Wikipedia talk:Requests for mediation/Plasma cosmology

message: Respond below:
# I'm a less active participant here, but the obvious choice would be right here. I've never done IRC, so I can't promise it will work for me. Art LaPella 05:35, 13 February 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: Question one: what type of mediation

message: Alright, next, it would be helpful for me if I could get a summary of what's been going on since I've been trying to read the talk page and it's quite a long piece of writing. It would be nice if each participant could write a 200 words or less summary of their view (theirs and their own, no pointing fingers, accusations, etc.) This is just so I can get a handle on things. Sasquatch  t|c 00:18, 14 February 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: n.b. the message on my talkpage – which came after I made this statement – suggests I state my opinion on the issues without making reference to other editors. However, I don't yet have any strong view of the contested edits, except to say that they merit discussion. My prejudice, as someone who has frequently worked with ScienceApologist on cosmology articles, is to assume that his edits aren't totally uninformed. –Joke 02:09, 14 February 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Fair enough. The main reason behind that is I have seen people misinterprept things and go at it at a personal level which is not at all helpful to discussion. Sasquatch  t|c 02:48, 14 February 2006 (UTC)

text: I just saw that the mediator recommended a size restriction on our summaries. I apologize for exceeding this length by more than 5 times. If you wish, I'll edit my comments. --ScienceApologist 15:06, 14 February 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: Okay, that was the easy part

message: The plasma cosmology page was the subject of a large edit war in and around November 2005. For details, see the talk page Talk:Plasma cosmology, the RfC and RfAr against Reddi (Reddi RfC and Reddi RfAr) and the recently reopened RfAr against Elerner  (Elerner RfC). The short summary is that Eric Lerner, who edits wikipedia as Elerner, is an expert in, and one of the major living exponents of a non-standard cosmological model called plasma cosmology. At the end of the edit warring, a more or less stable détente was reached (settling on a version largely written by Elerner), and it seems Elerner stopped checking Wikipedia. During this time, ScienceApologist made what I consider to be a series of well documented, slow, conservative edits (see Talk:Plasma cosmology#Differences for descriptions). In the past couple of weeks, Elerner has started editing Wikipedia again, and took umbrage to the updates, reverting all the edits since December. This was reverted, and has resulted in an edit war and a correspondingly ugly talk page and re-opened RfC. The chief obstacle at present, as I see it, is that Elerner refuses to discuss any of the well documented changes made by ScienceApologist to arrive at consensus. He has been defending himself, inappropriately in my opinion, by attacking the competence of the other editors and citing various Wikipedia policies. –Joke 00:32, 14 February 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: n.b. the message on my talkpage – which came after I made this statement – suggests I state my opinion on the issues without making reference to other editors. However, I don't yet have any strong view of the contested edits, except to say that they merit discussion. My prejudice, as someone who has frequently worked with ScienceApologist on cosmology articles, is to assume that his edits aren't totally uninformed. –Joke 02:09, 14 February 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Fair enough. The main reason behind that is I have seen people misinterprept things and go at it at a personal level which is not at all helpful to discussion. Sasquatch  t|c 02:48, 14 February 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: Summary by Joke137

message: I don’t know the science well enough to make an independent judgment of the issues here. However, I think the establishment (some individuals more than others) is generally more credible than the plasma cosmology side. I could give examples of why, but you didn’t want us to discuss other editors.
I was surprised to be invited to this mediation because I haven’t made any reverts or major edits to this article page. My usual edits are spelling, grammar, links etc. I’ve criticized (name deleted) on the talk page, but no one has discussed any of my criticism further.
This is the latest battle in a revert war going back for months, on several cosmology pages and using every dispute resolution mechanism I know of. The rebels claim that scientific papers challenging the Big Bang are seldom published, despite allegedly crumbling evidence for the Big Bang. The establishment says it’s easier to look important by denying well-known science than by honest investigation. The current plasma cosmology revert war is an attempt to undo the last couple months. Art LaPella 03:15, 14 February 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: Summary by Art LaPella

message: I concur 100% with the summary by Joke137. I have my biases, but I don't know enough about cosmology to have a strong opinion on the issues of fact, including the representation of the state of consensus/controversy in the cosmology community. From my point of view, the problem is less a matter of content, and more a question of process, i.e. making changes one at a time and discussing them when asked. For future reference, I do know a lot about plasma physics. --Art Carlson 09:08, 14 February 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: Summary by Art Carlson

