Wikipedia talk:Articles for deletion/Superbradyon (2nd nomination)

Thread 1

 * We will repeat what we just wrote. This is obviously partial. It is actually a personal attack and corresponds to the Wikipedia policy correlated with the Bogdanoff affair:

March 5, we wrote our first article against the anti-Bogdanoff campaign :

http://science21.blogs.courrierinternational.com/archive/2011/03/05/cnrs-freres-bogdanoff-medias-i.html

March 21, the biography of Luis Gonzalez-Mestres was suppressed from the French Wikipedia.

We then wrote several papers about this incident. See our blogs :

http://science21.blogs.courrierinternational.com/

http://www.mediapart.fr/club/blog/Scientia

April 11, the attacks against the superbradyon page started, and later on the English biography of Gonzalez-Mestres.

The situation seems quite clear, and is even worse. In the article "Bogdanoff affair" :

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

Wikipedia writes that the CNRS (a French public research institution) "issued" a report. But the link given :

http://www.marianne2.fr/docs/rapport_cnrs_bogdanoff.pdf

is just a PDF without any mention, in the text of the article, of the actual source that provides the PDF and that is actually a private newspaper (Marianne). There is no reference to the Marianne article containing the PDF file whose authenticity is far from obvious (no signature, no stamp, and a CADA official opinion contrary to any publication of the actual report) :

http://www.marianne2.fr/REVELATIONS-Le-rapport-du-CNRS-qui-flingue-les-Bogdanoff_a198523.html

This is not an official source and its polemic will should be known by the reader. Actually, the CNRS has issued no public report, as explained in this version that was competely censored :

http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Bogdanov_Affair&oldid=427554435

So, the article is clearly misleading. Even the reference to an official statement of the University of Burgundy :

http://www.u-bourgogne.fr/IMG/pdf/cp-29-10-2010-theses-bogdanov.pdf

has been suppressed.

We have already commented all that here :

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

Indépendance des Chercheurs (talk) 02:38, 14 May 2011 (UTC)

Furthermore, bibliometric arguments are more and more misleading. Everybody knows how citations are exchanged and the increasing role of lobbying in bibliometry. The papers specifically on superbradyons have been quoted by the most prominent authors in the field. For instance :

- by S. Coleman and S. Glashow, here (ref. 1) : http://arxiv.org/abs/hep-ph/9703240

- by J. Ellis, N.E. Mavromatos and D.V. Nanopoulos (ref. 16), here : http://arxiv.org/abs/0901.4052

- by T. Stanev (ref. 34), here : http://arxiv.org/abs/astro-ph/0411113

- by T. Jacobson, S. Liberati and D. Mattingly (ref. 12) here : http://arxiv.org/abs/astro-ph/0212190

- by G. Amelino-Camelia (ref. 4) here : http://arxiv.org/abs/astro-ph/0209232

- by G. Sigl (ref. 57), here : http://arxiv.org/abs/astro-ph/0104291v1

and so on...

There are also other references to articles dealing simultaneously with superbradyons and with more general Lorentz violating scenarios.

Obvioulsy, this has nothing to do with tachyons and there is no reason (except "political" due to the Bogdanoff affair) to suppress this article.

