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This is an old revision of this page, as edited by JackSarfatti (talk | contribs) at 00:28, 24 September 2005. The present address (URL) is a permanent link to this revision, which may differ significantly from the current revision.

Look you little twits, I don't know how to use this talk thing, but you are all going to wind up behind the 8-ball ground up in a USG counter-terrorist investigation if you continue to smear me in Wiki with false negative information. Why? Because there is somethng else going on that you have all blundered into making yourselves all into suspects on this other thing. Chris Hillman in particular is stepping on dynamite. Every correction I put in is the damn truth and Chris STOP putting in your own false info. This IS Jack Sarfatti sarfatti@pacbell.net I know my own life, how dare any of you call me a "vandal" when I am defending myself from the smears of pimply little twits like yourselves.



From: Jack Sarfatti <sarfatti@pacbell.net> Date: September 23, 2005 4:59:12 PM PDT To: hillman@math.washington.edu

Memorandum for the Record Here is the acceptable balanced version of the Wiki article that is OK with me that Chris Hillman keeps replacing with his inaccurate decidedly more negative smear of me:

Jack Sarfatti From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.

Jack Sarfatti is a frequent poster to certain Usenet groups, such as sci.physics. His contributions, are notable for their originality and imaginative writing. Sarfatti's entry in the net-legends FAQ begins: 

   Can be seen in the sci.* groups and alt.consciousness. A small collection of posts is available. *Not* a "crackpot" in the classic sense; has a Ph.D. in physics and understands the field quite well - but tends to use it to delve into philosophical concepts and outre' theories rather deeper than many other physicists care to read about. Also posts on and off to sci.psychology about connectionism and perception, and the neuro-psychological implications thereof.

Sarfatti's websites (See external links below.)

Sarfatti has an academic background in theoretical physics. He earned an undergraduate degree from Cornell University in 1960, where he wrote an honor's thesis under the guidance of Hans Bethe. He went on to earn a MS from UCSD in 1967 and a Ph.D from UCR in 1969 writing a thesis on local gauge symmetry in superfluids under the direction of Fred Cummings on local gauge symmetry in superfluids. He taught at San Diego State and was a Research Fellow with David Bohm at the University of London, 1971 and with Abdus Salam [ICTP, 1973-74] before venturing into non-academic pursuits as told in detail in his autobiography "Destiny Matrix." Sarfatti predicted the recently observed "supersolid" in a peer-reviewed publication months before Nobel Laureate Tony Leggett did. Ed Teller's protege George Chapline, Jr. and Lenny Susskind, inventor of string theory, Professor of Physics at Stanford will all vouch for Sarfatti's bona-fides as a theoretical physicist. Sarfatti's paper (1967) "Goldstone Theorem and the Jahn-Teller Effect" (Proc Physical Society of London), with Marshall Stoneham at UKAERE Harwell, is cited as an important paper in AIP "Resource Letter on Symmetry in Physics." Ray Chiao UCB Physics, credits Sarfatti with providing useful input for his early experiments on self-trapped laser filaments." Sarfatti claims to have derived Einstein's theory of General Relativity from the standard model's Higgs mechanism. His key formula for the curved part of the Einstein-Cartan tetrad is

B = (hG/c^3)^1/2"d"(Goldstone Phase of Higgs Field)

"d" denotes phase singularities like Dirac strings and Abrikosov branch cut phase jumps 2piN, where N is the winding integer. See also Hagen Kleinert's "multi-valued gauge transformations).

Einstein's metric tensor is then the local frame-invariant symmetric bilinear form of the EEP

g = (1 + B)(flat metric)(1 + B)

George Chapline, who according to http://www.wyp-ptm.org/lecturers.html#chapline "... received the U.S. Department of Energy E.O. Lawrence Award in 1983 and served as Science Advisor to the Associate Lab Director for Defense Programs at the Los Alamos National Labs in 2000 and 2001 ..." wrote on 16 February 2005, saying in part: "... Jack, Your solid He4 superfluid paper is wonderful! ... This paper is a precursor to quantum gravity, and much more important in that regard than string theory ( you can quote me). george ..."

Leonard Susskind, a co-inventor of string theory, professor of physics at Stanford, will confirm Sarfatti's essential role in his first published paper on quantum phase operators at Cornell in 1964. David Finkelstein, from Georgia Tech congratulated Sarfatti on his prediction of the ODLRO supersolid in Physics Letters A decades before it was seen in the lab.

