Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Cosmological General Relativity

The following discussion is an archived debate of the proposed deletion of the article below. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as the article's

talk page or in a deletion review

). No further edits should be made to this page.

The result was no consensus. Editors disagree about whether this apparently fringe theory has been covered in reliable sources to an extent that makes it notable enough for an article.  Sandstein  16:57, 6 September 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Cosmological General Relativity

Cosmological General Relativity (edit | talk | history | protect | delete | links | watch | logs | views) – (View log · Stats

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A complete

Note: This debate has been included in the

talk to me 02:04, 27 August 2014 (UTC)[reply

]

I have provided links to the pre-print versions as a courtesy to the reader, rather than links to paywall sites that only show the abstract. As an astronomer, I presume you are used to reading about theories such as MOND in the ApJ. However, the bulk of the work on this theory was published in Carmeli's book and the International Journal of Theoretical Physics. There are a number of publications in other related journals on the subject that were not readily available to me that would very likely serve as alternatives to the arxiv-only versions; however, I can't afford to subscribe to that many pay sites. So I simply cannot agree with your contention that it is "simply sourced to preprint servers which are not peer-reviewed."

As to your contention as a soapbox for creationism: yes, Hartnett is a creationist. However, my understanding is that that Carmeli was an agnostic (though I can't remember where I read that). CGR itself is not a creationist theory. It only becomes a creationist theory in Hartnett's version, where he "applied creationist boundary conditions." Other than including the trigger word "creationist," what makes it a soapbox? If I were to remove all references to creationism from the article, it would be substantially unchanged. However, since Hartnett is the primary researcher continuing Carmeli's work, and since Hartnett is a creationist, it seemed relevant to bring it up.

I noticed that another user deleted the last sentence from the section on Key Features. It originally included this:

Creationist origin theories are generally controversial in the scientific community, particularly in Western culture.^[1][2][3][4]

You have proved my point on that. Many theories have been adopted as creationist even though their creators did not intend them to be so. In fact, the standard cosmological model is the basis for many old-earth creationist theories. I read an article a couple of months ago that looked at the overall distribution of thought (in the U.S., I think) on origins. It was roughly divided into thirds: about a third believed in a naturalistic evolution in a Big Bang universe, another third believed in intelligent design and a young earth creationist origin, and a final third believed in an old earth in a Big Bang universe, but with intelligently directed evolution.

If your contention is that the article should be deleted because it is a creationist theory, then you have implicitly acknowledged it as notable on that count--creationism is a notable theory, and espoused by all major and most minor world religions. But again, CGR is not inherently a creationist theory--it must be modified to make it into one.

If your contention is that it should be deleted because it is a non-standard alternative to the standard cosmological model or Einsteinian general relativity, then you must also delete all articles in that same category:

bimetric theories, and most or all of the alternatives to general relativity

.

Cheers,

Al'Beroya (talk) 04:46, 27 August 2014 (UTC)[reply]

• comment The relevant polices are
  WP:NN
  from FRINGE, To maintain a neutral point of view, an idea that is not broadly supported by scholarship in its field must not be given undue weight in an article about a mainstream idea. More extensive treatment should be reserved for an article about the idea, which must meet the test of notability. Additionally, when the subject of an article is the minority viewpoint itself, the proper contextual relationship between minority and majority viewpoints must be clear.

If this is a theory held by a handful of scientists, and not widely discussed, or widely reported then it does not meet notability, and looks like original research. If it is a theory held by a few people against scientific consensus then that needs to be mentioned, and the size of the coverage on wikipedia should reflect that. [1] this seems to be based upon the work of two scientists, and that article says "While Cosmological relativity is not yet generally accepted,....". In short this seems to be a little supported fringe theory. Martin451 06:54, 27 August 2014 (UTC)[reply]

• DeleteHaving thought about this I think delete. There are a lack of third party reliable sources on this theory. The theory goes against mainstream physics, e.g. Absolute time and absolute centre of the universe, Hubble's law as an absolute. There are no reliable third party references that talk about this in a objective manner. The work of Hartnett is not objective, it builds on the theory. A Pradhan et al who keeps citing this cites the results in the two (non-springer) papers I looked at, without mentioning the theory. The creationist blogs are not reliable for something like this, they support it because it agrees with their world-view. If this were a notable theory, there would be mainstream scientists disagree with it, or discussing how it fits in with general relativity. The draft that went into mainspace had the line While the theory is neither widely known nor accepted,... this in itself questions the notability of the theory. Martin451 16:55, 1 September 2014 (UTC)[reply]