message: The facts of the editting are, in my opinion, well laid-out by User:Joke137. I will try to explain my position on plasma cosmology in terms of content:
Plasma cosmology represents a particular kind of alternative cosmology that is based, in part, on a philosophical rejection of a universe that is time-dependent on its largest scales. In particular, advocates of plasma cosmology are effectively promoting a static universe -- an idea that is independent of both the Big Bang and the steady state models. They do this in two ways:
#By appealing to plasma physics and claiming that current mainstream cosmology ignores or at least underestimates the importance of electromagnetic forces in plasmas. Such ideas are based in part on the work of Nobel Prize winnder, Hannes Alfven who actually promoted a different sort of cosmological model based on electromagnetic forces and a mixture of matter and antimatter called ambiplasma. Plasma cosmology advocates, as far as I have been able to research, reject this model but think that the ubiquitous plasma in the universe can account for most cosmological explanations. The first work in this direction seems to have been done by Alfven's student, Anthony Perrat, who ignored gravitational forces altogether and modeled a galaxy-sized plasma coming up with a form that appeared to him to mimic the observations of spiral galaxies. The numerical simulation was compared in a basic eye-test comparison: there has been no attempt to do any quantitative analysis comparing Perrat's simulation with actual galaxies. This may be in part due to the fact that no simulation has been done that uses gravity. For this reason, most cosmologists do not take this simulation seriously, but plasma cosmology advocates use it as a jumping-off point. In particular, Eric Lerner has taken this as a starting postulate and has proposed other mechanisms and descriptors (including an explanation of large-scale structure) which have become part of the "plasma cosmology" research idea.
#By rejecting and pointing out perceived flaws with the Big Bang model. In particular, plasma cosmology rejects the traditional general relativity mechanism for the Hubble Law instead claiming that there are plasma processes that can account for associated observations of this (such advocacy is rejected by cosmologists). They also have responded to the detailed measurements of the CMB with a proposal that is very similar to integrated starlight advocated by Hoyle up until he died. This idea relies on coincidences (incidentally, coincidences explained in standard cosmology as due to coupling of photons and matter in the early universe) between the energy associated with stellar processes and the energy of the CMB. Mechanisms for getting the incredible homogeneity and isotropy are proposed to be "local" in nature, there are, according to advocates, plasma particles that isotropize and homogenize an anisotropic background radiation. They have used recent studies of the CMB that may or may not indicate problems within the vanilla banana model of cosmology to justify their claims that their ideas better fit the data, though none of the observations seem to have been actually predicted ahead of time by advocates. Lerner also refers obliquely to the work of Halton Arp who has maintained a stubborn skepticism with regards to the cosmological origin of quasars by proposing his own model for quasars which is far different from the standard explanation of quasars being the cores of AGN -- but whether this is meant as a means to critique general astrophysics or as a support of a fellow advocate of alternative cosmologies, this isn't clear. (Editorially speaking here: What seems strange is that even if quasars were found tomorrow to be tiny lightbulbs in the Oort cloud, that wouldn't change the fundamental observations and foundations of the Big Bang -- it might cause some cosmology modelers a pause for thought, but the Big Bang doesn't depend on a cosmological quasar model.) Nucleosynthesis is explained entirely by stellar processes together with cosmic rays. I'm not sure how, in the plasma cosmology's infinite universe, all the hydrogen hasn't been converted to helium yet, but I assume they have an answer. 
I think you can see from above that plasma cosmology develops in parallel to standard cosmology as a "shadow theory" of sorts providing what are perceived by its advocates to be answers for all the observational underpinnings of the Big Bang (of which, traditionally, there are four: Hubble's Law, CMB, nucleosynthesis, and large scale structure). I think that these are the major points that need to be illustrated in the article. Plasma cosmology is extremely fringe science, with almost zero presence in the cosmological community. That point should be made clear in the article too, though it absolutely must be done in as NPOV a way as possible. Some of the critiques of the Big Bang offered by advocates of plasma cosmology seem to be based on problems that have subsequently been solved (for example, Lerner claims that the voids observed in our universe are too large to be explained by the Big Bang but in fact the Big Bang does have dynamical models which account for voids of the size observed). Such critiques will naturally appear in the article about this subject, but it also needs to be made clear immediately when there are standard explanations to the perceived "problems". 
There is also an issue of verifiability in regards to this subject. One good example is that Lerner has written an article recently using HUDF data to show that the Tolman surface brightness test "contradicts" an expanding universe paradigm. However, earlier a mammoth study of this phenomenon by Lubin et al. was conducted which came to the opposite conclusion. The Lubin study is highly regarded in the cosmological commnunity and Lerner's yet to be published paper is almost unknown. What's more Lerner's methodology could be rightly described as at least "unorthodox". That's not to say that his paper is "wrong", it's only to say that there may be issues with verifiability. There actually is a lot of concern on the subject of verifiability on this subject. The papers written by plasma cosmology advocates tend not to be published by the major astrophysical journals, but instead are published quite a bit by the IEEE transactions which is an association of plasma physicists not connected with cosmology. While such papers are excellent resources to what plasma cosmology advocates say, I think it is important to point out that there is a massive body of literature published in the mainstream that 1) out-and-out ignores plasma cosmology for the most part and 2) seems to contradict many of the claims of its advocates -- though never directly since the discipline is ignored. How one reports this kind of indirect criticism has been a source of contention (to say the least) on the page.
I could go on, but this is supposed to be a summary. --ScienceApologist 13:32, 14 February 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: I just saw that the mediator recommended a size restriction on our summaries. I apologize for exceeding this length by more than 5 times. If you wish, I'll edit my comments. --ScienceApologist 15:06, 14 February 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: Summary by ScienceApologist

