Talk:Robert L. Park

message: In the March 23, 2007 edition of What's New, he had these comments about Wikipedia:
WIKIPEDIA: HAS A BEAUTIFUL IDEA FALLEN VICTIM TO HUMAN NATURE?
Science owes its success and credibility to openness. Findings, including details of how they were obtained, are exposed to the scrutiny of the entire scientific community. It sounds like a prescription for chaos, but it's a mechanism for self-correction. The alternative is dogma. Could openness be extended to all knowledge? With Wikipedia, it seemed to work for a time, but for those who profit from a misinformed public, including purveyors of pseudoscience, the target is too tempting to leave alone.http://bobpark.physics.umd.edu/WN07/wn032307.html 
(Note:  I have moved the above from the article to here.  It's not that I doubt the accuracy of the information, it's that it's a self-reference -- it's not presumed to be important information because it communicates anything valuable about Park; it's presumed to be important because it talks about us. -- Antaeus Feldspar 03:11, 2 April 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: OK.  I put it in, but I see your point.  Bubba73 (talk), 03:14, 2 April 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: No harm done -- it's really easy to forget that people won't necessarily be reading what we write on Wikipedia, or at the time that to us is the "current" time, etc... -- Antaeus Feldspar 03:59, 2 April 2007 (UTC)

text: Perhaps this could be referenced somehow in the Criticism of Wikipedia article.  --Wfaxon 05:05, 2 April 2007 (UTC)
replies: text:  Good idea, done.  Bubba73 (talk), 15:25, 2 April 2007 (UTC)
thread_title: Wikipedia

message: This article was automatically assessed because at least one WikiProject had rated the article as stub, and the rating on other projects was brought up to Stub class. BetacommandBot 16:11, 10 November 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  WikiProject class rating

message: The site below states: 
"Because this technology challenges the currently popular theories of physics, this lobby [Park's lobby] has unjustly branded it as being fraudulent."
http://www.theorionproject.org/en/documents/EPWoutofboxBrief.pdf 
DISCUSSION: 
It is possible that this biography is naive, biased and fraudulently incomplete, by omitting reports that Mr. Park has undertaken aggressive strategic smear campaigns to undermine the careers of patent officials that grant patents for inventions that have been independently verified by other scientific labs to validly work.  
The controversy might be grounded in the fact that scientific discoveries can at almost any time out-pace existing human theories (in their current state), because the act of discovery generally precedes the creation of theories to explain them.  
The website above gives the impression that Mr Park and his lobby have attacked inventions and their patent eligibility, if their theory is not yet understood (by those he defines as the mainstream).  
This might be intellectually retrograde in that truly novel inventions can never be magically grasped by ALL others scientists, particularly those giving theoretical not empirical objections.  
This is why independent confirmation of experimental results is the method through which findings are deemed valid.  Theoretical consensus of merely mainstream scientists (or ideological partisans) can by no standard be deemed a scientific criteria of validity.
Agbdf (talk) 07:19, 2 February 2009 (UTC)
replies: text: I read the linked document, and it appears to be a bunch of unsourced claims made by people who have products they are trying to push. One section specifically mentions Cold fusion, which after 20 years still has not amounted to anything and is generally accepted by science (not just Park) to be nonsense. The other section that mentions Park does so in conjunction with Blacklight Power, a company that for years has been pushing an energy technology that, if it actually works, would clearly upset many fundamental rules of physics. Park and many others legitimately regard this company's product to be impossible. I read lots of Park's writing, and yes he does write about both these things often.  But things like "undermine the careers of patent officials" need to be sourced. Where's the evidence?  Why are the specific people affected not named in the document?  Have any of them sued Park or spoken out publicly against him?  There should be a paper trail that can be cited as sources.  All in all, I am dubious of these claims, they seem to me to be the claims of pseudoscience proponents who don't like their moneymaking schemes being publicly criticized. --Krelnik (talk) 13:57, 2 February 2009 (UTC)

text: Correction, I do see two affected people are named on page 24. But you need to find primary sources. If there are legal actions underway, those should be citable.  Further, the specific things that Park said and how they fit in with the timeline, need to be cited as well.  Ideally, it would be good to know if there was other, independent criticism of these people and not just Park.  (The document seems to have an almost paranoid tone, as if it thinks Park has some sort of magic power over such issues.  I suspect other people might have criticized these two patent examiners as well, for them to have been fired.)  However, if this is truly in regard to pending litigation, take care to maintain WP:NPOV. Claims made in court are not facts until the case has been decided. --Krelnik (talk) 14:07, 2 February 2009 (UTC)
thread_title:  This bio might be naive, partisan, imcomplete 

message: Science and the Law:
"Furthermore, a group of judges recently asked renowned physics professor Robert L. Park for guidance on how to recognize questionable scientific claims. The author of a landmark book on the subject, Park came up with "seven warning signs" that a scientific claim is probably bogus (Park 2003): 
# The discoverer pitches the claim directly to the media (thus bypassing the peer review process by denying other scientists the opportunity to determine the validity of the claim).
# The discoverer claims that a powerful establishment is trying to suppress his or her work. (The mainstream science community may be deemed part of a larger conspiracy that includes industry and government.)
# The scientific effect involved is always at the very limit of detection.
# The evidence for a discovery is anecdotal.
# The discoverer says a belief is credible because it has endured for centuries.
# The discoverer has worked in isolation.
# The discoverer must propose new laws of nature to explain an observation. 
That's a pretty significant honor and deserves mention in this article and elsewhere. -- Brangifer (talk) 07:06, 3 March 2010 (UTC)
thread_title:  Status as scientific advisor to the judicial system 

message: There is an RfC on the question of using "Religion: None" vs. "Religion: None (atheist)" in the infobox on this and other similar pages. 
The RfC is at Template talk:Infobox person#RfC: Religion infobox entries for individuals that have no religion. 
Please help us determine consensus on this issue. --Guy Macon (talk) 18:09, 21 April 2015 (UTC)
thread_title:  [[Template talk:Infobox person#RfC: Religion infobox entries for individuals that have no religion|Request for Comments]] 

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thread_title:  External links modified 

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