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. Keep. Fram (talk) 12:15, 16 January 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Adi Bulsara[edit]

Adi Bulsara (edit | talk | history | protect | delete | links | watch | logs | views) – (View log)

Appears to either be a hoax/prank or a fictitious biography. Most of the sources are bogus; the link to a conference supposedly in the subject's honor goes to a link farm site. The link to his personal site shown as "tribute to Adi Bulsara" is blank with "under construction"; the link to his supposed employer (a U.S. Navy research lab) gives a 404 error. Article looks like a vanity autobiography or COI creation. There appears to be someone with this name publishing works on physics, but not the person described here. Furthermore, even if everything in the article checked out -- which it doesn't -- subject would not pass WP:PROF test as a notable academic/researcher or WP:BIO in general. Delete. MCB (talk) 06:34, 7 January 2008 (UTC)[reply]

  • As I said, there's someone with that name (or at least surname and first initial) publishing physics books and papers, although if you consider the ones listed, they really don't add up to actual notability, just an average academic/researcher. It's not at all verifiable that that person is the one described in the article and photo. (By the way, an Erdos number of 5 is pretty meaningless as an indicator of prominence in the scientific field. I'm no worse than a 6 myself, and could probably find a shorter path if I put my mind to it, and I know two 5's who are not even working as scientists -:- one is a nurse, and the other is a librarian.) --MCB (talk) 10:00, 7 January 2008 (UTC)[reply]
  • Then I'd be a weak delete on this pending proof of notability - though I doubt it will be found. Cheers, Ouro (blah blah) 10:27, 7 January 2008 (UTC)[reply]
  • Comment Although technicians sometimes get listed as authors on papers, I have yet to see one that racks up the citation record that DGG uncovered. --Crusio (talk) 10:25, 8 January 2008 (UTC)[reply]
    • Have you evere heard about "walled gardens", sometimes disguised as "scientific schools"? It is not an unknown practice that a closed community may rack up their citation count by buddy-buddy cross-referencing each other in their numerous 2-3 page articles half of which are lists of their own references. Just as google bombs, "citation index bombs" were known long before internet, only not very famed. `'Míkka>t 17:08, 8 January 2008 (UTC)[reply]
  • Yes, I have heard of this (something like that was encountered in a recent AfD where a journal's impact factor was padded this way). But I strongly doubt that you could get away with this in journals like Phys Rev or Phys Rev Let. Getting published in journals like that is already an accomplishment (although not enough in my eyes to be notable). The citation rates obtained are excellent. --Crusio (talk) 22:04, 8 January 2008 (UTC)[reply]
    • P.S. You still did not answer my fundamental question: what was so important an ahievement of this guy? If no one can explain it then it is only natural to suspect something fishy. `'Míkka>t 17:11, 8 January 2008 (UTC)[reply]
  • It takes about 30 seconds to scroll through the citation list of the 1991 PRL and confirm that it is not a "citation index bomb". The citations are from many different authors writing in PRL, Phys. Rev. E, and similar journals. Bm gub (talk) 21:35, 8 January 2008 (UTC)[reply]
that the links did not work does not prove that the conference did not exist. the secondary sources are the citations to the papers, they're the relevant media. Obscure is about the opposite of the situation, and agreed the Erdos number paragraph should go--and I just now removed it. a naively written article. COI sometimes does that--it often ignores what is actually important. DGG (talk) 02:05, 11 January 2008 (UTC)[reply]
What we are missing is the fundamental basic criterion of WP:BIO: "A person is presumed to be notable if he or she has been the subject of published secondary source material which is reliable, intellectually independent, and independent of the subject." A mere listing of papers from a mechanically-retrieved citation database is not a useful secondary source and does not meet that criterion. The only verifiable source for this person's existence, let alone his work, is a list of the titles of published papers, with nothing to demonstrate the importance or significance of his work, which would require some sort of commentary, coverage, reviews, etc., from an independent source. I think that Wikipedia's policies require that type of sourcing in a biography, not just a publication or citation count. --MCB (talk) 03:00, 11 January 2008 (UTC)[reply]
but the significance in science is in the articles published: where they are published, and the citations. That's the way the subject works. That's the basis on which people are notable. A good article should have a commentary, but it isnt necessary for notability. We use the standards of the subject.i do not ask for citations to academic papers about athletes: I could say no athlete is notable unless his performance has been analyzed in peer-reviewed journals--it would be just as absurd. WoS is Reliable in the areas it covers (GS perhaps a little less so); it is not a derivative of the original paper or duplicative of other sources, and it is certainly independent of the subject. It has the additional advantage of being totally objective. I wish we had as good standards in other subjects. DGG (talk) 01:34, 12 January 2008 (UTC)[reply]
I don't believe that's sufficient to meet Wikipedia's notability guidelines. Mere citations do not show anything about the significance or importance of the work cited nor of the prominence of the author. All it shows is that someone published a paper and mentioned their work; in the relatively closed and hermetic community of academics and researchers, that is exceptionally common and completely unremarkable. For someone to be notable for Wikipedia purposes, however, there needs to be some sort of actual, published, third-party acknowledgement of the significance or importance of the subject's work -- something that asserts that in so many words. A citation does not provide that -- it could be as little as a part of a sentence in a long paper, or a tangential footnote. To put it more directly, if this guy is so notable, why are there no biographical references for him at all, anywhere? Not a single mention I can find among newspapers, magazines, TV, radio, nothing -- just a list of papers read by a tiny number of specialist researchers. That's a big difference. --MCB (talk) 08:11, 12 January 2008 (UTC)[reply]
  • Comment: I agree that the article should be kept, but I disagree with several things you say about notability here. Citation counts ARE relevant. Articles that have been cited hundreds of times by other researchers are a clear sign of notability. (Not necessarily the other way around: someone whose works have only seldomly been cited can still be notable on other grounds). Books need not be an indication of notability: if those books had never been cited or reviewed, then that would clearly be non-notable books. The fact that someone did his PhD with a Nobel Prize winner is not relevant either. Why should they inherit notability from their mentor? I know several such people and some of them are completely non-notable in an encyclopedic sense. --Crusio (talk) 15:41, 15 January 2008 (UTC)[reply]
  • Comment: Yes, I agree too that the article should be kept. However, I believe your reasons are specious. His notability is clearly via the fact he is a Fellow of the APS and they recognized his contributions. The fact he did a PhD under a Nobel Prize winner is also very important—the principle of "reflected glory" holds here...it's something akin to being the child of a king automatically qualifies you for a wiki bio. It's a well-known fact that the chances of you getting a Nobel Prize vastly increases if your PhD advisor was one also. The fact he is an author and has books is also very notable. I've never even met the guy, and yet his books are sitting on my shelf as we speak. That's notable. I don't care about the citations. People can have lots of citations in some obscure area of science, but if they never wrote a book, then they weren't really making a wider impact. Once someone writes a commercially published book they immediately become of interest for a bio, because of the breadth of their impact.WikiCrisis (talk) 21:13, 15 January 2008 (UTC)[reply]
  • Comment: Just for the record, I don't think working for a Nobelist indicates notability—most Nobelists run very large laboratories. On the other hand, having a very famous student is a is one of the factors in WP:PROF making for notability. DGG (talk) 00:38, 16 January 2008 (UTC)[reply]
  • Comment: Disagree. I'm not talking about "working for a Nobelist." I'm talking about being the PhD student of one. A PhD that was "given birth" by a Nobelist is a very interesting beast to study. That person has a lot of reflected glory. That person has invariably contributed to the body of work that the Nobelist was known for. It's like a parent-child relationship. As readers we are fascinated to know what became of Einstein's actual children...and indeed they all have wiki bios. Likewise we are interested in the academic children of Nobel Prize winners.WikiCrisis (talk) 07:40, 16 January 2008 (UTC)[reply]
  • Comment: WikiCrisis, Einstein's was a very different time. Einstein didn't have many PhD students working for him in his lab. Current Nobelists, especially in the life sciences, run huge labs, with sometimes 30 or more PhD students and postdocs working for them concurrently. Working for a Nobelist, not even as a PhD student or postdoc, therefore doesn't confer notability and these people will have to show what they're worth on themselves. --Crusio (talk) 09:09, 16 January 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Email from subject[edit]