message: I don't think it is possible to summarize the issues without refering to other editors' behavior. In my view, the basic issue is ScienceApologist's massive deletion of material in the article.  ScienceApologist is Joshua Schroeder in the earlier discussion.
As Joke said, in November and December, after a great deal of discussion of both process and content, a stable version was arrived at. I stopped monitoring the article because I don't see that editing an encylopedia article should be a full-time or even part-time permanent job. The article should change when there is new material.
When I looked at the article in January, I found that SA had deleted large amounts of material that described the content of plasma cosmology.  Since this is a scientific theory, and a controversial one, what is key in an encyclopedia article are descriptions of how the theory has been applied to various probems in cosmology and a brief comparison of prediction with theory.  All of the deleted material were summaries of material published in peer-reviewed journals, so was verifiable by wiki's standards. I originally did not have all the footnotes in, but I have added them and pointed this out to SA.  In particular, the surface brightness work is published, contrary to SA's repeated unsupported assertions.
I have repeatedly said that I have no objections to SA or others adding “critics of plasma cosmology say...” or something to that effect. As with all wiki stuff, it should be sourced, not just their own opinion. Let the reader form their own opinion of what makes sense.  But I strongly object to SA censoring plasma cosmology because he personally disagrees with it and considers himself some sort of expert.  In many cases he gave no justification for his deletions and in others gave only his own opinions. I do not see why I should have to answer his misconceptions point by point, which clearly seems to be an endless process.  In my view, the only justification for deletions is that the material is not verifiable or that it is too detailed for the reader to follow. I think that SA's deletions should not be allowed. They prevent the reader from being able to form an informed opinion about the field.Elerner 15:45, 14 February 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: Summary by Elerner

message: While I take no pleasure in writing what follows, I believe it is important to this process that all participants be apprised of certain facts that are needed to put Mr. Lerner’s edits in perspective.
Eric Lerner who styles himself a plasma physicist, (with little more than an undergraduate degree) is a principal in The Focus Fusion Society an organization that actively solicits funds in the form of donations from the public for research into plasma fusion energy systems. He is also a principal of Lawrenceville Plasma Physics, Inc which in its own words is a “consulting and communication corporation specializing in applications of plasma physics” which is raising funds by privately offering shares in itself.
When I first stumbled upon this issue several months ago, I was under the impression it was caused by yet another pathetic attempt to elevate a marginal hypothesis to the same level as the established paradigm by the process of constantly harassing critics and then claiming legitimacy on the basis of the ‘debate’; a technique I’ve seen too often in this wiki.  Now, in light of the above, it is my opinion that Mr. Lerner is attempting to use this article, and Wikipedia to give his ideas the cachet of legitimacy with potential investors/donors that may come here looking for a NPOV treatment of the subject, and it is for that reason he cleanses away any negative edits in this article.
If my suspicions are true then this is an abuse of the sprit, if not the letter, of policy of Wikipedia, and it is for this reason I have entered the fray. --DV8 2XL 17:03, 14 February 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: Summary by DV8 2XL

message: I'm not sure whether I'm welcome to give my two cents worth, but I feel in a position to do so, as a previous contributor to the Plamsa cosmology article, and, as having numerous editing disagreements with ScienceApologist.
I am general unhappy with ScienceApologist's contributions because I feel that they violate Wikipedia's neutral point of view policy as follows:
*An article on Plasma cosmology is not about alternative views of cosmology (there are already articles on cosmology, and on the Big Bang). Therefore, it is not necessary to qualify contributions as "Plasma cosmologist believe..." because the article is by definition, about the plasma cosmologist viewpoint. It is also not necessary to counter views with explanations of the "standard" cosmology, as again, these can be found their respective articles.
*It is not for ANY editor to judge contributions. If plasma cosmologists believe that the the Moon is made of green cheese, and there is a citation, then as long as it is verifiable that that is the position of plasma cosmologists, then that is the end of it. It is not for editors to provide counter citations, and further judge whose citation is more worthy; that is for the scientific process to judge, and editors to report.
Wikipedia has articles on the Flat earth which I am sure that we all disagree with. Yet there is not the same degree of including counter examples to "disprove" it.
--Iantresman 00:23, 15 February 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: Summary by [[user:iantresman|iantresman]]

