fabien Gruhier (February 1997), Dans trente ans le réacteur miracle? Nucléaire: la bataille du rubbiatron, Le Nouvel Observateur, February 6, 1997 (in French), reproduced in http://resosol.org/contronucleaires/Nucleaire/important/2010/rubbiatron-bataille.html

^ André Gsponer (November 2003), In memoriam: L'amplificateur d'énergie nucléaire de Carlo Rubbia (1993 - 2003), from La Gazette Nucléaire, No. 209/210 (in French), http://cui.unige.ch/isi/sscr/phys/Rubbiatron.html

^ Rapport de Claude Birraux sur le contrôle de la sûreté et de la sécurité des installations nucléaires, pages 67-150, http://www.senat.fr/rap/r96-300-2/r96-300-21.pdf

^ Christian Bataille et Robert Galley, L'aval du cycle nucléaire, http://www.senat.fr/rap/o97-612/o97-612.html, Section 2.4, http://www.senat.fr/rap/o97-612/o97-61238.html

^ See, for instance : 1998 written questions by Marie-Claude Beaudeau, http://www.senat.fr/questions/base/1998/qSEQ981213282.html ; ; 1997 written question by Noël Mamère, http://questions.assemblee-nationale.fr/q11/11-5756QE.htm ; 1997 written question by Claude Billard, http://questions.assemblee-nationale.fr/q11/11-5761QE.htm

(end of quote)

that the so-called Kevin is obviously willing to destroy, as they show "unwanted" evidences. The so-called Kevin seems to be willing to protect influent people and lobbies. And there is no real public information on who the Wikipedia administrators are. How many of them may actually have been involved in the controversies evoked by this biography, or be friends of these people ?

Anyway, the Wikipedia administrators have at their disposal easy solutions : banning people and doing anything they want without an editorial board to which "dissisent" editors and net surfers can complain. For obvious reasons, citizens must oppose to any Wikipedia application for a UNESCO World Heritage status.

83.199.18.174 (talk) 08:15, 25 May 2011 (UTC)

I am not anonymous, and I am not a wikipedia administrator. My real-life identity is disclosed on my user page and I have absolutely no real-life affiliation with anyone involved in any of these events. This nomination is not any sort of conspiracy, I started it solely because I do not believe Luis meets our well-established notability requirements. Kevin (talk) 08:19, 25 May 2011 (UTC)


 * Sorry, but your user page actually says nothing about your "real life" identity. You just write :

I'm Kevin Gorman. I was a participant in the spring 2011 session of Politics of Piracy at UC Berkeley, and I will be facilitating the fall 2011 session.

(end of quote)

The Berkeley university provides no link with your curriculum vitae or anything similar. There is only this name that, given the controversial subject of the Berkeley course, could even be an agreed "pen name".

In practice, there is just no way to have an idea of your possible conflicts of interests. This is a general feature of Wikipedia administrators.

And you just give no specific argument to answer the scientific content of the biography.

83.199.18.174 (talk) 08:40, 25 May 2011 (UTC)


 * The Berkeley website provides no link to my CV because I am an undergraduate. And, again, I am not an administrator.  Take a look at WP:PROF, it lays out the criteria that an academic must meet to have an article on Wikipedia.  If you think Luis meets any of those criteria, then calmly explain how he meets them.  Otherwise this article is likely to be deleted.   Kevin (talk) 08:44, 25 May 2011 (UTC)


 * If you are an undergraduate, you are just unable to evaluate the relevance of the references given. There is no "miracle bibliometry" that can replace precise facts and analyses. Serious scientists are against bibliometry. Why are you attacking this biography, if you cannot judge it from a scientific point of view ? And if you are an undergraduate, then you may depend on influential people for many purposes. By the way, even an undergraduate should normally exhibit his curriculum vitae if he must give a lecture of any kind in a university like Berkeley. 83.199.18.174 (talk) 08:53, 25 May 2011 (UTC)


 * Whether or not you agree with the criteria that Wikipedia uses to determine whether or not an article should be included, the fact is, they are the criteria that the community here has decided to use. Inclusion on Wikipedia has nothing to do with scientific merit. If you do not explain how Luis meets the standard laid out at WP:PROF then this article will most likely be deleted.