In various writings over the years, Sarfatti has apparently made numerous claims about his activities, easily corroborated by serious historians, including these: 

   * at age 13, received "phone calls from the future" informing him of his special destiny,
   * founded a "Physics-Consciousness Research Group" with Werner Erhard, the founder of Esalen, and others,
   * consulted for U.S. intelligence agencies on the so-called "physics" of remote-viewing,
   * consulted for the U.S. Department of Defense on the Strategic Defense Initiative,
   * has worked or is working under 'deep cover' (allegedly explaining the small number of his published research papers),
   * involved in the publication of a controversial memoir by former K.G.B. agent Pavel Sudoplatov,
   * taught math and physics for the U.S. Navy at sea (on board aircraft carriers)

Sarfatti has had three books published by Author House since 2002, Destiny Matrix, Space-Time and Beyond II & Super Cosmos. He was awarded the Victor von Frankenstein "Weird Science" Award in December 2004 by the denizens of the alt.usenet.kooks newsgroup. [edit]

See also 

   * Usenet, an article about the Usenet in general

[edit]

External links 

   * Reality check], an essay by the late physicist Milton Rothman, reviewing for the skeptic group CSICOP the website of something called the Internet Science Education Project, a "corporation" apparently created by Jack Sarfatti
   * Crank dot net, a very extensive list of cranky websites
   * Part 1 of the net-legends FAQ
   * Is Jack Sarfatti a kook or a genius.., a thread from sci.physics
   * Disformation (an interview of Sarfatti)
   * A Sarfatti website
   * a Sarfatti web page containing some snippets of autobiography by Sarfatti, including photographs of himself literally at sea (on the flight deck of a carrier); see what appears to be Sarfatti's own account of the phone calls mentioned above
   * a Sarfatti website
   * a Sarfatti blog

Retrieved from "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jack_Sarfatti"

Categories: Usenet people

On Sep 23, 2005, at 4:34 PM, Jack Sarfatti wrote:

Chris Hillman (PhD in math from University of Washington it appears) refuses to stop vandalizing the information on me on Wiki with his own inaccuracies. He accuses me, his victim, of being the vandal. The Wiki Board must stop Hillman's vicious campaign of misinformation against me. Hillman is using shocking Nazi-like tactics systematically deleting positive factual information and replacing them with same false smears and personal attacks. Why Hillman keeps doing this needs investigation in the light of a concurrent hate-mail campaign against me accusing me of murder, with stories similar to the charges against Ira Einhorn, from unsigned letters sent from Springfield, MO on Sept 17,2005. I shall add Chris Hillman's name as a possible suspect in my impending complaint to the FBI and the US Postal Inspectors.

On Sep 23, 2005, at 3:55 PM, Jack Sarfatti wrote:


OK one of the offenders slandering me with deliberate lies and exaggerations removing all positive information about me from other physicists is John Baez's buddy Chris Hillman from the University of Washington Data Compression Department. He was hiding his ID on Wiki, but it did not take long to find out. Mr. Hillman should cease and desist intentional vilification and smearing of me or face the legal consequences. His personal attacks and removing of quotes by famous physicists like David Finkelstein, George Chapline and Leonard Susskind and replacing them with inaccurate smears from non-entities e.g. like I received a PhD from UCSD in 1967 (it was from UCR 1969, the MS was UCSD 1967) although that is fairly innocuous Hillman keeps putting in his wrong info after I have corrected it.

On Sep 23, 2005, at 2:01 PM, Tony Smith wrote:


The page at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jack_Sarfatti was "... last modified 19:57, 23 September 2005 ..." and stated, on the last line before [edit]: "... Jack Sarfatti is a well known crackpot. ...".