message: I pretty much agree with Elerner and Iantresman's points. I regard Plasma Cosmology as an interesting re-interpretation of observations, and one that can at least shed light on some of the currently unsolved problems in astrophysics. The dispute here is more a matter of mythology and religion than of science - people are treating their pet theories as if they were their core belief systems, rather than the mere instruments and frameworks of thought that allow us to hang our observations of the world together.
Everyone editing this page, or any other science related page for that matter, should realise that in science nothing is sacred, and be able to debate rationally rather than ducking questions, name-calling and so on. Yes, guilty as charged; shortly before giving up in disgust. Jon 06:07, 15 February 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: Summary by [[User:Jonathanischoice|Jon]]

message: === 1. "Deletions" ===
Can we have a point of order regarding "deletions"? Having an article that is open to all editors means that justifiable edits including that which removes prose are part of the process. I claim that most of my edits in no way "remove" verifiable material and those that do remove such material have their rationale explained on the talkpage. This point seems lost on User:Elerner who rather insists that I have "deleted" his material in an attempt to "censor" it. I have a different suggestion, let Eric Lerner respond to the points with which he disagrees and we'll work together to get to a version that is ammenable to all parties involved. I don't think that simply taking the prose from Eric's version and "pasting" it in will solve the problem or adequately addresses the concerns I carefully outlined on the talkpage. --ScienceApologist 19:54, 15 February 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Well, my main concern is that in comparing  there is a large section in the middle starting with "Since this theory hypothesizes filaments..." that simply does not get mentioned at all? As dubious as you think it may be, there should be no reason that you can't simply paraphrase it. Sasquatch  t|c 02:44, 16 February 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Would you like a rundown of my explanations for these differences? Basically, I was removing redundant material. You can look through and see that most of the prose in that paragraph are either unsourced claims or are already covered in the other paragraph. I was trying to make that section conform to Wikipedia:Summary style, I don't believe I deleted any content. --ScienceApologist 13:11, 16 February 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: What you see as redundant, Elerner obviously sees as important. So let it be. One man's junk is another man's treasure. Sasquatch  t|c 17:27, 20 February 2006 (UTC)

text: I agree that edits should not undo large amounts of works. If you see a major problem,  rather than revert. i experienced a similar war on Winter Soldier Investigation and it is my opinion that it is much more beneficial to edit and correct rather than revert. Sound fair? Sasquatch  t|c 02:52, 16 February 2006 (UTC)

text: Precisely; which is why we edit as a community in the first place, and why changes are discussed. Of course it has to be decided on a edit-by-edit bases, which is why any demand that attempts to preempt a critical edit by restricting it to that which can be sourced is unacceptable. --DV8 2XL 22:04, 15 February 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: A ready-made concrete example might be Lubin et al. Tolman test paper vs. the paper written by Lerner about the same subject. Lerner seems to offer criticisms of the Lubin paper, but I doubt that the authors of the Lubin paper are going to respond especially considering that k-correction and galaxy evolution they use is well-known in standard astronomy/cosmology. --ScienceApologist 22:00, 15 February 2006 (UTC)

text: Right. So if plasma cosmologists say the moon is made of green cheese (sorry, can get away from Iantresman's example) and the Apollo missions say it is made of, oh, I don't know, silicon and iron, it would be fair to quote this result and say that scientific opinion is different on the matter: applying some other piece of research in the plasma cosmology article, in this way, ought not to constitute original research, even though I doubt NASA would bother with a paper on the green cheese claims. In the trickier example given by ScienceApologist above, I'm not at all sure what to do about it. I doubt if Lubin will respond, but that shouldn't be worded in the article to imply that Lerner is the "last word" on the expanding universe using surface brightness, but on the other hand any detailed investigation of the methodology of the two papers would, I think, reasonably constitute original research. –Joke 22:24, 15 February 2006 (UTC)

text: I think that the claim that this is a protoscience is not NPOV. It is fringe science, though. --ScienceApologist 13:13, 16 February 2006 (UTC)

