Talk:Randell Mills

message: I've tagged the article, because it needs some work to properly adhere to WP:BLP and WP:NPOV.  In particular, so of the wording of Mills' claims is in need of cleanup. Michaelbusch 04:01, 10 November 2007 (UTC)
thread_title: Cleanup tag

message: My edits: Fafarman, please don't attempt to wikilawyer, and also do not make false accusations of vandalism.  I have attempted to clean up this article in accordance with WP:BLP, WP:NPOV, and the ArbCom ruling on pseudoscience, as well as general readability and relevance grounds.  If you have particular concerns, we may discuss them.  However, blanket reverting is inappropriate (especially restoring links to webpages that don't exist).  Re. your false accusation that 71.174.94.146 was me: that IP traces to a Verizon Internet Services server farm in Reston Virginia.  I'm in Pasadena California, and have not edited Wikipedia from an IP in roughly a year. If I were to do so, it would show up in the 131.215.*.* block, which is owned by Caltech.  Do also note that 3RR limits reversion to three reverts in 24 hours, unless there is a clear long-term pattern of abuse. Michaelbusch 05:41, 14 November 2007 (UTC)
thread_title: [[User:Davesf|Fafarman's recent blanket revert]]

message: Time of my last article edit:  05:16, 14-NOV
Time of MB's blanket revert:   05:29, 14-NOV
Elapsed:  13 minutes.
:It appears from subsequent events that I was on to more than I suspected here. Note the times in the following excerpts from the article's edit log:
:    * 06:07, 23 Nov Michaelbusch m (minor typo)
:    * 23:00, 22 Nov 71.174.94.146
:Comment -- Well, it appears that Mr. Busch does sometimes sleep.  However, it is arguable that he hasn't a life outside of trashing everything he considers "bollocks" -- look at the rest of these (btw, this is a 3RR violation):
:    * 21:55, 3 Dec Michaelbusch (rvv)
:    * 21:55, 3 Dec TStolper1W (Mills is the author or co-author of dozens of published, peer-reviewed articles in the archival scientific literature.)
:    * 21:50, 3 Dec Michaelbusch (rvv)
:    * 21:43, 3 Dec TStolper1W (But you seem to want to make that egregiously hostile generalization yours by repeatedly putting it back in, Michael.)
:    * 21:28, 3 Dec Michaelbusch (rvv - and if you consult the record, it was not I who originally put this here)
:    * 21:27, 3 Dec TStolper1W (Deleted Michael W. Busch's sweeping and egregiously hostile characterization of Mills' work.)
:    * 21:15, 3 Dec Michaelbusch (rvv)
:    * 21:07, 3 Dec TStolper1W (Deleted a sentence that was an especially hostile violation of the NPOV guideline.)
:    * 19:31, 3 Dec Michaelbusch (rv stating of fact is not considered a violation of NPOV)
:    * 18:58, 3 Dec TStolper1W (Deleted a sentence that was a violation of the NPOV guideline.)
: Dave Fafarman (talk) 03:20, 7 December 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: I don't see the relevance of your last several paragraphs, as they seem to be an attempt to justify Mills' work and are are confusing amalgamation of disconnected physics terms more than anything else.  Any detailed debunking of Mills' work is not necessary here: it is redundant with other article on Wikipedia and my writing out a physics text on Wikipedia is time-consuming.  However, in deference to your concerns, I will prepare a detailed explanation of my changes in another section. Michaelbusch (talk) 23:12, 16 November 2007 (UTC)
thread_title: [[User:Michaelbusch|Busch's gold-medal-winning blanket revert]]