According to http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Jack_Sarfatti&diff=23856312&oldid=2385 3763 that line was added by 68.123.140.70

According to http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Special:Contributions&target=68.123.14 0.70 the history of 68.123.140.70 editing the Jack Sarfatti page is

  • 19:24, 23 September 2005 (hist) (diff) Jack Sarfatti
  • 19:10, 23 September 2005 (hist) (diff) Jack Sarfatti
  • 19:09, 23 September 2005 (hist) (diff) Jack Sarfatti
  • 18:41, 23 September 2005 (hist) (diff) Jack Sarfatti (Deletion of

vicious lies & disinformation)

  • 18:30, 23 September 2005 (hist) (diff) Jack Sarfatti
  • 16:47, 23 September 2005 (hist) (diff) Jack Sarfatti
  • 16:04, 23 September 2005 (hist) (diff) Jack Sarfatti
  • 15:45, 23 September 2005 (hist) (diff) Jack Sarfatti


According to http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=User:68.123.140.70&action=edit Wikipedia does not yet have a User page called 68.123.140.70.


Jack, I don't know an easy way to control such malicious anonymous editing with respect to wikipedia if it permits anybody to edit anything.

However, if wiki were to require that any change in your page be approved by you using a username/password that only you have, that might solve your problem.

Also, you could demand that wiki remove any biographical page about you, and then if they did not, you might be able to hold them responsible for any defamation.

There might be some problems about holding wiki responsible if you consent to wiki having a page about you, and you know, or should know, that wiki policy permits anybody to edit any page, including allowing you to remove anything.

In that case, wiki might say that it is your responsibility to keep your page "clean", and that wiki has given you the editing means to do so, and that you have failed to do so.

My thoughts above are NOT based on a clear understanding of whatever wiki's official policies might be. Of course, if they allow defamatory material in violation of their own policies, maybe that might make them liable for defamatory material.

wiki does have a "Policies and Guidelines" page at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Policies_and_guidelines and it says in part: "... Some policies are also enforced by temporary blocks (notably as a mechanism for dealing with vandalism) by admins. In extreme cases the Arbitration Committee may make a ruling to deal with highly disruptive situations, as part of the general dispute resolution procedure. ...".

A page at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Resolving_disputes#Avoidance describes a multi-step procedure for dispute resolution, and says "... If you have taken all other reasonable steps to resolve the dispute, request Arbitration. Be prepared to show that you tried to resolve the dispute by other means. ...".

A page at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Requests_for_arbitration has a lot of material about arbitration.

A page at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Arbitration_policy has material about arbitration policy.

Also, you might request protection under wiki procedure described at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Requests_for_page_protection is a page that discusses requests for protection of pages from vandalism. It lists some such current requests, including: "... Ted Kennedy Constant vandalism by removal of entire paragraphs ...".


All this stuff seems to me to be very burdensome bureaucratic bullshit, which is why I think that wiki is very seriously flawed, except as a repository for uncontroversial facts, such as who is buried in Grant's tomb (OK, maybe in today's world even that might be controversial).

Tony


Content of the article

This article is causing some problems at the moment. I propose cutting it back to a minimal bio stub, then slowing adding material to it after it has been checked and has valid sources. What do others think? --Apyule 07:04, 11 September 2005 (UTC)

First of all, are you a theoretical physicist? What are your credentials?
Sarfatti has all the degrees from good universities Cornell & University of California all in physics. He has had influential publications easily documented. Someone has even had the arrogance to suggest censoring him because they did not like the title of his autobiography "Destiny Matrix". What is going on here? Two prominent physicists Leonard Susskind of Stanford, one of the inventors of string theory and George Chapline of Lawrence Livermore (asst to Ed Teller for years) will testify to Sarfatti's creativity in physics. For people without any credentials in the field to try to censor the presentation of Sarfatti's ideas on the emergence of Einstein's gravity from the quantum substratum is shameful. Since Sarfatti has been prominent in US Intelligence operations one wonders about the motivations of these non-physicists.
(Unsigned comment by User:Adastra, who may or may not be none other than Jack Sarfatti. Adastra, please avoid confusion about who said what by using indentation and signing your comments! It would be helpful if you provided some information about your physics background and identify on your user page. ---22:43, 21 September 2005 (UTC))

Editorial comment, moved from article to this talk page

I dispute the use of "alternative" here. That is not accurate at all. Sarfatti only used mainstream physics, i.e. Einstein's general theory of relativity, quantum field theory and standard ideas from soft-condensed matter physics. Where are examples of Sarfatti using "alternative physics"? On the contrary, Sarfatti has criticized Hal Puthoff & Bernie Haisch who really use "alternative physics" ,e.g. the so-called "PV" and "Yilmaz" challenges to Einstein's GR and the so-called Stochastic ED "origin of inertia".