Indépendance des Chercheurs (talk) 03:08, 14 May 2011 (UTC)
 * Political and other conspiracies aside: Coleman and Glashow, ref. 1, do not mention the term and only say "L. Gonzales-Mestres (to be publ.) discusses possible Lorentz non-invariance in a different context." Ellis et al, ref. 16, do not mention the term. Stanev, ref. 34, does not use or acknowledge the term. Jacobson et al. ref. 12 and text, does not mention the term and speaks only of "Cerenkov radiation". Amelino-Camelia, ref. 4, does not mention the term. All these articles mention ("discuss" is saying too much) the work published by González-Mestres, but none of them use or even mention the term, let alone discuss it in depth. Drmies (talk) 03:21, 14 May 2011 (UTC)
 * Drmies is wrong. The selected papers cite work that was specifically on superbradyons, and by the way at the time of this work Gonzalez-Mestres was using the expression "superluminal particles" and not "superbradyons" until February 1997 (the word "superbradyons" was introduced here : http://arxiv.org/abs/physics/9702026 ), although the concept had been clearly formulated already at the January 1995 Moriond Workshop ( http://arxiv.org/abs/astro-ph/9505117, already cited by several people) and since then. Even after February 1997, Gonzalez-Mestres often used the expression "superluminal particles" rather than "superbradyons", just to be more easily understood. The actual introduction of the word "superbradyons" was a progressive one. An example is this December 1997 paper : http://arxiv.org/abs/physics/9712049 (Workshop on "Observing Giant Cosmic Ray Air Showers for > 10E20 eV Particles from Space", Univ. of Maryland, Nov 13-15, 1997, AIP Conf. Proc. ) entitled "Observing Air Showers from Cosmic Superluminal Particles", with this explanation in the abstract : "The new superluminal particles ("superbradyons", i.e. bradyons with superluminal critical speed) would have positive mass and energy, and behave kinematically like "ordinary" particles (those with critical speed in vacuum equal to c, the speed of light) apart from the difference in critical speed." Superbradyons are a really new concept, fundamentally different from tachyons that do not break Lorentz invariance or from "accidentally superluminal" phenomena due to particular dynamical situations. The superbradyon picture implies a radically different view of vacuum and matter. Superbradyons are a new version of preons (not just "building blocks") and the possible ultimate constituents behind the string model. Indépendance des Chercheurs (talk) 03:55, 14 May 2011 (UTC)
 * By the way, we do not undestand very well Kevin's comment. There is no scientific motivation, and we have found no physicist or mathematician named Kevin Gorman at arxiv.org. Concernig the use of the word, a Google search for "superbradyons" gives 1600 results. An example of a paper from another author using the word "superbradyons" in its title is here : http://www.sbfisica.org.br/bjp/files/v40_92.pdf But what is really important is that the Physics papers have been cited. This is also the case of the recent paper "Lorentz violation, vacuum, cosmic rays, superbradyons and Pamir data", http://arxiv.org/abs/1009.1853, cited in Physical Review Letters by this article (ref. 14) : http://arxiv.org/abs/1102.3434 , Phys.Rev.Lett.106:101101,2011 Indépendance des Chercheurs (talk) 04:26, 14 May 2011 (UTC)

Question Is there any evidence that anyone, ever, has used the term -- besides Luis González-Mestres ?  DGG ( talk ) 04:22, 14 May 2011 (UTC)
 * Response Judging by Google Scholar it doesn't appear that anyone has (except for a French author). Google results for "Superbradyon -wikipedia" are only 1,970 and most of those are either by or about "L Gonzalez-Mestres", or definitions, some of the definition sites seem to be copying from Wikipedia as well.  I'm not suggesting Google is a "notability bible" by any means, but it's usually a pretty good indication. - SudoGhost (talk) 05:35, 14 May 2011 (UTC)


 * Delete as per my response above, and also due to lack of established notability. There are 18 references, 12 of them are by Luis González-Mestres, the inventor of the term (unless I'm mistaken, that makes them WP:SPS).  The other references do not mention superbraydon in any way. - SudoGhost (talk) 05:35, 14 May 2011 (UTC)
 * Delete as not yet being accepted as part of mainstream science and salt in view of previous AfD. Xxanthippe (talk) 05:54, 14 May 2011 (UTC).

Thread 2
There is no serious reason to delete this article. By the way, you just "kill" all the comments opposed to the deletion. Is this a "citizen" and "ethical" behaviour in a foundation that permanently asks for help and money from citizens ? And there is obvioulsy a problem about risks of conflicts of interests and lobbying in Wikipedia, as most administrators are anonymous.