• Comment The list of sources given above by Al'Beroya is a bit of a red herring. Some of the citations are for general concepts, not the specific theory discusses in the article, and are thus irrelevant/misleading. However, GScholar does list 75 citations for "Cosmological Relativity: A New Theory of Cosmology I" and not all of them are self-citations, so there is some amount of work being performed in the context of this theory. (I removed the blanket statements about creationism, since they were (a) irrelevant to the topic and (b) original research. One of the references was in fact a WP clone.) QVVERTYVS (hm?) 09:33, 27 August 2014 (UTC)[reply]

• Delete, I unfortunately do not see a single article in a decent journal. At west
  WP:FRINGE.--Ymblanter (talk) 18:11, 27 August 2014 (UTC)[reply
  ]
• Delete The only mainstream journals are those that don't actually discuss the topic, but which are dragged into the topic by the unreliable ones. Also World Scientific is a vanity publisher who spam researchers looking for submissions (for the academics, do a search for "World Scientific" in your email if you don't already filter the spam). No quality control at all. Second Quantization (talk) 19:59, 27 August 2014 (UTC)[reply]

• Comment. I disagree with some of the strong characterizations of the publishers and journals that have been advanced here: World Scientific is, for the most part, a respectable outfit; the International Journal of Theoretical Physics is published by Springer (although it is far from their flagship journal). That having been said, browsing the Google Scholar hits for "Cosmological General Relativity" certainly leaves the impression of a walled garden. Are there any sources that address this theory in detail, apart from Carmeli, Hartnett and their cronies? I don't see strong evidence of this, and I am leaning towards delete. Sławomir Biały (talk) 22:16, 27 August 2014 (UTC)[reply]

• Comment
  Ben Gurion University and President of the Israel Physical Society. John Hartnett is a Research Fellow at the University of Adelaide
  and has published more than 200 papers in scientific journals, book chapters and conference proceedings.

So the theory has been published in reliable sources, even if it has attracted no attention beyond the researchers. However it is taken seriously by some outside the academic world, which might establish its notability. I would like to see evidence that reliable secondary sources mention the theory, even if only when discussing creationists.

TFD (talk) 20:41, 28 August 2014 (UTC)[reply]

It is rather misleading to trot out 't Hooft's credentials as the editor in chief of Foundations of Physics. The citations in question were well before 't Hooft took on that responsibility. We must not forget here that this is the journal that published the crank

Einstein-Cartan-Evans theory, so I think there are very good reasons for questioning this journal's reliability. Also, while "president of the Israel Physical Society" certainly sounds impressive, this society does not seem to be very notable. Their flagship journal, the Bulletin of the Israel Physical Society, does not even have a listed impact factor. The whole thing seems very questionable. Sławomir Biały (talk) 12:51, 29 August 2014 (UTC)[reply

]

Carmeli's 1996 paper was not publsihed when the journal published Evans' theory. Incidentally Carmeli also co-wrote "Cosmological Relativity: a New Theory of Cosmologly", International Journal of Theoretical Physics (1999), also published by Springer.

Before publishing his theory in 2003, Evans had authored over 100 papers that are listed in Google scholar.[5] The publishers include

Journal of Physical Chemistry A, the Journal of the Chemical Society

- that's just a sample from the first two pages.

The reality is that academic journals do publish papers whose methodology or mathematical calculations are later found to be wrong or whose research has been falsified. When this is uncovered, academic journals then retract their support for publication, as they did in the case of the Einstein-Cartan-Evans theory. Incidentally, the most reputable newspapers also publish stories that turn out to be incorrect, and they publish retractions. These sources are considered accurate not because they never wrong, but because they are usually accorate and errors are detected and retracted.

TFD (talk) 20:27, 29 August 2014 (UTC)[reply]

This is all well and good, but in your original post, you asked us to accept that Foundations of Physics is a reliable source because 't Hooft is editor-in-chief. Now you have shifted the goalposts considerably, asking us to believe that Foundations of Physics would judiciously publish corrections to papers that appeared a long time before 't Hooft's tenure there, but with presumably the source of its reliability still being 't Hooft's Nobel pedigree and the recent resurgence of that periodical under his regime. This seems rather implausible to me. Is it not much more likely that no one even noticed the theory in question? A correction of the kind published in the case of ECE would actually confer more notability, not less. But so far I haven't seen any substantially independent treatment of the subject, even published in a questionable place like FoP, despite Carmeli and Hartnett writing screeds about it. Sławomir Biały (talk) 21:21, 29 August 2014 (UTC)[reply]