 * And no, it would not be a typical for an undergraduate here to make public his CV. Kevin (talk) 08:58, 25 May 2011 (UTC)
 * There is nothing whatsoever about the notability standard being considered here (which I quoted in full below) which requires any kind of expertise. Certain questions are asked, and we look to find whether the evidence in the article answers them positively. If any one of them is a yes, then the subject is notable in Wikipedia's terms -- that's a pretty easy standard to meet.  Yet even with the bar set relatively low, LGM doesn't appear to clear it.  That's not a knock on him, just a fact, based on our standards. Beyond My Ken (talk) 21:33, 26 May 2011 (UTC)


 * Delete. I agree with Kevin, he does not seem to pass WP:PROF. Crisco 1492 (talk) 09:09, 25 May 2011 (UTC)


 * This is just not serious. If Kevin is an undergraduate, he is unable to evaluate the relevance of the references given.

Similarly, Crisco declares to be a student but he seems to be anonymous, so that one cannot check his biography. But he does not claim to have any special konwledge of the subject of this biography. What is he doing in this discussion ? He seems to be just supporting Kevin for personal reasons.

If there is no CV that can be checked, how can the public get an idea about the competence of the teacher and the seriousness of the course ? The same problem exists for the Wikipedia administrators, including possible conflicts of interests. The biography has explained everything, and is being censored. Now, it ias attacked on unclear grounds by people that do not claim any specific competence.

Actually, such as it is run, Wikipedia is not a community and has no "rules" or "criteria". Anonymous administrators just do what they want and there is no real control as there is no public editorial board to which one can complain. In any Parliament, even in the worst banana republics, there are public institutions. Candidates to elections have a known identity with a CV, and their conflicts of interests can in principle be controlled.

83.199.18.174 (talk) 09:35, 25 May 2011 (UTC)


 * Delete A careful examination of WP:PROF, the criteria for determining the notability of academics indicates that LGM does not fulfill any of the criteria:


 * The person's research has made significant impact in their scholarly discipline, broadly construed, as demonstrated by independent reliable sources. - There are barely any independent reliable sources concerning LGM's work to begin with.
 * The person has received a highly prestigious academic award or honor at a national or international level. - No
 * The person is or has been an elected member of a highly selective and prestigious scholarly society or association (e.g. a National Academy of Sciences or the Royal Society) or a Fellow of a major scholarly society for which that is a highly selective honor (e.g. the IEEE) - No
 * The person's academic work has made a significant impact in the area of higher education, affecting a substantial number of academic institutions. - There is no indication of this.
 * The person holds or has held a named chair appointment or "Distinguished Professor" appointment at a major institution of higher education and research. - No.
 * The person has held a major highest-level elected or appointed academic post at a major academic institution or major academic society. - No.
 * The person has made substantial impact outside academia in their academic capacity. - There is no indication of this.
 * The person is or has been an editor-in-chief of a major well-established academic journal in their subject area. - No
 * The person is in a field of literature (e.g writer or poet) or the fine arts (e.g. musician, composer, artist), and meets the standards for notability in that art, such as WP:CREATIVE or WP:MUSIC. - No.
 * Clearly, from the evidence available in the article, LGM does not fulfill our requirements for notability, although it's certainly possible that he might someday. Beyond My Ken (talk) 09:42, 25 May 2011 (UTC)

As remainded before, there at least two well-known original contributions by Gonzalez-Mestres : the luminescent bolometer and the suggestion of a possible suppression of the Greisen-Zatsepin-Kuzmin cutoff. The fits one has been at the origin of CRESST and of other well-known experiments. The seconf one has plaid a crucial role in a whole field of checks of relativity theory.
 * Do not delete and STOP DELETING COMMENTS, I have just been forced to restore several deleted comments.

83.199.18.174 (talk) 09:51, 25 May 2011 (UTC)


 *  PLEASE STOP RE-DELETING COMMENTS !!! This is precisely what tou call "vandalism".