The work on superbradyons has been cited by the main specialists, and papers on the subject have been endorsed by the refereed proceedings of the most specialized workshops. It is therefore normal that the public knows what the superbradyon idea is about, especially in a period where there is a serious crisis of the string model. 83.199.16.15 (talk) 08:57, 15 May 2011 (UTC) It is also clearly unethical to speak about "comments by a blocked user" without any proof of it, as an argument to hide and exclude comments that you do not like. Unfortunately, the Wikipedia administrators seem to do that quite often. 83.199.16.15 (talk) 09:03, 15 May 2011 (UTC) — 83.199.16.15 (talk) has made few or no other edits outside this topic.
 * The above comments represents the IP editor's first edits on Wikipedia. Beyond My Ken (talk) 13:49, 15 May 2011 (UTC) 

I am the person who reverted the edits; I am not a Wikipedia administrator. Blame me for what I do and blame them for what they do. If you want to understand why I feel it is fair to call the comments comments by a blocked user, see WP:DUCK. Kevin (talk) 09:07, 15 May 2011 (UTC)

If one looks at the way people get blocked in Wikipedia, suspicion arguments are too often used. Is this kind of internet police normal in such an encyclopedia ? Of course, if Jimmy Wales proposes such an internet police at the Paris G8 including the DUCK and so on, he will be warmly supported by several governments. 83.199.52.143 (talk) 09:47, 15 May 2011 (UTC) — 83.199.52.143 (talk) has made few or no other edits outside this topic.
 * The above comments represents the IP editor's first edits on Wikipedia. Beyond My Ken (talk) 13:49, 15 May 2011 (UTC) 
 * Note to closing admin: Please take notice of the obvious meat- or sockpuppetry above.  All  of the "keep" !votes are clearly related and coordinated.  Given that that are all IPs, they may be IP socks of the blocked account User:Indépendance des Chercheurs, or they may be meatpuppets.  In either case, all of their comments after the initial one should be ignored.  If a checkuser would like to take a look, that might be interesting. Beyond My Ken (talk) 13:49, 15 May 2011 (UTC)

The last comment is very interesting. This looks more and more like some sort of internet police. What can be learned from internet adresses that correspond to geographic zones ? And who can check the personal and professional relations, and conflicts of interests, of most Wikipedia administrators and influent users ? Maybe it would be interesting to ask the United Nations Commissionner on Human Rights to examine these celebrated "checkuser" techniques and the use Wikipedia and other sites are making of them.

83.199.87.242 (talk) 16:36, 15 May 2011 (UTC)


 * Your crackpot conspiracy theories are of no relevance to this discussion. Wikipedia policy dictates that articles be backed up by outside reliable sources which indicate notability. This article doesn't have them. It should therefore be deleted. End of story. AndyTheGrump (talk) 17:05, 15 May 2011 (UTC)

Some explanation for Indépendance des Chercheurs - Dear Indépendance des Chercheurs, some people (e.g., User:AndyTheGrump) are being rude here, and no one has really explained what is going on. Moreover, Wikipedia editors spend a lot of time blocking spam, and tend to be exclusionists, meaning they are quick on the draw to remove content. They typically mean well, but in cases like this, they can seem like closeminded pricks. I'm not a Wikipedia insider, but I've observed enough of these discussions that I understand some of what's going on. So I'm going to explain a little bit of broader context to you.

First of all, I'm sorry this has been so frustrating for you. You clearly have put a lot of thought an work into the Superbradyon theory, both in terms of working out your theory, and also in trying to promote it more broadly in the physics community. Moreover, you have people with very little physics background who appear to be criticizing your work, or accusing you of fringe science (I am not qualified to comment on your science).

Unfortunately, Wikipedia, at it's core, is not designed to acknowledge new work. This is both a good an bad characteristic of Wikipedia. It's good because it shifts judgement about issues to people who might be more expert or impartial. It's bad because it does not recognize the expertise of contributors like you. You need to deeply understand that Wikipedia relies on secondary and tertiary sources. That's just how it is. So until people who are not directly related to the Superbradyon research write about it, it is invisible to Wikipedia.

Your best bet will be to try to work with the media or other scientists. You could try to get a well regarded blog or newmagazine to write about hypothetical elementary particles, including the Superbradyon, or similarly try to recruit other scientists to mention the Superbradyon in their articles or in review articles. I know this is an uphill battle.