text: I more or less agree with your remarks re Lubin and Sandage. I also don't think there is any disagreement that relevant, sourced information should remain in the article. –Joke 22:59, 15 February 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: As for 'no deletions' this is unacceptable even if it was workable. You're looking for an agreement that flies in the face of "If you don't want your writing to be edited mercilessly or redistributed by others, do not submit it.> warning that appears on any page open for edit. Fat chance. --DV8 2XL 23:11, 15 February 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: I would agree to Eric's suggestion if the reporting Eric included in his version of the article accurately and NPOV-wise represented the conclusions and implications that can be drawn from the content of his paper. However, I'm afraid the wording of the implications was far from a neutral reporting of this. The outstanding questions concerning the methodology associated with Lerner's work are important in trying to compare the two "different methods" and it isn't clear how we can indicate this using his prose if it is to remain inviolable. If we were to keep the prose as Eric wrote it, I'm afraid what this runs the risk of is setting up a detailed technical analysis of both papers which is absolutely something that this summary style article should avoid. In short, we need to be aware that summarizing Lerner's original work in brief, if it is agreed that this information is to be included not as original research, requires editting Eric's reporting on his own paper. --ScienceApologist 23:12, 15 February 2006 (UTC)

text: Yeah, I should clarify that when I say that there is no disagreement that relevant, sourced information should remain in the article, this doesn't apply to editing, rewording or summarizing. Nobody's work is inviolable here. –Joke 23:18, 15 February 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Requests for Rulings 

message: Can we have a point of order regarding "deletions"? Having an article that is open to all editors means that justifiable edits including that which removes prose are part of the process. I claim that most of my edits in no way "remove" verifiable material and those that do remove such material have their rationale explained on the talkpage. This point seems lost on User:Elerner who rather insists that I have "deleted" his material in an attempt to "censor" it. I have a different suggestion, let Eric Lerner respond to the points with which he disagrees and we'll work together to get to a version that is ammenable to all parties involved. I don't think that simply taking the prose from Eric's version and "pasting" it in will solve the problem or adequately addresses the concerns I carefully outlined on the talkpage. --ScienceApologist 19:54, 15 February 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Well, my main concern is that in comparing  there is a large section in the middle starting with "Since this theory hypothesizes filaments..." that simply does not get mentioned at all? As dubious as you think it may be, there should be no reason that you can't simply paraphrase it. Sasquatch  t|c 02:44, 16 February 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Would you like a rundown of my explanations for these differences? Basically, I was removing redundant material. You can look through and see that most of the prose in that paragraph are either unsourced claims or are already covered in the other paragraph. I was trying to make that section conform to Wikipedia:Summary style, I don't believe I deleted any content. --ScienceApologist 13:11, 16 February 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: What you see as redundant, Elerner obviously sees as important. So let it be. One man's junk is another man's treasure. Sasquatch  t|c 17:27, 20 February 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  1. "Deletions" 

message: I would also like to hear a point of order (i.e. the opinion of the arbitrator) on massive revisions. Even in Eric Lerner turns out to be right more often than Science Apologist, I find it disruptive when he reverts wholesale to a two-month-old version. How are fellow editors supposed to deal with that? Along the same lines, he has - generously - offered to create a new version of the whole article. I think it would be much better if he would pick a single section to try to fix up. That way, we have a chance to come to an agreement on what the article should look like, but in a focussed way. Tackling the whole article at once is counterproductive. --Art Carlson 20:13, 15 February 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: I agree that edits should not undo large amounts of works. If you see a major problem,  rather than revert. i experienced a similar war on Winter Soldier Investigation and it is my opinion that it is much more beneficial to edit and correct rather than revert. Sound fair? Sasquatch  t|c 02:52, 16 February 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  2. Massive revisions 

message: "In many cases, REFERENCED criticism is not really there... First there is no rule that demands that all criticism be referenced; nor can there be. This is an attempt to exercise the Fallacy of False Dilemma - asserting that there is no middle ground where a legitimate criticism of a referenced source can be made without citation. In the case of a marginal theory like this one, that has very little support in the broader scientific community, it is unlikely that anyone will take the time to refute these ideas. This is nothing more than an attempt to silence criticism. What is needed here is a clear statement that this is a minority view, that is not widely held. Dressing this topic up to look like it is a viable alternative to Big Bang is dissemination at best - mandacity at worst --DV8 2XL 20:24, 15 February 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Precisely; which is why we edit as a community in the first place, and why changes are discussed. Of course it has to be decided on a edit-by-edit bases, which is why any demand that attempts to preempt a critical edit by restricting it to that which can be sourced is unacceptable. --DV8 2XL 22:04, 15 February 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: A ready-made concrete example might be Lubin et al. Tolman test paper vs. the paper written by Lerner about the same subject. Lerner seems to offer criticisms of the Lubin paper, but I doubt that the authors of the Lubin paper are going to respond especially considering that k-correction and galaxy evolution they use is well-known in standard astronomy/cosmology. --ScienceApologist 22:00, 15 February 2006 (UTC)