83.199.18.174 (talk) 09:59, 25 May 2011 (UTC)


 * Note: At the risk of being censured for this action, I am not going to allow the chaos that took place on the AfD for the related article Superbradyon to happen here. The account-based puppetmaster User:Haeretica Pravitas and sockpuppets  User:Indépendance des Chercheurs and User:Jaumeta are all currently blocked, but, as usual, the person behind these accounts is using IPs to disrupt this proceeding with irrelevant comments.  I have moved these to the talk page, and will continue to do so until the Request for Page Protection is carried out.  As always, legit editors can comment freely here, but the sockpuppets will not be allowed to participate. Beyond My Ken (talk) 10:04, 25 May 2011 (UTC)
 * Please note that I am not acting precipitously. Admin EdJohnston determined that these IPa were sockpuippets of the named accounts when he blocked IdC for seven days for socking with them, and Admin DeltaQuad agreed they were connected when HP was blocked for two weeks for the same reason.  Admin Cirt agreed that these IPs were disruptive when he semi-protected the Superbradyon AfD to stop the IPs from editing there, and Admin HelloAnnyong agreed by semi-protecting the LGM article for the same reason. Beyond My Ken (talk) 18:25, 25 May 2011 (UTC)


 * So, obvioulsy there are no "rules" for the anonymous Wikipedia lobby.

THIS DICUSSION MAKES NO SENSE, EVERYTHING MUST BE STOPPED.

83.204.178.105 (talk) 19:01, 25 May 2011 (UTC)


 * Keep Quoting something Bm gub said at the first Superbradyon AfD: "Gonzalez-Mestres isn't a crackpot, he's notable (in the academic sense, perhaps not in the WP sense) in the field of cosmic-ray tests of spacetime symmetries." Spanish Wikipedia has a fairly long bio and French Wikipedia has an article on superbradyons. It's clear the article needs improvement, but surely it is a nontrivial sign of some kind of notability that his work is mentioned in the 2002 NYT article cited. Also, the notability tests in WP:PROF are based on US university practice, not on relevant status-milestones for physicists at CERN or College de France, both of which are very highly-regarded institutions. betsythedevine (talk) 11:48, 26 May 2011 (UTC)
 * @Betsythedevine: Is there another notability criteria you think would be more appropriate to use? Beyond My Ken (talk) 18:08, 26 May 2011 (UTC)
 * I know that the issue of the WP:PROF criteria not applying neatly to non-American academics has been brought up before, but it's been pretty strongly argued elsewhere that the same criteria should apply to both american and nonamerican academics. (WP:PROF also actually explicitly mentions CNRS.)  Kevin (talk) 20:20, 26 May 2011 (UTC)
 * I went through the archives of Wikipedia talk:Notability (academics) and didn't see any extended discussion about the notability standards being biased against non-Americans, so perhaps it took place somewhere else? Beyond My Ken (talk) 20:33, 26 May 2011 (UTC)
 * I'll try to dig some of it up later, but I've apparently unwatchlisted the relevant pages at some point. I know I've seen it argued about in pretty good length on a few AfD's in the past.  Kevin (talk) 20:42, 26 May 2011 (UTC)


 * Keep Dear Betsy, if you keep writing sensible things, you may be "checkusered", "ducktested" and so on by the Wikipedia would-be Intelligence Agency and perhaps found to be a "sockpuppet" of Abraham Lincoln, Oliver Cromwell, David Wark Griffith or some other well-known internet surfer.

Of course, the biography of Gonzalez-Mestres is the natural place to discuss his work, but an unclear lobby is trying to destroy it.

To repeat a comment from somebody else posted to another discussion, let me remind that Nick Mavromatos wrote in the August 2002 CERN Courier :

"Other astrophysical probes of the stochastic quantum-gravity effects may be provided by ultra-high-energy cosmic rays (UHECR) with energies above 1019 eV, as well as by TeV photons. The presence of such events seems puzzling from the point of view of Lorentz invariance - standard kinematics imply the existence of energy thresholds, the Greisen, Zatsepin, Kuzmin (GZK) cut-off, above which certain reactions would prevent such energetic particles from reaching the observation point, assuming an extra-galactic origin. Some exotic suggestions have been made to relate Lorentz invariance violation associated with the quantum-gravity-induced modification of the particle's dispersion relations with the existence of UHECR or TeV photons, in the form of an abolition of the GZK cut-off in such models."

and that one of the references of the article is precisely :

L Gonzalez-Mestres 1997 physics/9704017 at http://www.arxiv.org/.

which corresponds to :

http://arxiv.org/abs/physics/9704017 (14 April 1997)

whose abstract explicitly states :

The sectorial Lorentz symmetry may be only a low-energy limit, in the same way as the relation $\omega $ (frequency) = $c_s$ (speed of sound) $k$ (wave vector) holds for low-energy phonons in a crystal. We study the consequences of such a scenario, using an ansatz inspired by the Bravais lattice as a model for some vacuum properties. It then turns out that: a) the Greisen-Zatsepin-Kuzmin cutoff on high-energy cosmic protons and nuclei does no longer apply; b) high-momentum unstable particles have longer lifetimes than expected with exact Lorentz invariance, and may even become stable at the highest observed cosmic ray energies or slightly above.