message: Here follows a summary & explanation of my attempt to clean up the article, itemized:
:*External links: I removed a large number of these.  Some were flagged 'unavailable on net' and so shouldn't be there at all.  Others were critiques of the patent system that had little to do with Mills himself.  Finally, a couple of media appearances seemed less notable than the others.
:*Patents: I removed an unsourced list of areas in which Mills was said to have received or filed patents.  If citation and relevant patent numbers can be provided, then they may be added back.  However, I'd be against that if only because Mills is notable only for his 'hydrino' claims.  I also removed some speculation associated with the patent that the Patent Office withdrew.
:*Professional background: I removed the 'summa cum laude' and 'Phi Beta Kappa' after his BA, as being largely extraneous to the article.  This is standard for professional biographies.
:*Lead section: I largely removed discussion of Mills' work, because it is covered in the hydrino theory article.  This is independent of the details of Mills' claims - here we are talking about Mills, not about his work.  That said, that there is no verification of Mills' claims and that the scientific community views his work as pseudoscience is very relevant here, because that is what Mills is known for.
:::I note that Fafarman's proposed rewrite, which attempts to describe (and, in my opinion, to falsely defend) Mills' work, is also invalid on physical grounds - and I can't say how well it matches Mills' work, but that would be more properly addressed on Talk:Hydrino theory.
:*Categorization: Placing Mills in :Category:Scientists seems ill-advised, because if it were possible to poll the entire scientific community on the matter, he would be immediately excluded - his work violates many physical laws and has not been verified by anyone. :Category:Inventors is less bound by the scientific consensus. Michaelbusch (talk) 23:35, 16 November 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: Yes.  Hydrino theory is hardly a 'significant alternative to scientific orthodoxy'.  It is pseudoscience and bollocks. Michaelbusch (talk) 22:47, 17 November 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: Mills' work does not have a substantial following.  It is generally considered pseudoscience. Michaelbusch (talk) 22:47, 17 November 2007 (UTC)

text: There is no following for Mills within the community.  As reference of this, observe that no journal, regardless of its quality, has accepted his work for publication, and also the debunking as described on hydrino theory.  He is only notable because most bollocks doesn't get to the point of venture capitalists investing money. Michaelbusch (talk) 22:47, 17 November 2007 (UTC)

text: Consult WP:BLP. Michaelbusch (talk) 22:47, 17 November 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: For the record, I point out that this reply is non-responsive to the issue I had raised.  Once again: this (censoring mention of Mills' scholastic honors) exemplifies Mr. Busch's agenda of character assassination against Mills.  Busch said, "This is standard for professional biographies."  When challenged to justify it, he waved his hands in the general direction of BLP as if to say that BLP endorses this activity.  It doesn't. Dave Fafarman (talk) 02:45, 7 December 2007 (UTC)
thread_title: Cleanup of article

message: I apologize for my abbreviated edit summary in an earlier edit in which I deleted three external links; I said that the links I was deleting had no information about Randell Mills, while in fact only two of the three had no mention of Randell Mills, and the third was a broken link.
: Had they not been relevant to Mills, they would not have been mentioned here. Dave Fafarman (talk) 01:51, 7 December 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: The Hydrino Theory article has been censored.  See below.  Dave Fafarman (talk) 01:51, 7 December 2007 (UTC)

text: The wording that was used here was "Mills has received or filed patent applications ..."  These were not my words, but I understood them to mean that those that had patent numbers were "received" and those without were only "filed".  Patents pending are often not completed for various reasons, the most common being that the patent examiners detect infringement (their most important function).  The formal filing of a patent application is a significant event that IMO is appropriate in a biographical article.  Dave Fafarman (talk) 01:51, 7 December 2007 (UTC)

text: No kidding.  Dave Fafarman (talk) 01:51, 7 December 2007 (UTC)

text: I agree that this is supposed to be a biographical article and details of hydrino theory should be only cursory here (which indeed was the case).  There was a fairly NPOV Wiki article about Hydrino Theory that this article linked to, which has been censored and which now redirects to this bowdlerized article. Dave Fafarman (talk) 01:51, 7 December 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  Suggestions 