text: Right. So if plasma cosmologists say the moon is made of green cheese (sorry, can get away from Iantresman's example) and the Apollo missions say it is made of, oh, I don't know, silicon and iron, it would be fair to quote this result and say that scientific opinion is different on the matter: applying some other piece of research in the plasma cosmology article, in this way, ought not to constitute original research, even though I doubt NASA would bother with a paper on the green cheese claims. In the trickier example given by ScienceApologist above, I'm not at all sure what to do about it. I doubt if Lubin will respond, but that shouldn't be worded in the article to imply that Lerner is the "last word" on the expanding universe using surface brightness, but on the other hand any detailed investigation of the methodology of the two papers would, I think, reasonably constitute original research. –Joke 22:24, 15 February 2006 (UTC)

text: I think that the claim that this is a protoscience is not NPOV. It is fringe science, though. --ScienceApologist 13:13, 16 February 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  3. Unreferenced criticism 

message: Other than Iantresman and myself, everyone seems to be totally ignoring what Sasquatch suggests, which includes no deletions, which means "no deletions". What is the point of mediation if you don't respond to what the mediator suggests? 
The chance that SA and I will arrive at an agreement on what is right in plasma cosmology, or whether the sun rises in the east for that matter, is zilch, but that is not necessary for arriving at a NPOV wiki article.
To get rid of one non-issue: a perfectly valid NPOV way of dealing with surface brightness is to leave my work in (no deletions!) and add that Lubin and Sandage arrived at different conclusions (brief description) based on a different sample (brief description)using differnt methods ; reference. Very simple.Elerner 22:44, 15 February 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: I more or less agree with your remarks re Lubin and Sandage. I also don't think there is any disagreement that relevant, sourced information should remain in the article. –Joke 22:59, 15 February 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: As for 'no deletions' this is unacceptable even if it was workable. You're looking for an agreement that flies in the face of "If you don't want your writing to be edited mercilessly or redistributed by others, do not submit it.> warning that appears on any page open for edit. Fat chance. --DV8 2XL 23:11, 15 February 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: I would agree to Eric's suggestion if the reporting Eric included in his version of the article accurately and NPOV-wise represented the conclusions and implications that can be drawn from the content of his paper. However, I'm afraid the wording of the implications was far from a neutral reporting of this. The outstanding questions concerning the methodology associated with Lerner's work are important in trying to compare the two "different methods" and it isn't clear how we can indicate this using his prose if it is to remain inviolable. If we were to keep the prose as Eric wrote it, I'm afraid what this runs the risk of is setting up a detailed technical analysis of both papers which is absolutely something that this summary style article should avoid. In short, we need to be aware that summarizing Lerner's original work in brief, if it is agreed that this information is to be included not as original research, requires editting Eric's reporting on his own paper. --ScienceApologist 23:12, 15 February 2006 (UTC)

text: Yeah, I should clarify that when I say that there is no disagreement that relevant, sourced information should remain in the article, this doesn't apply to editing, rewording or summarizing. Nobody's work is inviolable here. –Joke 23:18, 15 February 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: please respond to the mediator's comments

message: By no deletions, I don't mean they can't edit your writing, but I think it's fair to say that the overall message needs to remain. If we were to take deletions as other people cannot edit your text at all or make it shorter, than the article would end up about 30 pages long (which is not really encyclopedic). Sasquatch  t|c 02:48, 16 February 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: Clarification

message: Dammit SA, why are you reverting a resonable compromised edit from Elerner?Jon 04:16, 16 February 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Do we really need that? Keep in mind WP:CIVIL still applies. Do not get into personal arguments on Wikipedia as it will only lead to more trouble. Sasquatch  t|c 04:24, 16 February 2006 (UTC)

text: It's, of course, ammenable to me, but Elerner seems to want his version to be the one to start with and then "add in" my prose. I think this contradicts Wikipedia:Summary style as his version seems a bit more wordy and I truly only removed points I thought were dubious enough to be of questionable verifiability. Would it help if I explained my edits to the last two sections? --ScienceApologist 13:16, 16 February 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: I don't think there are black and white rules that we can apply in these cases. The best course of action is to give a little and take a little. I think I have made that clear, you cannot expect to get EVERYTHING you want. As I said before, I think the message carried in the material should stay if it is peer-reviewed independently (which it has). However, it should be paraphrased in most cases as this is an encyclopedia (we write articles, not copy and paste scientific papers). We're not here to judge whether these research papers are correct or not but just to present the information within them. I think SA should stop removing sections he considers dubious but he is free to paraphrase them as long as their original message is retained. Elerner also needs to accept that people are calling into the question the validity of his papers and let that be known in the article. If you operate on those 2 principles, it should be fine. Sasquatch  t|c 18:21, 16 February 2006 (UTC)