(end of quote)

Similarly, in The New York Times (December 2002), Dennis Overbye writes :

http://www.nytimes.com/2002/12/31/science/interpreting-the-cosmic-rays.html?n=Top/News/Science/Topics/Space

In the late 1990's Dr. Luis Gonzalez-Mestres of the National Center for Scientific Research in France, and, independently, the Harvard theorists Dr. Sheldon Glashow and Dr. Sidney Coleman proposed that a small violation of relativity would allow high-energy cosmic rays to evade the G.Z.K. energy limit on travel.

(end of quote)

Even if Dennis Overbye uses the expression "independently", the way he quotes Gonzalez-Mestres is a clear recognizion of his priority. Then, one can check the actual dates of papers. It is quite obvious that in August 1998 there was no reason for Coleman and Glashow not to cite Gonzalez-Mestres. Especially, given the fact that Coleman and Glashow had cited Gonzalez-Mestres here :

http://arxiv.org/abs/hep-ph/9703240 (revised 30 April 1997 version, two weeks after the above paper by Gonzalez-Mestres and not considering a possible suppression of the GZK cutoff)

and the Harvard University has itself an excellent database quickly picking arXiv.org abstracts, where you can find this paper :

http://adsabs.harvard.edu/abs/1997physics...4017G

as well as the May 1997 one by Gonzalez-Mestres whose title was explicitly :

Absence of Greisen-Zatsepin-Kuzmin Cutoff and Stability of Unstable Particles at Very High Energy, as a Consequence of Lorentz Symmetry Violation

http://arxiv.org/abs/physics/9705031

http://adsabs.harvard.edu/abs/1997physics...5031G

Coleman, Glashow and Smolin could not reasonably ignore this evidence, especially in August 1998 (date of the first paper where Coleman and Glashow evoked a possible GZK cutoff suppression) or years later.

83.199.69.101 (talk) 13:07, 26 May 2011 (UTC)


 * There also seems to be a clear correlation between the attacks against the superbradyon article and the Gonzalez-Mestres biography (the biography has also been recently suppressed in the French Wikipedia) and the public statements of the Collective Indépendance des Chercheurs against the anti-Bogdanoff campaign where some Wikipedia administrators appear to be directly involved (at least one of them, Alain Riazuelo). See the Wikipedia articles :

http://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Igor_et_Grichka_Bogdanoff

http://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Affaire_Bogdanoff

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bogdanov_Affair

as well as these articles by Indépendance des Chercheurs :

http://blogs.mediapart.fr/blog/scientia/050511/wikipedia-and-so-called-bogdanov-affair-i

http://blogs.mediapart.fr/blog/scientia/190511/wikipedia-and-internet-police-i

http://blogs.mediapart.fr/blog/scientia/210511/superbradyons-and-wikipedia

http://blogs.mediapart.fr/blog/scientia/240511/how-wikipedia-administrators-investigate-and-punish-dissident-editors

http://blogs.mediapart.fr/blog/scientia/250511/wikipedia-and-internet-police-ii

83.199.69.101 (talk) 13:43, 26 May 2011 (UTC)


 * Keep I agree with the previous posts by 83.199.69.101, but the role of Gonzalez-Mestres in the field of cryogenic detectors, where he was one of the leading scientists when the field started, must also be emphasized. References are available in the previous version of his biograpphy before censorhip started, for instance here :

http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Luis_Gonz%C3%A1lez-Mestres&oldid=370854852

In January 1984, together with Denis Perret-Gallix, González-Mestres proposed the use of superheated superconducting granules (SSG) of type I superconductors to detect magnetic monopoles. Both authors worked in 1984-90 to develop a SSG detector for this project, but also for a SSG solar neutrino detector following a proposal by Georges Waysand. In 1985, following a suggestion by Mark Goodman and Edward Witten, they also started considering a SSG dark matter detector.