This evening I received an email from the subject of the article (I have no reason to doubt his identity) citing factual errors including his date of birth, and saying, "I WANT that stupid page deleted. I did NOT authorize it, and whoever wrote it has totally screwed it up. I do NOT have the time to go in and fix it up, and I DON'T want to fix it up. I don't need a "vanity" page (I got this from the comments). So...I am requesting that you proceed with the deletion. Just do it!!!"

While authorization from the subject is never needed for a Wikpedia biography, and the subject's request is not grounds for deletion, I wanted to bring the email to the attention of the AfD, without further comment except to note that should the article be kept as a result of this AfD, WP:BLP would require removal of all questionable and unsourced biographical details. (He went on to clear up the record regarding his contributions to the authorship of papers credited to him, and I plan to answer his message emphasizing that none of the comments here should be construed as criticism of his work or of him personally. --MCB (talk) 06:41, 15 January 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Comment: I have seen vanity articles before, but this is not one of them. The factual errors noted should be corrected (or if no correct info is available about, e.g. date of birth, it should be removed). The subject clearly is notable, with papers that have been cited hundreds of times by his peers. --Crusio (talk) 09:40, 15 January 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Comment: Yes, this is an occasional response by eminent (and not-so-eminent) people when their notability is questioned at AfD--"who are those guys to judge me. I want nothing to do with them!" I hope this will decrease as the quality of work increases. DGG (talk) 00:40, 16 January 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Comment: Yeah, agreed. That's a very perceptive psychological observation. The wish for deletion is nothing to do with the quality of the article....it is the nature of wiki that that improves over time. The real issue is eminence has been questioned. This is all the more reason to ignore the request and not delete the article, as it is only an emotional knee-jerk reaction.WikiCrisis (talk) 07:47, 16 January 2008 (UTC)[reply]
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 talk page or in a deletion review). No further edits should be made to this page.
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