Good luck in your quest to promote your theory. Don't post anonymously (if that was you) from other IPs, or get your friends to post. Wikipedia editors are also a super defensive bunch, and they only like for other possibly-ignorant exclusionist editors to comment, not for you to recruit outsiders. You only chance to win over these wiki editors is going to be if there's a new, independent publication which substantially discusses (e.g., several paragraphs) the Superbradyon. Don't bother trying to fight.

Sorry for a little lecture here, but the editors are baiting you a little here, I wanted to be clear about the core problem. Best wishes with your research. Wxidea (talk) 18:50, 15 May 2011 (UTC)

So, now Indépendance des Chercheurs is blocked for one more week and therefore excluded from this discussion. It also seems that any net surfer with a IP beginning by 83.199 is prevented from writing in Wikipedia articles. By looking at the Indépendance des Chercheurs user page, one finds :

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User_talk:Ind%C3%A9pendance_des_Chercheurs

Sockpuppetry

Please see Wikipedia's policies on sockpuppetry. It is not allowed to edit while logged out, pretending to be someone else, as you appear to have done here. This is especially true when your own account has been blocked. Please do not edit Wikipedia until your block runs out or is lifted. Beyond My Ken (talk) 06:33, 14 May 2011 (UTC)


 * A large set of IPs from 83.199.0.0/16 (block user · block log · WHOIS) is now editing at Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Superbradyon (2nd nomination) since your block. These IPs are presumably you. Your block is extended by another week for evasion. EdJohnston (talk) 17:39, 15 May 2011 (UTC)

(end of quote)

All this is by the way based in pure suspicion arguments. There seems to be a problem with internet police, fundamental rights and expression freedom in this way of proceeding.

90.46.179.240 (talk) 19:11, 15 May 2011 (UTC)


 * So we see two conflict resolution strategies here: (a) Engagement & explanation vs. (b) IP blocking. Good luck with the latter. --- Indépendance des Chercheurs -- I urge you not to let this fire you up. Don't go drive over to your local library or internet cafe, or use a proxy, and post some more or try to defend yourself. Just make a copy of your article, let them take it down (which I assure you the editors here intend to do), and when you have succeeded in obtaining some independent coverage of your theory, come back here, re-post the article along with the new citation, add a note that the article was previously deleted for lack of notability, and that now it is notable. Don't take the word "notable" personally, it has a very narrow definition in Wikipedia, and it means 'are there secondary and tertiary sources that talk about this?' Getting secondary sources is the only way to "win" at Wikipedia. Good luck. Wxidea (talk) 19:38, 15 May 2011 (UTC)

Obviously, there is no real debate here, and people are blocked when they bring arguments. Indépendance des Chercheurs is well-known in an institution like CNRS and is not a person but a collective. A sizeable amount of researches vote for them, and most of these researchers are not members of the collective. And what about the conflicts of interests of the (often anonymous) Wikipedia administrators ?

IP adresses are blocked just on the grounds of suspicion. The end of the text quoted above is :

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User_talk:Ind%C3%A9pendance_des_Chercheurs

A large set of IPs from 83.199.0.0/16 (block user · block log · WHOIS) is now editing at Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Superbradyon (2nd nomination) since your block. These IPs are presumably you. Your block is extended by another week for evasion. EdJohnston (talk) 17:39, 15 May 2011 (UTC)(end of quote)

As previously stressed, this is based in pure suspicion arguments. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 82.123.168.157 (talk) 20:32, 15 May 2011 (UTC)


 * True, but these 'suspicion arguments' are backed up by evidence (the closely-related IPs), unlike the nonsense about others' supposed 'conflict of interest' which is backed up by nothing. If Wikipedia chooses to take suspicions about closely-related IPs as evidence of collusion, it is their right to do so. In any case, these repeated postings of the same irrelevant points will make no difference. This is not a vote. It is a discussion as to whether the article should or should not be deleted, according to Wikipedia policy. Such policy requires reliable outside sources for articles. This article doesn't have them, and as such is almost certain to be deleted. If you wish to argue that this policy is wrong, or you have verifiable evidence that anyone taking part in this debate has a conflict of interest, this should be raised elsewhere. We cannot change policy here, and this isn't an appropriate place to discuss alleged conflicts of interest. AndyTheGrump (talk) 21:24, 15 May 2011 (UTC)

"Close-related IP's" are not an evidence, but furthermore such assertions are false. There are in this discussion several groups of IP adresses with comments opposing to the deletion. Such an internet police "technique" is not legitimate.