Gonzalez-Mestres and Perret-Gallix simultaneously considered alternative detectors for neutrinos and dark matter, such as special scintillators,. They formulated in 1988 the original proposal of the luminescent bolometer with simultaneous detection of light and heat, , that is now the basic instrument of the CRESST (Dark Matter Search) experiment , of the ROSEBUD experiment and (partially) of the EURECA (Dark Matter Search) project. In 1989, Gonzalez-Mestres and Perret-Gallix further emphasized the potentialities of such a detector for particle identification and background rejection. In 1991-92, Gonzalez-Mestres also discussed the possible use of the luminescent bolometer to improve effective segmentation and energy resolution in solar neutrino experiments incorporating an indium target,. He considered the use of arrays of superconducting tunnel junctions to simultaneously detect light and phonons.

(end of quote)

90.46.59.25 (talk) 18:08, 26 May 2011 (UTC)


 * Note: This debate has been included in the list of Science-related deletion discussions.  — • Gene93k (talk) 19:31, 26 May 2011 (UTC)
 * Note: This debate has been included in the list of Academics and educators-related deletion discussions.  — • Gene93k (talk) 19:31, 26 May 2011 (UTC)


 * Comment Is this a carryover of the "Superbradyon" deletion argument? I'm seeing a large number of the same citations that were trotted out in support of keeping that article being used here. And they have the same shortcomings. --Alan the Roving Ambassador (talk) 21:02, 26 May 2011 (UTC)
 * Yes, LGM is the person behind the superbradyon concept, and once again the (now hatted) comments are mostly irrelevant to the question at hand. Beyond My Ken (talk) 21:38, 26 May 2011 (UTC)
 * Keep WP:RS in article are sufficient to establish WP:GNG-based notability. Chester Markel (talk) 21:40, 26 May 2011 (UTC)
 * Also, the subject is only required to be notable under one guideline. WP:PROF doesn't need to be met, if WP:GNG is. Chester Markel (talk) 21:43, 26 May 2011 (UTC)


 * Once you exclude WP:SPS's, all I see in the article is one new york times article and very brief mention in a book. That's not unusual or notable coverage at all for an academic - many or even most academics who have been around a while will have similar levels of coverage.   Kevin (talk) 21:56, 26 May 2011 (UTC)
 * Then many academics are notable. For how many Pokemon would one New York Times article be considered an exceptionally high level of coverage in reliable sources? I don't believe that we should be holding academics to higher source standards. Also, since they appear in reliable sources, the research articles cited are not self-published in the classical sense, though they are written, at least in part, by the subject. Chester Markel (talk) 22:07, 26 May 2011 (UTC)
 * But a list of publications alone isn't enough. #1 in WP:PROF demands independent evidence of importance, easily satisfied for notable academics by reference to reviews of their work. It can also be satisfied by a measurement such as was performed by Crusio and Xxanthippe, below. That the standards for Pokemon (and characters on TV shows, etc) appear to be lower or practically non-existent (in practice anyway) has no bearing on this matter--it's unfortunate, but besides the point. Drmies (talk) 14:38, 27 May 2011 (UTC)
 * I don't want to be in the position of defending the Pokemon standard for notability (whatever it is), but look at it this way: our encyclopedia covers both serious things and trivial things. Pokemon is trivial, so the fact that its notability standard isn't as rigorous as it might be isn't a big deal. Science, however, is serious, important stuff, and it's precisely for the important stuff that we should get it right.  Putting aside the question of whether or not LGM is notable enough by our standards to have an article, I assume that he is doing serious research on subjects that he considers to be important.  Out of respect for that, he deserves to be judged against a serious standard, and not one used for trivial things. Beyond My Ken (talk) 17:37, 27 May 2011 (UTC)
 * The lead of WP:V states using bold text that the threshold for inclusion is "not truth". Wikipedia itself does not hestitate to identify that Wikipedia is not a WP:RS reliable source.  I don't agree that WP:PROF is a "serious standard", I expect that everyone here has experience with serious standards.  Unscintillating (talk) 09:10, 28 May 2011 (UTC)