text: This is what we need. Edits that try to balance both sides rather than push one side. Thank you Joke137. Sasquatch  t|c 18:21, 16 February 2006 (UTC)

text: You made a complete hash of the footnotes! I can't figure out how to fix them. –Joke 02:46, 17 February 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: I'm trying my best to make things easy on you, Joke, but I'm sorry if I'm not doing a good job. In particular, I'm confused as to why it seems that Eric is consistently reverting points that seem to be uncontroversial summaries and attempts at NPOV. --ScienceApologist 17:58, 17 February 2006 (UTC)

text: Don't go throwing accusations around. See the diff  between my last edit and your edits to the redshift and microwave background section, visible here . Almost everything has been retained, with the only difference that I took out the Hoyle and Narlikar reference as uncited and irrelevant, and reinserted the GR reference. I didn't even change the wording. That was why I was saying that my merged version ought to be relatively uncontroversial. –Joke 20:50, 17 February 2006 (UTC)

text: And I spent nearly an hour trying to fix the unbelievable mess you made of the footnotes, so rather than being accusatory perhaps you ought to thank me for once. –Joke 20:51, 17 February 2006 (UTC)

text: I think your argument belies the fact that your recent edit was purely a revert of SA's text to text you wrote back in November. I think the current version reads better, but could still use improvement. –Joke 22:10, 17 February 2006 (UTC)

text: I agree. I can't see how the Virgo simulations indicate that. The papers I dug up seem to indicate that the observed voids may be consistent with observations, to within the limits of our understanding of bias and galaxy formation. Let me know if you would like more references. –Joke 22:10, 17 February 2006 (UTC)

text: By the way, I wasn't aware of the existence of voids 100 Mpc or greater. Boötes is only 70 Mpc, and isn't it the largest known void? Are you sure you don't mean 10 Mpc? –Joke 22:15, 17 February 2006 (UTC)

text: Most cosmolgists except Saar don't think his void issue causes a problem. But Saar is known to be fairly gruff in his opinion forcing. I can see Eric is exploiting this as is normally the case with fringe science folks who look at one kind of controversy and claim it is evidence of a "paradigm in crisis" or some such nonsense. --ScienceApologist 00:46, 20 February 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: Stop Reverting Reasonable Edits!

message: Hopefully this version  will annoy everyone equally. In particular, I can find no evidence for SA's claims about BBN and the microwave background and about Lieu claiming that the SZ deficit is about baryogenesis. I also rephrased some incomprehensible sentences about the surface brightness test. Eric, can you add the missing references? –Joke 00:04, 18 February 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Haha, I like the phrasing of the "will annoy everyone equally" part. But I think things are working out are they not? Sasquatch  t|c 05:50, 18 February 2006 (UTC)

text: I consider the above statement to be a continued violation of personal attacks policy on Wikipedia. Please do not badmouth me any longer, Eric Lerner. Please, moderator, let Eric know his thuggeryantagonism is not tolerated. --ScienceApologist 23:22, 19 February 2006 (UTC)

text: If you think that attacking someone else cannot be described as thuggery, then I guess we disagree on the definition of "thug". (Okay, I'll concede "antagonism" is a better word. --ScienceApologist 23:58, 19 February 2006 (UTC)

text: But you did lie as you claimed to address my points and yet still haven't. I'm not sure why. --ScienceApologist 00:42, 20 February 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Learner is showing no interest any compromise that does not allow him to present his pseudoscientific ideas untouched by other editors. He refuses to answer request that he explain his submissions with anything but a retreat to misinterpretations of Wikipedia policy, and reverts. This mediation cannot be successful unless he shows some movement on his position. --DV8 2XL 00:11, 20 February 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Definition of thug (dictionary.com):"A cutthroat or ruffian; a hoodlum.". Neither antagonist is a thug. A more useful discussion might center on which antagonist, or both, is more guilty of violating Wikipedia:Reverts#Explain your reverts. Art LaPella 00:14, 20 February 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: I have half a mind to block both of you for acting childish and revert warring. Do you really think calling each other names helps? Do you really think reverting over and over will support your arguments? As for "unreferenced criticisms", it is valid if he's comparing it just to the Big Bang phenomenon. Discuss each one on talk and see where the scientific consensus lies as thee seems to be many among you. All this article needs is more cooperation and less pointless bickering. I think that's all I've been trying to say. Just because you see it as criticism, I think you're trying to use policy and calling it unreferenced to remove it so it's more generous to your point of view Elerner. On the otherside, SA has been removing sections just because they don't fit his points of view. Again, Wikipedia isn't here to take sides on the issue. Both of you let each other sides be presented fully and we can all get along. Sasquatch  t|c 17:41, 20 February 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: revised version