And "Wikipedia policy" is just a joke to provide "official reasons" to attack people. Indépendance des Chercheurs has disavowed the campaign against the Bogdanoff brothers were a Wikipedia administrator (Alain Riazuelo) has built his own "notability" and is quoted by Wikipedia itself as a "source".

Gonzalez-Mestres is a well-known candidate of Indépendance des Chercheurs to the CNRS elections, see for instance :

http://blogs.mediapart.fr/blog/scientia/190410/luis-gonzalez-mestres-profession-de-foi-elections-2010-au-conseil-scientif

Obviously, the program he is proposing does not point to the same direction as the Jim Wales participation to the e-G8 together with representatives of the main internet corporations. Influent CNRS people also consider him as a "dissident". Precisely, Wikipedia was at the origine supposed not to get involved into suppression of dissent campaigns.

82.123.87.182 (talk) 22:02, 15 May 2011 (UTC)


 * How do you know that the assertions of collusion are false? AndyTheGrump (talk) 22:08, 15 May 2011 (UTC)

You wrote : "these 'suspicion arguments' are backed up by evidence (the closely-related IPs)". This is obviously false, as there are several groups of IP addresses providing comments against the deletion. Furthermore, what do we really know about the Wikipedia administrators ?

82.123.87.183 (talk) 22:26, 15 May 2011 (UTC)

All this noise against an unconventional Physics concept presented in articles that have been cited by the main authors in the field, and that has been presented to the most specialized conferences and published in their refereed proceedings is clearly unreasonable. If the idea had been emitted by a member on an influent lobby, there would not be such a discussion. Even when The New York Times or the CERN Courrier :

http://www.nytimes.com/2002/12/31/science/interpreting-the-cosmic-rays.html

http://cerncourier.com/cws/article/cern/28696

refer to the work by Gonzalez-Mestres, they actually cite papers on superbradyons, and in particular this one :

http://arxiv.org/abs/physics/9704017

90.46.103.102 (talk) 23:10, 15 May 2011 (UTC)

Thread 3
Looking in to some background about this, I noticed that the article on the Bogdanov Affair is still under arb comm sanctions, found here. Among other stuff the sanctions specify that people with external involvement in the affair may not edit the wiki article about it, and further specifies that anyone who appears to be an WP:SPA shall be assumed to have external involvement in the affair and shall thus be banned from editing the article. As far as I can see, arbcomm doesn't specify anywhere that these sanctions apply to other related articles. The arbcomm case was years ago but as far as I know the ruling doesn't expire. As seen here, the main article about the Bogdanov affair has seen a recent spate of IP SPA editing. All of the IP's currently editing this AfD reverse dns back to the same ISP as the IP's that had been editing the Bogdanov affair; I think it is fair to assume that they are the same person or group of people. (As the sanctions don't apply to other pages, it's not like edits to this AfD would be blocked based on that, I just thought it was interesting history to bring up.) Kevin (talk) 05:18, 16 May 2011 (UTC)
 * possibly interesting, but of no real relevance to the AfD. It needs to be assessed on its own merits. Personally, I had no prior knowledge of the 'Bogdanov affair' and am less than convinced that it is even relevant here. AndyTheGrump (talk) 05:25, 16 May 2011 (UTC)
 * All AfD's should be assessed on their own merits, but I found it informative re: the flood of SPA's on this nomination, both because the Bogdanov affair has been explicitly brought up by the SPA's and because the previous incident dealt with a flood of SPA's to related articles. I mean, realistically their comments were not in danger of redeeming the article from deletion, but more evidence that the silly SPA's can be safely written off can't hurt. Kevin (talk) 05:30, 16 May 2011 (UTC)