message: (Note:  This was written yesterday in response to the activities of user Michaelbusch.  User ScienceApologist is better, at least addressing substantive matters and the Claims of Consensus, though still quite biased.)
A few weeks ago I received an email from a friend, part of which described the death of the Italian Renaissance:
The sun and the planets revolved around the Earth embedded in crystalline spheres, the circle being the most ideal of all shapes. To make the observed data fit the presumption of circularity, the Alexandrine astronomer Ptolemy elaborated a baffling system of "epicycles," with smaller spheres embedded within larger spheres.
...
In the conventional wisdom of 1600, the moon, like all heavenly bodies, had to be a perfect sphere.
"The dark spots on the moon that been visible to man throughout the ages were explained away as parts of the moon that absorbed and emitted light differently than other parts -- the surface itself was perfectly smooth." [Galileo's Moon--Then and Now (Rice University)]
When Galileo pointed his new telescope at the moon in 1609, however, he observed changing shadows that could only be cast by mountains. He announced:
"The Moon certainly does not possess a smooth and polished surface, but one rough and uneven, and just like the face of the Earth itself, is everywhere full of vast protuberances, deep chasms, and sinuosities."
This, and much other new evidence discovered with his telescope, caused Galileo to doubt that the celestial and sublunary spheres were fundamentally different. There aren't two spheres, just one. Adopting the heliocentric theory of the solar system, Galileo began to develop a theory of mechanics that, unlike Aristotle's, would work for both the heavens and the earth.
At first, Galileo was the toast of Italy, long the most intellectually sophisticated land in Europe, and a friend of the Pope. Gradually, though, the political and ideological climate changed. In 1633, the Inquisition forced Galileo to recant his belief that the Earth went around the sun. ("And yet it moves," he was later reported to have muttered in defiance.)
Perhaps heliocentrism had seemed to the Inquisition to be an esoteric issue of little practical importance ... Yet, the cost to Italian science of the Galileo affair proved immense. The English poet John Milton visited Galileo in Arcetri where the now-blind astronomer was confined. Six years later, Milton wrote in Areopagitica, his defense of a free market in ideas:
"That this was it which had damped the glory of Italian wits; that nothing had been there written now these many years but flattery and fustian. There it was that I found and visited the famous Galileo, grown old, a prisoner to the Inquisition, for thinking in astronomy otherwise than the Franciscan and Dominican licensers thought."
Maybe Milton exaggerated the speed of the downfall of Italian science. But he got the trend right. According to the database Charles Murray sent me of the 4002 eminent artists and scientists he compiled from authoritative reference books for his 2003 book Human Accomplishment, from 1000 AD to Galileo's arrest in 1632, Italy furnished 34.7% of the world's scientific eminence. From then up through 1950 (the end of Murray's database), Italy only accounted for 3.46%.
The transition of intellectual leadership from Southern to Northern European is famously symbolized by the year 1642, when Galileo died under house arrest in Italy, while Newton, who would go on to describe "the system of the world" explaining movement in both the heavens and on the earth in 1687, was born in England.
... Lies, ignorance, and wishful thinking are dead ends. But if you follow one truth far enough, it will eventually lead you to others.
That's why the impact of the censorship of any one scientific fact is as unpredictable, and as potentially immobilizing, as removing one part from your automobile's engine.
Returning to Wikipedia, Wikipedia's reputation as a reliable source has already been tarnished by the antics of the "pseudoscience" mafia.
Claims of Consensus Wikipedia:Reliable_sources
Claims of consensus must be sourced. The claim that all or most scientists, scholars, or ministers hold a certain view requires a reliable source. Without it, opinions should be identified as those of particular, named sources.
(Thank you, ScienceApologist; you at least appear to be following this.)
Instead we find articles like the following from people who have given up on Wikipedia, for cause: .
Or this, from  -- 
School officials unite in banning Wikipedia
By Lynn Olanoff
Express-Times (Easton, Pa)
EASTON, Pa. — Linda O'Connor regards Wikipedia the same way former first lady Nancy Reagan campaigned against drugs.
She urges people to "Just Say No."
The Great Meadows (N.J.) Middle School librarian hasn't been a fan of the online encyclopedia for years. This fall, she decided it was time to make others at her school aware of the Web site's pitfalls.
She put up a sign saying "Just Say 'No' to Wikipedia" over the computers in the school library.
Several other school officials feel similarly about the Web site. Wikipedia is blocked on all computers in the Warren Hills Regional School District.
Some teachers at Easton Area High School discourage its use, as do officials at Centenary College and Lehigh University.
"We don't see it as an authoritative source," said Nancy Madasci, Centenary's library director.
The problem with Wikipedia, the school officials said, is it can be modified by anyone. There have been many cases of incorrect information on the Web site, some of which has been biased.
Egregious errors ... (etc.)
Speaking for myself, I made a donation to Wikipedia a while back, but if the shenanigans that I have described here are actually endorsed by Wikipedia's management, it'll be the last one.
Dave Fafarman (talk) 19:22, 7 December 2007 (UTC)
thread_title: The High Costs of Censorship