message: I'm getting really tired of these stupid arguments. I've been trying to reword the version that the edit war this weekend was over, and have come to the conclusion that it is crap. These are the reasons:
#Lerner refuses to spend the time to add the missing references. He seems to advocate verifiability when it comes from the big bang side, so why is this the case?
#Sentences, like the one about N-body simulations, repeat in the text. Does nobody care about keeping the text sensible?
#The contention that the fractal scaling relationship "has been borne out by many studies of the galaxy number counts" is wrong. It has been suggested by a few recent studies. The Sloan Digital Sky Survey, which is the best galaxy number count to date, as well as the 2dFGRS surveys both contradict this, and these are the next redshift surveys to date. Say some, but not many.
#The quadrupole and octopole are not "aligned". What does that even mean, mathematically? They aren't vector quantities. The correct statement is that they are unusually planar, which you can call being "aligned" if you like, as it is true that they have a deficit of power in a particular direction. Think before you change these things.
#The text "Moreover, an expanding universe appears to be supported by the overwhelming balance of evidence in cosmology and is an unambiguous prediction of general relativity, a theory which has been established by numerous precision tests. At present, plasma cosmologists have not suggested a competing theory of gravity." needs to stay, no matter what Lerner thinks, unless he cares to contradict chapter 10 of Hawking and Ellis which I have cited. It makes no assumption of homogeneity, whatever you believe, and I pointed this out above. Why don't you bother to respond?
I just want to leave these comments for you to respond to. I'm going to revert to my old version and leave it at that. If you want to revert back, fine, I'll leave it be. I'm sick stupid edit war where I just have to keep making the same revisions again and again. –Joke 18:34, 20 February 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Fed up 

message: I understand that Eric Lerner hates it when I edit, but his wholesale reversion of my work is inappropriate. On the talkpage, he gave some rather poor arguments as to why he claims my edits were not acceptable. I agreed with one of his points about pseudoplasma, but the rest ranged from questionable to downright rude (removing a citation to an interview claiming it was "unverifiable"). He seems insistent that he doesn't have bias and that every edit I make to the article inserts bias. I am perfectly willing to admit I have bias, but Eric doesn't seem to get the point of the fact that Wikipedia is a collaboration, not a soapbox. --ScienceApologist 15:13, 4 March 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: What Lerner is doing is a simple case of argumentum ad nauseam, if he keeps it up enough his critics will go away because, unlike him, we have no outside stake in the contents of this article. Unfortunately this sort of pest is not recognized by policy yet so there is no avenue to seek injunction. And their numbers are growing, --DV8 2XL 16:59, 4 March 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: Eric Lerner's habit of wholesale reversion

message: See this.  After repeated rebuffs from Eric Lerner I have given up my attempt to negotiate what I hoped would be a solution to the content dispute which would be agreeable to all. 
Some context for my concern about POV pushing in WP articles can be found in my recent comments at Wikipedia talk:Forum for Encyclopedic Standards and at User:Hillman/Wikipedia quality control.  
During my ill-fated discussion with Lerner, I did notice his tone in interacting with me, which I can only describe as huffy. ---CH 04:44, 7 March 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: It's also useful to contrast that with his tone toward the newest user who has swooped in to edit Plasma Cosmology who obviously knows next-to-nothing about physics (didn't even know the definition of a plasma) but Eric was very kind and supportive towards the new editor simply because they shared a dislike for the Big Bang. This shows that it isn't just Eric's personality -- he is intentionally gruff, uncivil, and rude toward people who don't share his opinions. In short, Eric's POV is getting in the way of him being a useful contributor. His two-sided personality makes him come across as a very small-minded individual in need of an attitude adjustment. --ScienceApologist 19:07, 7 March 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: My Ill-fated Attempt to Broker a Resolution of the Dispute

message: Once again, if you want me to believe this edit war is waged to improve Wikipedia, then please don't revert my presumably undisputed proofreading edits like this one, this one and part of this one along with controversial edits. I don't ask you to do your own proofreading or wikifying - just revert to my proofread version of your own text instead of your earlier version. Art LaPella 20:51, 7 March 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: Overinclusive reverts

message: I am requesting unprotection of this page. I responded fully to Joshua(ScienceAplogist) continued reverts on the talk page. This response has been now moved to the archive since it was before March 9. Protection has simply served to take ScienceApologist's side. He is unsupported in his changes by anyone else's edits. He is getting his way as a minority of one by continually reverting and now getting the page protected with his changes in place.Elerner 05:15, 12 March 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: No, the responses are not there. I have been very clear with why I find your advocacy to be so questionable. The only person who has responded to me has been Iantresman over the issue of whether MHD should be described in detail or at all. You have continued to ignore my requests for engagement. --ScienceApologist 13:58, 12 March 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: Joshua's last stand--page protection