(Editorial comment by anon editor, moved here from article by CH (talk) 19:57, 11 September 2005 (UTC))

Disputed tag

I am removing the disputed tag after the good work by CH . --Apyule 02:26, 12 September 2005 (UTC)

AfD discussion

— JIP | Talk 07:30, 14 September 2005 (UTC)

Edits by anonymous editor from 67.124.118.41

You said in the edit line that you felt that my revision of the article failed to maintain NPOV since it began by saying that many feel Sarfatti's posts are inoherent and that he has been labeled a crank. I disagree. The article would indeed have been NPOV if it had read Sarfatti is a crank who frequently posts incoherent articles to certain newsgroups, but instead it says that many readers have stated that they find his posts incoherent and that Sarfatti has been labeled a crank. That is actually NPOV, because it states verifiable fact. For example, as pointed out in the article, Sarfatti has earned the "crankiest" rating from the crank.dot website. Searching Google, you can find occasional posts in which posters say things like "is it just me, or is this utter nonsense?".

I reverted to the original order of statements because Sarfatti has a biography here on the basis of being a Usenet personablity, not on the basis of his academic background in physics. Obscure persons with physics Ph.D.s do not warrant biographies on that ground alone, as you probably appreciate. Sarfatti's claim to fame are his zillions of postings. You'd have a very very hard time justifying any claim that he is highly regarded by physicists as a physicist. OTH, I can justify my claim that say Roger Penrose is highly regarded by citing numerous review articles published in leading journals stressing the importance of his many contributions, by citing zillions of citations of his research papers in research papers by other physicists, etc.

You added some claims about Sarfatti's alleged contribs to some popular books. I deleted those claims because so far no-one has verified them, and I don't even know what they mean. Was he quoted in the books? Was he a copy editor working for the publisher? What?

If you want to reply, it would be helpful that you create a user account and provide some information about your physics background and identity. (Since Jack Sarfatti's recent posts originate from a Pac Bell account, and 67.124.118.41 is currently registered to Pac Bell, you can perhaps see why we are curious about your identity.) ---22:40, 21 September 2005 (UTC) (by User:Hillman)

Interesting discussion going on here....here's my 2cents. I think this is pretty NPOV; Hillman is correct in asserting that the person's notability is almost completely here on the basis of his perceived crankhood, rather than any merit to his theories. His physics background makes his postings more technical than that of the usual crank and that does add to his notoriety.
On the other hand, there are definitely problems with POV in this article. I've already changed this twice, and Hillman has changed it back twice, so I will explain what the problem is. The sentence "Unlike most who have been labeled crackpots, Sarfatti does have an academic background in theoretical physic." is definitely not NPOV. The "DOES have" emphasizes that it is somehow amazing that Sarfatti has a degree in physics. I feel there's some "OMG he has a Ph.D. in physics!!!" sentiment leaking through. Implicitly the reader is supposed to recognize that knowledge in physics and such postings by Sarfatti is at odds somehow; consequently this is a judgment on Sarfatti by the article rather than others mentioned in the article. I will delete "does" and hopefully Hillman will leave that alone.
I also feel that the "unlike" comment is rather dubious. It definitely appears to me that there are plenty of educated cranks in physics. I think such an unverifiable quantitative statement should be avoided, but it's not really a big deal I guess. I'll remove that too and if Hillman disagrees he can put it back. --Chan-Ho 08:18, 23 September 2005 (UTC)

Hi, Chan Ho: of course I agree that simply earning a Ph.D. in physics is not notable. I don't feel it is neccessary to remove the "does", since I was simply trying to make the repetition of the statement that Sarfatti has an academic background which was made in the quote from the FAQ less awkward. However, I will bow to your wishes. I am about to edit my recent revert of the latest vandalism to see if I can find another graceful transition which cannot be interpreted as implying that simply earning a Ph.D. is somehow notable.---CH (talk) 21:18, 23 September 2005 (UTC)

Edit by Rwill9955

I have noticed that Rwill9955 edits in an extreamly similar way to Adastra, and I suspect some sockpuppet activity here. --Apyule 05:54, 23 September 2005 (UTC)

