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This is an old revision of this page, as edited by IrreversibleKnowledge (talk | contribs) at 21:40, 6 January 2006 (reply). The present address (URL) is a permanent link to this revision, which may differ significantly from the current revision.

Edward Smith (psychologist)

Since Novemeber of last year on Talk:Edward Smith (psychologist) we have been trying to figure out if this person actually exists, what his academic credentials really are, etc. Is he a hoax? Is this vanity? I suspect he is a non-notable with a diploma mill doctorate. Ifnord 21:21, 4 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]

  • Speedy Keep While the tone of the article is a bit off, I think the guy is real and probably notable. I think he is on faculty at Georgia Southern University (scroll down), with a PhD (and MS) from University of Kentucky (see [1]). My only concern is it is a different Edward Smith, but Edward WL Smith's interests seem to overlap with the description from the wikipedia article.--Hansnesse 21:54, 4 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]
    • Even if he is the same guy, what makes him more notable than any other professor? I was going to quote some policy but looking at Wikipedia:Criteria for inclusion of biographies/Academics/Precedents I don't see a real consensus. Ifnord 22:13, 4 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]
      • Comment Perhaps we should delay deletion until a consensus emerges? I think it is certainly the case that a claim of notability is made in the article. According to the article, Edward Smith created a new field of psychology (so-called "abstract spatial psychology"). I know nothing of the field, but this is certainly a claim of notability (whether true or not, I can not judge). I think we should avoid the "let's delete it until we know more" approach. This article is about a real person with verifiable contributions to the academic literature. Lacking a criteria of notability for those contributions, it seems premature to delete. To delete until a consensus on deletion emerges is to de facto enforce a policy for which there is no agreement. The article can always be deleted later, but not so easily is it recreated. --Hansnesse 23:23, 4 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]
        • I think we can assume that when consensus is reached it will look something like, "Is this professor notable amongst other professors?" I do not believe this article meets that. Ifnord 23:56, 4 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]
  • Delete. Yes there is a debate. But meanwhile this is non notable. Obina 22:34, 4 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]
  • Delete - If we can't tell if this is Edward Smith the psychologist, or some other psychologist named Edward Smith, then he is not sufficiently notable. Tom Harrison Talk 22:44, 4 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]
  • Delete Forcefulness divided by seepingness equals sharpness seems at best original research. Dlyons493 Talk 23:47, 4 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]
  • Delete - Google searches on "justice maximism" and "abstract spatial psychology" find no evidence of their use by any credible source, and there's particularly no evidence of their use by the psychologist Edward WL Smith (like in this interview or this biography). In addition, the ultimate source appears to be uncredited documents [2] [3] at a homeboy web address www.cotse.net/users/t3nj/*. Tearlach 03:02, 5 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]
  • Comment American Psychologist (1998 Apr Vol 53(4) 368-370) has a note about an "Edward Smith" recieving an award "For his outstanding and diverse contributions to the study of cognition, including word perception, semantic memory, concept use, and reasoning." As I noted, I don't think the article is well written. I don't know if this is the same Edward Smith as in the article. I don't even know (and in fact, I suspect not) that he is the same as Edward W.L. Smith, since the citations in the American Psychologist article are to an E.E. Smith. A poorly written article, however, is no reason to delete. I think rewrite is needed, maybe a quality or dispute tag, but not deletion. --Hansnesse 03:44, 5 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]
  • Comment For me, notability and quality aren't issues: it's the complete unreliability of the article as an information source. We don't know who it's about, and the content originates in documents of equally unknown authorship on mailing lists and personal websites. See Wikipedia:Reliable sources on that point. Tearlach 05:36, 5 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]
  • Delete. What Tearlach said. JoaoRicardotalk 17:05, 5 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]
  • Keep I have verified the scientific findings of Edward Smith (such as the correlations of abstract spatial psychology) via observation and experimentation. I too am bothered by the fact that Edward Smith's exact identity and educational certificates are uncertain, and that his work has not been published in any major scientific journal, but the fact remains that his contributions are major and scientifically verifiable, not even mentioning the catalog of correctable omnipresent human flaws, which is not even a scientific thesis, but simply a readily-observable large contribution to society. I know, I know, we would all like to believe that all people that make major contributions to society, especially in scientific advancement, must meet those social prerequisites. We would also like to believe that everything that is abstract and/or humbling is b---s---. I too feel the temptation to suppress this article for those reasons, and to word that reasoning as you have -but come on, we're supposed to be responsible adults here, not like children in an unsupervised candy shop. I know it's hard though, despite being comical when viewed from the outside or in retrospect. Besides, wikipedia also has an NPOV policy. We shouldn't be selectively deleting information just because it goes against beliefs that we hold dear. IrreversibleKnowledge 04:02, 6 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]
    • We are not deleting the article because it goes against our beliefs. In fact, I don't even remember what Edward Smith is supposed to have said now. Our concern here is notability, not importance. Different things. JoaoRicardotalk 04:29, 6 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]
      • Come on, Joao, don't misrepresent what I said. I don't like to admit it either. To reiterate, for the sake of clarity, I am not referring so much to the specific findings of Edward Smith as going against our beliefs, but more so, the way that we want to delete this article because the fact that he has made major contributions is evidence against our belief that 'in order for a person to make large contributions to society, and especially scientific advancement, they must have certain social prerequisites, namely having been published in major scientific journal(s), having gone through the official educational system, and/or having a certain identity'. IrreversibleKnowledge 13:44, 6 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]
        • I am quite confused. Can you enlighten us as to whom the article refers to? If this is an unpublished Edward Smith, he is clearly not notable. If you know what material the Edward Smith of the article has produced (in a professional publication sense), by all means, please note it. I don't think Wikipedia is the place for a person's work which has never seen the rigors of professional scrutiny. Moreover, I do not think "scientifically verifiable," in the sense that such discoveries could be independenly reproduced by readers, is a good standard for Wikipedia (to say nothing of trying to "verify" the material based on such a short discussion, no lab report, etc.). Such a standard would invite all manner of crackpot. If you have information about who is Edward Smith, please let us know. I maintain my position to keep the article, as I noted above, as long as the aricle refers to someone with academic credentials. --Hansnesse 18:03, 6 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]
        • I don't know what Edward Smith's academic credentials are and aren't, so if you intend to delete all articles about people that lack credentials, then you may as well delete this article. However, that is not an honest policy, as we both know. I can see clearly from your sentences that you strongly adhere to the belief that 'in order for a person to make large contributions to society, and especially scientific advancement, they must have certain social prerequisites, namely having been published in major scientific journal(s), having gone through the official educational system, and/or having a certain identity, and anyone that lacks those social prerequisites that claims to have made such contributions is a crackpot'. I too am tempted to believe that. I know the feeling. It is a pleasurable crude forceful feeling of disrupting fine subtlety, in this case, the value of people that lack those social prerequisites, as such people are perceived as having the abstract property of subtlety, just as children and animals are. This is precisely one of the things that Edward Smith has discovered, so you have inadvertantly supported his findings with your very reply. However, I am responsible enough to resist that temptation so as not to make this encyclopedia biased. Anyway, it is clear that we will not resolve this dispute with personal discussion, and this dispute involves more general policy principles, so this is a matter for an RfC. IrreversibleKnowledge 21:40, 6 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]
        • Sorry, I didn't intend to misrepresent what you said. But I'm affraid you don't understand the situation here. You claimed that you had reproduced and validated Smith's experiments, but this is not the point. His experiments may have arrived at true conclusions, but they are not notable yet. JoaoRicardotalk 20:12, 6 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]
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