It did not transition from a conspiracy theory magazine to a mainstream academic source when the new editor joined. Presumably he joined because it was already mainstream. Even if that were the case, the new editor could denounce all previous articles, and would not have to do it on a case by case basis. He would have done that had there been pervasive problems. The issue that published Moreli[6] also had articles by Philip Pearle (Hamilton College) and Euan Equires (University of Durham), Robert W. Batterman (Ohio State) and Homer White (Pikeville College), A Nariz (Innsbruck University), and others who were qualified in their fields and published in many other academic journals. TFD (talk) 18:59, 30 August 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Hartnett does not argue in his articles that have been published in numerous astronomical and physics journals that the earth is 6,000 years old and in fact acknowledges the universe is billions of years old. And the authors of the theory were not young earth creationists. TFD (talk) 18:03, 31 August 2014 (UTC)[reply]

I don't see where he acknowledges the age of the universe in his papers. Perhaps you could offer a quote? jps (talk) 22:39, 1 September 2014 (UTC)[reply]

• Keep The theory has been discussed in multiple reliable sources, including World Scientific, Foundations of Physics, the International Journal of Theoretical Physics,[7]] Frontiers of Fundamental Physics[8] The theory is also briefly discussed in Space, Time, and Spacetime (Springer 2007), p.37.[9]

Two of these sources have been questioned. World Scientific has a similar name to a questionable publisher. Foundations of Physics published the Einstein-Cartan-Evans-Theory, which they later retracted. But there is no question about their current status as a reputable publisher and they continue to publish articles about Cosmological General Relativity.

If the theory is

fringe

then it meets requirements for inclusion becasue it has been discussed in reliable soruces. That does not mean of course that the theory should be discussed in other articles about cosmology or metaphysics.

TFD (talk) 17:41, 31 August 2014 (UTC)[reply]

I would not consider sources written by Hartnett and Carmeli as independent sources. Usually we should have sources on a theory besides the people who originated it. If it is fringe, as you say, then it definitely can't be based on the work written by the main proponents. And anyway the sources I have seen look like primary sources rather than secondary sources. A good source would be independent literature reviews discussing the work of Hartnett and Carmeli. Sławomir Biały (talk) 12:51, 1 September 2014 (UTC)[reply]

• Keep There could be dozens of relativity theories. Therefore we should not wonder that a notable physicist produced yet another relativity theory. String theory isn't physics yet, it is applied mathematics, as Sylvester James Gates, Jr. said in his TTC course. Both string theory and this theory are untested yet. We could remove creationist rant from the article, so its creationist implications are not the issue. If it is considered fringe, it could pass
  WP:FRIND, and the fact that it is fringe could be spelled out for the reader. Tgeorgescu (talk) 02:18, 1 September 2014 (UTC)[reply
  ]
  • I don't see how it could pass
    WP:FRIND since no one has identified any sources that are independent of Hartnett and Carmeli. jps (talk) 22:37, 1 September 2014 (UTC)[reply
    ]
    • See [10]. There is at least a bunch of other authors that repeatedly mention the theory. These include Pradhan, Oliveira, Amirhashchi, etc.TR 17:01, 2 September 2014 (UTC)[reply]

• Delete:Zero mention in reliable independent secondary sources. The reliable sources listed in the article do not even mention this fringe theory, so there is no way of gauging its notability. My own searches turned up nothing even faintly promising. Dominus Vobisdu (talk) 03:41, 1 September 2014 (UTC)[reply]
  • How can you say that "Carmeli’s Accelerating Universe is Spatially Flat Without Dark Matter", published in Springer's "International Journal of Theoretical Physics" (2005),[11] as well as dozens of similar articles in academic journals is "Zero mention in reliable independent secondary sources"? TFD (talk) 05:20, 1 September 2014 (UTC)[reply]
    • No one seems to think that a paper written by Hartnett qualifies as an independent source except for you. jps (talk) 22:36, 1 September 2014 (UTC)[reply]
      • I thought he was referring to the publications. TFD (talk) 16:09, 2 September 2014 (UTC)[reply]

• Comment: I have definitely seen worse articles. It is well structured and readable. But if it is too fringe, it regrettably has to go, but don't close this matter too fast. YohanN7 (talk) 12:29, 1 September 2014 (UTC)[reply]
• Delete - The paragraph "Carmelian Cosmological Relativity is a serious attempt to deal with many of the most important and challenging unsolved problems in cosmology and astrophysics. Nevertheless, it is not a widely accepted theory. This is likely due to two reasons. First, it presents a serious challenge to the established standard Lambda-Cold Dark Matter (Λ-CDM) Big Bang theory. Secondly, Hartnett has adopted it as the basis for much of his work on a creationist view of the universe, since CGR provides a credible solution to the starlight problem present in Young Earth Creationist cosmologies. Hartnett describes this as applying "creationist boundary conditions" to Carmeli's theory, namely that the universe has a center and an edge." gives enough of a reason to delete. Any theory that says that the universe has an edge in order to justify the introduction of a creator is obviously completely lacking in any semblance of academic rigor. It is a see through attempt to take accepted theory and modify it to allow for a creator, for no reason other than belief. The modification of accepted theory is in no way come upon as a result of observation. This is clearly a fringe theory.
  talk 12:13, 2 September 2014 (UTC)[reply
  ]

