Talk:William G. Tifft

He has spent a good part of his career collecting evidence that the universe is not expanding, a position that contradicts that of virtually all others in his field. (ref: http://www.as.arizona.edu/department/faculty/tifft.html Personal Web page] at the U. Arizona)

I removed this statement as I couldn't see anything in the reference that suggested this. His Web site mention that one of his research interests is "Redshift Problems", and although he has papers on Redshift quantization, this does not imply that he collects evidence against an expanding universe.

I found another quote from Discover magazine that suggests that Tifft's view is not anti-Big Bang. --Iantresman 12:46, 14 October 2006 (UTC)

Soba's views are not exactly a reliable source. Why should a popular-level magazine writer be able to characterize Tifft better than himself. I will modify the statement regarding the expanding universe, but I don't think that Soba's article belongs. --ScienceApologist 14:48, 14 October 2006 (UTC)

Request for Comments

WP:RfC: Is this an acceptable passage and quote from a third party source on William Tifft, to add?

In a 1993 article in Discover magazine, Dava Sobel noted: "The editors of the Astrophysical Journal grudgingly published his first quantized-redshift paper in 1976, but they announced in an unusual disclaimer that they couldn't endorse the idea (although they also couldn't find anything wrong with the underlying observations)" "[Tifft] isn't necessarily claiming that the universe isn't expanding, he says -- only that if it is, some other process is affecting redshifts as well. His basic idea is that redshift could be an intrinsic property of the galaxy and not merely something done to its light as the light travels through space." (ref: Dava Sobel, "Man stops universe, maybe - William Tifft believes the universe may not be expanding", Discover, April, 1993)

Support It's (a) informative (b) Not contentious to cause problems with WP:LIVING (c) And from a satisfactory source for a biography. --Iantresman 17:00, 23 November 2006 (UTC)

Object A line from an article published in 1993 gives the reader the false impression that Tifft's ideas have notability when in fact nobody in astrophysics pays attention to these points. The early 1990s was something of a publicity crisis for the Big Bang so to cherry pick quotes from popular-level articles written in that timeframe is very misleading. --ScienceApologist 19:02, 27 November 2006 (UTC)

From RFC on the WikiProject Biography page - Halton Arp, who also has a biography on wikipedia, so far as I understand endorses similar theories regarding anomalyous red shift, so I cannot conclude that it is intrinsically non-notable, as it is included on his page. I would however like newer or more extensive sources for this inclusion if they were available. Badbilltucker 17:19, 30 November 2006 (UTC)

Third party sources that are newer (say from 2001 on) would be fine, in my opinion. --ScienceApologist 18:46, 30 November 2006 (UTC)

• My reason for including the quote is to counter the misconception that Tifft is trying to "get rid of the Big Bang",[1] or is anti-Big Bang.
• The notability of the subject is evidenced by the papers provided in the footnotes in the Wiki article on Redshift quantization, which includes eight papers on the subject published since 2000 (not all peer reviewed), and a search of the NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS) for peer reviewed articles on "Redshift quantization" or "Redshift periodicity" (synonymous) provide additional papers. --Iantresman 18:45, 30 November 2006 (UTC)

Comment Considering how very little information is available on Tifft, why not just merge his bio into redshift quantization, which already has a section titled with his name which is longer than the main article here. The only argument against this approach that I can see is if he is notable for something other than redshift quantization: as far as I can see this is not the case. HEL 19:22, 30 November 2006 (UTC)

I envisage his biography growing in due course, and think that his biography in Redshift quantization might get lost, as it too gets bigger. --Iantresman 19:38, 30 November 2006 (UTC)

Tifft is a notable person among alternative cosmology people. He deserves a biography, even if the biography is a short one. For some additional information on Tifft and his research, I suggest looking at an ADS Abstract Service author search on "Tifft". Dr. Submillimeter 20:22, 30 November 2006 (UTC)

And the passage above? --Iantresman 22:04, 30 November 2006 (UTC)

Support This reader would like to see the quotation in the article, since it adds context. ScienceApologist's opinions are nice, but they don't trump even an old article. How do we know that "nobody pays attention?" Iantresman's opinions make good sense to me. Lou Sander 22:18, 30 November 2006 (UTC)

What makes you think an article from 1993 provides context for the present reception of a person? Would including a single quote from 1993 on an article about George W. Bush from 1993 give an accurate context? One knows that nobody pays attention because nobody cares to talk about the person any longer, you see. --ScienceApologist 22:25, 30 November 2006 (UTC)

