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. - Mailer Diablo 05:44, 19 September 2006 (UTC)[reply]

EmDrive and Emdrive[edit]

Note: please don't forget to sign your vote or comment using ~~~, and don't even think about multivoting! ---CH 01:20, 16 September 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Whilst this is true, this does not deal with the fact that one cannot educate people on something that one chooses to ignore. It is for this reason that wikipedia must cover psuedoscience. LinaMishima 15:31, 16 September 2006 (UTC)[reply]
You have a good point, but I'm concerned about our ability to educatte people properly, and I'm with CH in being disappointed. The problem is that our "reliable sources," frankly, are failing us; New Scientist keeps publishing "fair and balanced" articles on subjects that should either be either solidly criticized or ignored. The scientific community ignores them, and then these bozos create a controversy to keep the magazine exciting, so our only source is the misleading New Science article. Siiiigh. -- SCZenz 17:22, 16 September 2006 (UTC)[reply]
I'd like to add some relevant information to my previous comment:
  1. Science fiction author Greg Egan (who happens to be a physicist by training) has just posted (in the moderated newsgroup sci.physics.research, which traditionally was devoted to discussions by research physicists but unfortunately is now dominated by enthusiasts with little background in physics) a telling indictment of the New Scientist article on which the article under discussion in this AfD was based in the newsgroup sci.physics.research, which I hope everyone will read forthwith! In particular, note that Egan makes the same points that I, SCZenz, and others have made: in the physics community, New Scientist is increasingly regarded as the scientific analogue of The National Enquirer; contrary to the impression left by the cited article, the so-called EM drive appears to be firmly in the arena of pseudoscience, as suggested by the fact that the "inventor's" claims for this device would appear to violate conservation of momentum,
  2. Several recent New Scientist articles, which in my opinion should never have been published, including the one critiqued by Egan, have been uncritically cited at the WIkipedia. While I understand why several voters here have stated that they feel the article should be kept but neutralized, I feel these voters underestimate the tenacity of the POV-pushing users, and I respectively request that in the near future they spend some time assisting members of Wikipedia:WikiProject Physics and Wikipedia:WikiProject Pseudoscience members in trying to neutralize some older problem articles as well as EM drive, which appears very likely to become a new problem article in the physics pages here:
    1. Cover article "Take a leap into hyperspace", New Scientist, 07 January 2006 describes a supposed "rocket driven by quantum gravity", allegedly ascribed to a so-called"Heim quantum theory for space propulsion" (no such theory is known to mainstream physics), and apparently mentions the so-called "EM drive"; see Talk:Heim theory for endless contentious wrangling with (in the first case) a user, Hdeasy (talk · contribs), who publishes fringe papers on Heim theory, which is generally regarded in the physics community as cranky; see also numerous letters suggesting why the editors may be impelled by the low tastes of certain readers to publish such Dreck,
    2. An item in New Scientist, 17 December 2005 apparently mentions a so-called ""negative matter propellantless propulsion"; see for example Talk:Reactionless drive, Talk:Dean drive, Talk:Hutchison effect, Talk:John Hutchison,
    3. An item in New Scientist, 27 October 2001 mentions a so-called "Dark Energy Metric Engineering Exotic Propulsion"; see for example Talk:Harold E. Puthoff, Talk:Stochastic electrodynamics, Talk:Bernard Haisch; see also a review of Haisch's book The God Theory in New Scientist, 03 June 2006, and the "Breaking News" item on Haisch/Rueda from New Scientist, 14 August 2005,
    4. Earlier items apparently described putative "black budget secret government interest" regarding the so-called "Podkletnov effect", which appears to have been greatly overstated; see Talk:Eugene Podkletnov for contentious discussion.
Again, my point is that those voting for us to "to the right thing" and produce articles which describe dubious fringe proposals in WP:NPOV fashion should resolve to get involved themselves in helping Wikpedia users with expertise in advanced physics to keep all these articles in line with WP:NPOV. To a large extent, I feel that users without such expertise need to take the word of those with such expertise about what the mainstream views are, bearing in mind WP:AGF with regard to our fair-mindedness.---CH 02:03, 19 September 2006 (UTC)[reply]
  • Comment I am sick of New Scientist being brought up in every AfD discussion on some borderline subject...in this ongoing AfD, it is being used to establish the "notability" of a manufacturer of tin-foil hats. Seriously. Frankly, this "EmDrive" is "another of those pesky pages" which pose a grave danger to the integrity of Wikipedia as a real encyclopaedia. And we are not an archive of New Scientist back issues, as far as I know. Byrgenwulf 21:47, 16 September 2006 (UTC)[reply]
  • To expand a little on Edhubbard's comment, since this is something that's been bothering me lately. Some things are just nonsense, be they pseudoscience, junk science, or whatever. Many of them are so transparently rubbish that no-one bothers publishing a peer-reviewed, serious article pointing out exactly why they are rubbish, leaving this work to the bloggers, "skeptic sites", etc. However, if the nonsense in question has a Wikipedia article, it too often proves impossible to use the article to "educate" people as to why the subject is nonsense, because there exist no "reliable sources" giving criticism of it, resulting in all criticism being reverted as "original research" or in the name of "NPOV". Even if the criticism added amounts merely to the application of generally well-accepted scientific principles, the "citation needed" tags spring up all over it, and it gets removed eventually, or forms a horrendous drain on whatever poor editor volunteers to shepherd the article). Hence the article ends up being a hagiography of the nonsense, which simply does not do for an encyclopaedia. Since Wikipedia is not a science-related news blog, there is no reason to report on phenomena which have not generated a decent amount of material in the peer-reviewed literature, and hence EmDrive doesn't yet have a place here. Byrgenwulf 06:40, 18 September 2006 (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.