User talk:Urgent01

Tom van Flandern

What do you think needs changing on that page? Martin Hogbin (talk) 21:51, 23 May 2013 (UTC)

I think the "Personal Philosophy" section has serious problems. The first sentence says van Flandern "noted a regular practice of not re-examining the fundamental assumptions underlying a theory once it gained "accepted" status, almost no matter how incompatible some new observation or experiment might be". This is clearly false as an allegation against mainstream science (some physicists do nothing but re-examine fundamental assumptions!), so to say that Van Flandern "NOTED this practice" is wrong. At the very least it should say "alleged" rather than "noted". Also, the trailing phrase smuggles in the premise that new observations are incompatible with mainstream scientific assumptions. This is mostly a false insinuation. I think to be accurate the sentence would have to read something like this: "Van Flandern alleged that new experimental evidence is incompatible with the fundamental assumptions of mainstream science, but that it is the regular practice of mainstream scientists to not re-examine their fundamental assumptions, almost no matter how incompatible they are with experimental evidence". This makes it clear that it is an allegation rather than an observation, and also more clearly identifies the two distinct components of that allegation (both false). Also, to accurately represent Van Flandern's views, the article would have to add what Van Flandern thought was the reason for this bad behavior of mainstream scientists: He claimed they intentionally clung to their falsified beliefs just to keep their jobs and sources of funding. Yes, that's crazy, for several reasons, but it was Van Flandern's stated claim. By not accurately presenting his claims in their entirety, the article gives a false and biased view.

This is just the first sentence of the section. Each of the remaining sentences has similar (or worse) problems in my opinion. I doubt that the article can be fixed (given the long standing ownership issue), but the tags should remain to alert the readers. Cheers. Urgent01 (talk) 02:36, 24 May 2013 (UTC)

I agree with you, except that I think it is better to try to fix the article rather than add tags. Why not rewrite the bits you think are wrong. I think there is too much detail anyway and that the article should just contain a brief summary of his scientific views. It is not the purpose of the article to support or deprecate van Flandern's views just to state briefly what they were and that they were, generally, contrary to mainstream science. Martin Hogbin (talk) 09:35, 24 May 2013 (UTC)

I agree that a fixed article would be preferable to a bad article with tags. But worst of all would be a bad article with no tags. So I think, until the article is actually fixed, the tags need to remain. I actually did try to fix the article some time ago (you may remember me, I used to edit under the user name Flau98bert), but I encountered severe "ownership" issues. (Check the archives of the article Talk page.) This, along with the lack of interest on the part of other mainstream editors, makes it unlikely that the article can be fixed any time soon. Cheers. Urgent01 (talk) 17:02, 24 May 2013 (UTC)