Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/William T. Powers


 * 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  Keep Mandsford 00:43, 23 December 2010 (UTC)

William T. Powers

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Spam for unaffiliated supposed scientist who has his own psychological theory nobody ever heard of. Orange Mike  |   Talk  04:55, 15 December 2010 (UTC)
 * Delete I have been unable to find any independent reliable sources that discuss this person in depth. Readily available sources appear to be controlled by the subject. I wouldn't say "nobody" has heard of him, just nobody who chose to write about him in depth in independent reliable sources.  Therefore not notable. Cullen328 (talk) 06:21, 15 December 2010 (UTC)
 * Note: This debate has been included in the list of Science-related deletion discussions.  -- Jclemens-public (talk) 19:35, 15 December 2010 (UTC)
 * Note: This debate has been included in the list of People-related deletion discussions.  -- -- Cirt (talk) 20:47, 15 December 2010 (UTC)
 * Note: This debate has been included in the list of Academics and educators-related deletion discussions.  --  Ray  Talk 18:23, 16 December 2010 (UTC)
 * Keep His book and theories were reviewed in Nature, and Gscholar cites are: 1376,182,146,54,44,32,26,25,18.... While not precisely a RS, the book flap from his 1973 book has a heckuva lot of favorable reviews from some fairly eminent professors. I think this passes for WP:PROF criterion 1.  Ray  Talk 18:26, 16 December 2010 (UTC)
 * He's an engineer dabbling in psychology; what could possibly go wrong? Seriously, his book flap blurbs, even more than his own advertising copy, are pretty much the quintessence of non-reliable sources. -- Orange Mike  |   Talk  18:35, 16 December 2010 (UTC)
 * Keep He's the originator of a notable theory of the structure and function of living things, first published in 1960 (Powers. W.T., Clark, R.K., and McFarland, R.L. (1960). A general feedback theory of human behavior. Perceptual and Motor Skills 11, 71-88 (Part 1) & 309-323 (Part 2)) and developed in many publications up to the present, by him and by researchers in diverse fields. Glasser credits Powers for the origin of his Choice_theory, and Carver & Scheier (e.g. ) credit him, although in both cases the core of the theory, negative feedback control, has been discarded. Runkel ( reissued 2007 Hayward, CA: Living Control Systems Publishing) contrasts statistical methodologies with the methodology of PCT, for which he credits Powers. McPhail credits Powers' computer simulations of crowd behavior for his insights, as does McClelland (references in the article on PCT). Mansell, Carey, Goldstein, and others have written about PCT and psychotherapy (e.g. ; ). Such citations could be multiplied. Bn (talk) 21:24, 19 December 2010 (UTC)
 * Keep on basis of GS cites. Xxanthippe (talk) 06:08, 20 December 2010 (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.