 * Delete as not supported by a sufficient number of reliable and independent sources. Heroic efforts have been made by editors to get this article into a satisfactory shape (see the history). Unfortunately, it does not seem that the sources are sufficient to support notability of the article. The only criteria that it seems possible that it could pass is WP:Prof: the impact of the research on the discipline as evidenced by reliable independent sources. A search with Google Scholar gives 71 hits with around 460 cites and an h index of 13. The cites begin as 49, 34, 35, 30, 30...etc. At first sight this might qualify for a weak keep, but a more detailed look shows two insurmountable problems. The first is that, as far as I can see, only two of the 71 hits are published in good quality peer-reviewed journals. These are the calibre of journals that the scholars who usually appear on these pages normally publish in. The great majority of the subject's papers are published on the Physics ArXiv. This is a public repository of scientific papers. It's standards for inclusion are minimal, although the ArXiv does contain copies of excellent work that has been already been published in the standard peer-reviewed journals. As mentioned before, very little of the subject's work has been published in such journals. The second problem is that a large proportion of the citations that do exist are self-citations. These are not considered to be independent sources. For example of the 25 citations of the paper "Space, time and superluminal particles" (Arxiv preprint physics/9702026) only five seemed not to be self-citations (please correct me if this is not accurate) and this pattern seems to exist throughout the citation data. On the basis of the GS data it does not seem at present that there is a sufficient number of independent and reliable sources to confer notability. Web of Science data would be very helpful. General notability considerations are not enough to help either. Xxanthippe (talk) 00:19, 27 May 2011 (UTC).
 * On a side note: first of all, thanks for your detailed explanation of the evidence and, more importantly, what the data show or don't show. Second, how nice it would be if the Wikipedia article for ArXiv and the ones for all those other publication venues that show up in references had a note on reliability. I mean, some editors, maybe many editors, know what a publication in a certain journal or in a certain archive means; some, maybe many, know what to cite and what not to cite from the tabloids; etc. For a lot of AfD participants, it seems to go quickly: source X has a Wikipedia article, therefore it is notable and a citation from that source weighs heavily. (And if source Y doesn't have an article it shouldn't count.) About this particular one, I've come to the same conclusion you have, but it took me some time to figure that out and I might not always have the time or the capability to judge that. Well, these remarks aren't really for this forum, but I'm glad you took the time to explain your evaluation of the source. Thanks, Drmies (talk) 04:13, 27 May 2011 (UTC)
 * You are one of the editors who has struggled gallantly to rescue this BLP. Unfortunately though, however much effort one puts in, one can't make a silk purse out of a sow's ear. The physics ArXiv, as it says in its Wikipedia article, is not peer-reviewed. Accordingly, every paper on it is self-published, and does not meet the Wikipedia criterion for an independent source. Exceptions are the many papers on the ArXiv that have first been published in a standard peer-reviewed journal but, as mentioned, this subject has few of these. Xxanthippe (talk) 09:34, 27 May 2011 (UTC).
 * If by "rescue" you mean "trim the fat and make it look like a Wikipedia article", then I'm guilty as charged. ;) You'll note that I cut a lot of those ArXiv references. One hallmark of this fluffy kind of resume/biography is a veritable flood of publications, for vanity's sake, but probably also to lead editors astray by suggesting "notability by weight." Thanks, Drmies (talk) 12:45, 27 May 2011 (UTC)


 * Delete. Here is what I found on the Web of Science: Searching for "Gonzalez-Mestres L*" I found 3 articles, cited 7 times in total. However, if I search for "GonzalezMestres L*", I get 122 hits, with a total of 1236 citations, top counts of 79-66-65-48, and an h-index of 21. However, this includes another person working in cardiology. Weeding out all that stuff, I am left with 15 hits, cited 96 times, with an h-index of 5. Of course, some researchers contribute in other ways than by publications alone, so I looked in "Labintel", an internal CNRS database of all CNRS personnel (as a CNRS researcher, I have access to this). Gonzalez-Mestres has been with the CNRS (meaning doing research full-time, no teaching obligations) since 1972. His current rank is CR1. GM applied for a DR2 position, but was not ranked. All this also does not indicate any notability that might be derived from non-publication activities. Somewhere in the discussion above, the College de France is mentioned. While being a chair there certainly would make somebody notable, I have found nothing of the like in this case and all I can assume is that GM collaborates with a lab there (or has worked in a lab there), which is not at all the same thing. In conclusion, I don't see any evidence that any of the criteria of WP:PROF are met. The single in-passing mention in The New York Times does not appear to be enough to satisfy WP:GNG either. --Crusio (talk) 10:17, 27 May 2011 (UTC)
 * @Crusio and Xxanthippe: Thank you both very much for digging in and researching this stuff, and for explaining it so well. I think we're all much obliged to the both of you. Beyond My Ken (talk) 17:26, 27 May 2011 (UTC)
 * Delete per the cogent reasoning of Crusio and Xxanthippe. Being mentioned in the NYT is great, but it is only a passing mention and does not constitute the significant, in-depth kind of discussion called for to pass general notability guidelines. Since evidence of the subject's importance is lacking (lack of reviews of his work, lack of discussion of his influence) and since the position they appear to hold is not inherently notable, we should delete this article. I also propose we put Crusio and Xxanthippe on payroll, and that Mr. Wales (who owes me a t-shirt anyway) send each of them a E20 bill each time they perform an analysis like this. Seriously, thanks to both of you. Drmies (talk) 12:52, 27 May 2011 (UTC)
 * Just bought a house, I can use that extra cash! :-) --Crusio (talk) 12:56, 27 May 2011 (UTC)
 * Yup! E20 would always come in useful. Xxanthippe (talk) 22:56, 27 May 2011 (UTC).