• Weak keep Looking at the list of articles citing the main paper about Cosmological relativity collected by SPIRES [12], it seems there is a fair body of work on the subject from a group of more or less independent authors taking the theory (somewhat) seriously. There is certainly enough coverage there to satisfy
  WP:IJUSTDONTLIKEIT.TR 16:49, 2 September 2014 (UTC)[reply
  ]
  • I'm not sure I would consider that list to be "independent authors". It's more like a collection of fringe theory promoters, students, and friends of Carmeli. jps (talk) 12:27, 3 September 2014 (UTC)[reply]
• Keep Whether or not it is nonsensical as a theory, there have been enough publications that it is notable. It doesn't have to be widely accepted, it just has to be noticed. The argument by
  AlanS is irrelevant--we are not peer-reviewing for a journal. We are not here to judge the correctness of scientific theories. NPOV (and even Scientific POV) means we discuss it properly in context, not that we do not discuss it. DGG ( talk ) 05:25, 3 September 2014 (UTC)[reply
  ]
  • I don't see where we are capable of writing a good article on the subject since it hasn't been subject to the normal critical review we would require. That's the essence of
    WP:FRIND. jps (talk) 12:27, 3 September 2014 (UTC)[reply
    ]
    • You are confusing neutrality and independent sources. The sources meet the criteria of Wikipedia:Independent sources, which is the essay that WP:FRIND ("Independent sources") links to. We do not require that sources are written by people who are neutral about subjects, and the publications I cited are all neutral on the topic. In fact most reliable scholarly sources are not neutral, as their authors typically have opinions on the subjects about which they write. TFD (talk) 17:12, 3 September 2014 (UTC)[reply]
      • From what I read, all the authors being cited are either students or collaborators. That is not independence. jps (talk) 13:10, 5 September 2014 (UTC)[reply]
        • "Independent sources" does not mean that the authors do not have opinions. It means that the publisher has no financial interest in the subject. For example a website owned by the oil industry would not be independent in the subject of climate change because the oil industry has a financial industry in creating doubt. It does not mean that the authors of sources used cannot have an opinion on the subject. If you question that statement could you please provide a link to a policy or guideline that supports your interpretation. TFD (talk) 15:52, 5 September 2014 (UTC)[reply]
          • No, it's not just about financial interest, obviously. It's about whether or not there is a direct connection between the sources. For example, we wouldn't accept a mother writing about her son as an "independent source" even if their finances were separate. jps (talk) 20:11, 5 September 2014 (UTC)[reply]
            • Under the law, a mother and son are deemed not to be dealing at arms length, so the editor of the New York Times would not assign a woman reporter to write about her son. On the other hand a section in an astronomy textbook explaining a theory developed by the author would be a reliable source for that theory. Carmeli, Hartnett et al. do not own Springer and Springer does not promote their specific theories. It is not the same as using a book published by the Church of Scientology as a source for the Church. If you disagree then you can ask that Springer publications no longer be accepted as reliable sources. But your interpretation of policy is wrong. Now please find the wording in policy or guidlines that supports your interpretation. TFD (talk) 20:27, 5 September 2014 (UTC)[reply]

That is not what the policy says and again I ask you to read

"Independent sources"

. "An interest in a topic is vested where the source holds a financial or legal relationship with the topic.... Independent sources have editorial independence (advertisers do not dictate content) and no conflicts of interest (no potential for personal, financial, or political gain from the publication).... Independent sources are not necessarily "neutral" in the sense of being even-handed. An independent source may hold a strongly positive or negative view of a topic or an idea. For example, a scholar might write about literacy in developing countries, and he or she may strongly favor teaching all children how to read, regardless of gender or socioeconomic status, but if the author gains no personal benefit from these children learning how to read, then the publication is an independent source on the topic."

Incidentally, if publishers are not the source, then how do you treat news items that are not signed by a reporter? How do you know that the reporter on U.S. politics is not a Democrat or Republican and therefore too unindependent to write about it?

TFD (talk) 20:51, 5 September 2014 (UTC)[reply]

References

The above discussion is preserved as an archive of the debate. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as the article's

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