Indeed, I noted the following:
  • some of the anons, such as 68.123.140.70, actually referred to Jack Sarfatti in the first person,
  • Jack Sarfatti's recent signed posts originate from a Pac Bell account, and this machine and the others with similar IP addies are owned by Pac Bell,
  • these machines have been used only to edit the Sarfatti bio,
  • Jack Sarfatti's typical response to critisms in personal web pages or in the newsgroups has been to threaten legal action, and some of these anon edits threaten legal action.
  • several of the anons have added bizarre claims using technical buzzwards in a style which is very characteristic of Jack Sarfatti and in fact are extremely similar to claims in recent posts by Jack Sarfatti.
So I think it's pretty obvious what is going on here.
I also noticed that Rwill9955 stated that physicist Milton Rothman... like Heinz Pagels, allegedly died shortly after dissing Sarfatti. Maybe some admin can drop by an warn Rwill9955 to avoid making statements which could be construed as threats?
The most recent vandal, 131.111.8.102, appended to the bottom Jack Sarfatti is a well known crackpot; one possible explanation is that JS himself recalled the legal definition of libel and himself added this line so he could more credibly threaten legal action against Wikimedia, but this might also have been someone completely different who simply wants to further roil these troubled waters (ughgh). Again, maybe some admin can warn this user not to engage in vandalism.---CH (talk) 20:57, 23 September 2005 (UTC)
P.S. This Usenet article, posted under "Jack Sarfatti", is essentially identical to one of the anonymously vandalized versions noted above.---CH (talk) 21:09, 23 September 2005 (UTC)
Update: just reverted another vandalism by 68.123.140.248 (another machine owned by Jack Sarfatti's ISP). Maybe we should pursue having the page protected until such time as our anon loses interest in vandalizing it? So far he has done all of the following at least once:
  1. deleted the entire article
  2. threatened lawsuits

We seem to be over the 3 revert limit. Comments? Suggestions?---CH (talk) 23:15, 23 September 2005 (UTC)

Oh, wow, just look at the threat he just placed on my user talk page. Apparently I should expect to be raided by black helicopters, or possibly even to die suddenly :-/ (See the possible veiled threat noted above)---CH (talk) 00:04, 24 September 2005 (UTC)
I just requested on the requests for admins page for the page to be protected (after possibly reverting any changes by Sarfatti). Hopefully this should keep things stable for a while. Sarfatti, if you're reading this, your behavior (threats, reverts, etc.) is just making it easier for people to stop you from contributing to this article. --Chan-Ho 00:25, 24 September 2005 (UTC)

Consensus on intro paragraph

This is to establish the consensus on the intro paragraph dispute that has been occurring. Several people have reverted changes by what appears to be the same anon. The nature of the change is that the anon does not believe the opening should start by describing Sarfatti's Usenet notoriety, but instead the paragraph about his educational background.

People who believe it should start with Usenet stuff:

People who believe it should start with educational stuff:

Thus it appears to me that the consensus, such as it is, is for starting with Sarfatti's notorious postings on Usenet. The anon who believes otherwise should be aware that it is pointless, and fruitless, to keep reverting/changing this, without participating in the discussion which has already started above. --Chan-Ho 10:30, 23 September 2005 (UTC)

Attn Jack Sarfatti

Jack, thank you for using your own user account a few minutes ago to revert my reversion, but please take a deep breath and read the following pages:

After you have familarized yourself with basic Wikipedia behavioral standards and terminology, I stand ready to discuss with you why I feel that my revision of the biography, to which you apparently have objections, is NPOV and is not slanderous or a personal attack.

Wikipedia is a communal product. If you are willing to discuss your complaint about the content/tone of the article with other members of the community, you will probably find us willing to make some changes to include some of the features you want to see, while remaining consistent with NPOV and verifiable factual accuracy. Please refrain from anonymous edits and from using sock puppets in this dispute. OK?---CH (talk) 23:35, 23 September 2005 (UTC)

I have not done any anonymous edits. I simply unfamiliar with how the damn thing works that's all. DO NOT, I REPEAT DO NOT change my corrections to false info. Also DO NOT DELETE POSITIVE STATEMENTS ABOUT ME BY OTHER PEOPLE. You really do not want to be investigated by the FBI and other agencies swept up into something a lot bigger than you can all imagine because of your very bad timing.

Retrieved from "https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Talk:Jack_Sarfatti/Archive_3&oldid=23876054"