 * Delete per analysis by Crusio and Xxanthippe. --antiXt (talk) 09:00, 28 May 2011 (UTC)


 * Keep Luis is a well-kown physicist and also a well-known dissident, as his biography explains if you take a complete version. He is an original scientist, and he often defends at the same time ethical values different from the usual establishment pratice. The fact that he encountered career problems is not a surprise, and has nothing to do with scientific performance. A quick search allows to find at least seven public written questions from members of the French Parliament on the Laboratoire de Physique Corpusculaire affair in 1997-2000. Many influential people did not like that. Similarly, when he participated to the "Rubbiatron" hearing. According to people working in this domain, he has been one of the physicists at the origin of the field of cryogenic detectors, and his work on relativity (the GZK question and so on...) has been at the origin of a real research field on ultra-high energy cosmic rays (checks of relativity) that he was the first to propose at these energies. Nobody seems to contradict this, and there are too many personal attacks. Queleralo (talk) 19:41, 30 May 2011 (UTC)
 * By the way, can someone contradict the evidence that the April and May 1997 papers by Gonzalez-Mestres on the possible suppression of the Greisen-Zatsepin-Kuzmin cutoff were prior to any similar claim by Sidney Coleman and Sheldon Glashow ? My search confirms what the "long" versions of the Gonzalez-Mestres biography say. Queleralo (talk) 19:59, 30 May 2011 (UTC) — Queleralo (talk • contribs) has made few or no other edits outside this topic.
 * Blocked as a sock by DQ. The very typography gives it away. I just reverted the sock's edits to French National Centre for Scientific Research, where they slipped in a link to LGM's blog. Drmies (talk) 21:00, 30 May 2011 (UTC)


 * Delete. I do  not  doubt  for a moment  User:Eric Shalov's good faith  in  creating  the initial  stub, but  as he has not  commented here, and as there has been no  movement  on  his talk  page for several  months, he may  not  be interested in  the present  discussion  or even aware of it,  although  he still  contributes to  Wikipedia and as recently  as  30 March. That  said, we measure notability not  by  the number of references, but  by  their relevance, quality,  and reliability, and whether or not  the coverage is extensive and independent  of the subject. This article is a biography, hence it  should be about  the person, and not  about  the subject  matter of their work. Therefore, while the references to  the person's published work or published collaborative works and their contents can be cited in articles about  the person's subject  matter, they  are not  about  the subject  of the biography.  If we remove all L. G-M's published and co-authored works from  the list we are left  with  15 footnotes. Those remaining  references are to  scientific matters in  which L. G-M may  have been involved, an NYT  article about  interpreting cosmic rays,  and a petition website against harassment (which  may  be in  someway  connected with  the anonymous disruption  of this AfD). In  effect, we have nothing  about the life and times of Dr. González-Mestres.  Yes, we have articles about  garage band drummers and Pokemon (whater that  is), but WP:OTHERSTUFF is not  an argument here, and as Beyond My Ken and Drmies have pointed out, serious subjects require serious sources. It is quite possible that  L. G-M is notable, perhaps even eminent, but  on  the other hand, Wikipedia editors and administrators do  not  need a degree in  cosmic and particle science or quantum  mechanics to  apply  Wikipedia policies. Without  satisfying  the Wikipedia criteria for  reliable independent sources about  L. G-M, there can be no  Wikipedia article about  L. G-M. Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 15:41, 31 May 2011 (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.