Oh, heck! I'm trying to get away from this discussion, but it was still on my screen when I got back from dinner. If the guy's big contribution was in 1993, we don't need anything from the 21st century to support his notability. Think Bill Mazeroski, or George McGovern, or Charles Lindbergh, or I Love Lucy. Lou Sander 23:35, 30 November 2006 (UTC)

Because there is nothing in the extract that is outdated. The contents is valid in 1993, and would be equally valid in 2093. --Iantresman 22:32, 30 November 2006 (UTC)

There is something outdated about the level of acceptance of redshift quantization ideas. I included part of the Discover magazine quote in the article about redshift quantization which is where the discussion probably belongs anyway. --ScienceApologist 22:41, 30 November 2006 (UTC)

I don't have a dog in this fight, and I don't care much about redshift or Tifft. It seems to me that Tifft's scientific ideas belong in the redshift article, but that biographical stuff about him belongs in a Tifft article. That article's pretty light right now, but it won't be getting much heavier if people don't let stuff into it. And if the guy's notable enough to be the main scientist mentioned in the redshift article, how can he be non-notable? Lou Sander 22:50, 30 November 2006 (UTC)

And the quote says, or implies nothing, about he level of acceptance. --Iantresman 23:22, 30 November 2006 (UTC)

Support I think the Sobel quote can be included, and I wouldn't challenge this article on notability grounds, but I do hope somebody will be able to dig up a list of Tifft's relevant publications to include in the article. He doesn't seem to provide a list on his own website. At least the four Tifft references from the Redshift quantization page should be copied over here. EdJohnston 04:50, 1 December 2006 (UTC)

Comment - Rather than rely on second-hand information, someone should try to find the article and its warning with the ADS Abstract Service. Dr. Submillimeter 10:02, 1 December 2006 (UTC)

The quote is inaccurate. Tifft's first refereed paper on the subject may be this one, which contains no such warning. The second paper in the series, published in 1977, does contain an editor's note. Given the problems with Discover magazine's quote, it should not be used. (This is unrelated to the quote, but I would like to ask an innocent question: If Tifft changes the bin size in his histograms, does he still get the same result?) Dr. Submillimeter 21:22, 1 December 2006 (UTC)

If I remember my discrete Fourier analysis properly, changing bin sizes doesn't normally remove periodic features unless you dip below the Nyquist frequency or your bins have so few counts as to be unable to statistically resolve the distribution. --ScienceApologist 21:42, 1 December 2006 (UTC)

• I think the quote is poorly worded, rather than inaccurate. His first paper in the series mentioned was indeed in 1976, and the disclaimer appears in the second paper in 1977 (I reckon the description omits an "and then"). I think we can qualify the quote with a reference to the original ApJ article. --Iantresman 21:47, 1 December 2006 (UTC)

Why use a secondary reference when you have a primary reference, especially when the secondary reference garbles some of its information? Dr. Submillimeter 21:50, 1 December 2006 (UTC)

I agree. Let's use the primary source. --ScienceApologist 21:50, 1 December 2006 (UTC)

I agree that we should use the primary quote for the first part of the source. However, I am interested in retaining the second part of the quote, which notes that Tifft is not anti Big Bang, contrary to the view of some editors.[2] --Iantresman 22:04, 1 December 2006 (UTC)

Consensus appears to be 3-1 in favour of including the quote, which I have added. I've also added two statements that (1) Tifft's views are not shared by most other astronomers, and (2) found a quote noting that they are considered controversial. I've also added the ApJ quote in full. I think this fulfills all the concerns. --Iantresman 14:00, 7 December 2006 (UTC)

Note: I opposed using Sobol as a source. The revision does not represent my viewpoint. Dr. Submillimeter 14:05, 7 December 2006 (UTC)

• Editors are not allowed to express their viewpoint in articles. I included the viewpoints of Sobel and Napier, both of which are verifiable and accurate. If you want to provide an alternative view, dig out a source and by all means include it. Recall that WP:POV tells that "points of view (POV) are often essential to articles which treat controversial subjects." --Iantresman 14:27, 7 December 2006 (UTC)
• I also noted that I didn't think the Sobel quote was a problem. I believe that the first clause did indeed refer to the first paper, as your rightly pointed out, but the second clause concerning the disclaimer, refers to the second paper, but doesn't mention this specifically. I don't think the quote misleads, and inclusion of the original full quote will let readers decide for themselves. --Iantresman 14:37, 7 December 2006 (UTC)

Reversion

Since Ian lied about acheiving consensus, I reverted his additions. --ScienceApologist 14:56, 7 December 2006 (UTC)