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This is an old revision of this page, as edited by Hillman (talk | contribs) at 00:57, 20 December 2005 (→[[Myron Evans]]: reply to Colin). The present address (URL) is a permanent link to this revision, which may differ significantly from the current revision.

Myron Evans

Delete. Article appears to be original research, and subject of article is non-notable. Srleffler 03:00, 16 December 2005 (UTC)[reply]

Qualifying this a bit: the article has been rewritten to focus on Evans' biography. It is no longer "original research", and it may well be the case that Evans is a notable crackpot. Those who read the article early in the afd process might want to take another look and see if it changes their vote.--Srleffler 04:44, 18 December 2005 (UTC)[reply]
Comment. The link to the argument about Wikipedia not needing notability requirements makes the above essentially an argument for deleting this page. If even the page's supporters admit that the subject is not notable, the page is surely deletable under current policy.--Srleffler 06:04, 16 December 2005 (UTC)[reply]
At the time of my original vote, I was unaware that speedy deletion was mandated for articles not asserting the importance of an individual. I'm not happy with this policy, frankly, and I don't think it actually has consensus at this point (it only ever passed with 74% support, less than that required to make someone an admin), but I recognize that we can't very well allow individual editors to question policy because they don't think it has consensus (WP:IAR aside).
So let me change my reasoning in this case: Dr. Evans appears to have some hundreds of Google hits (some of the 1,150 appear to be talking about another Myron Evans but most seem to be referring to the man in question), he has 59 Google Scholar hits. He is not, of course, profoundly notable, but he's certainly modestly notable at least. My vote remains keep. —Simetrical (talk) 07:55, 16 December 2005 (UTC)[reply]
Would you like your hat served with tartar sauce or plain? --ScienceApologist 15:58, 18 December 2005 (UTC)[reply]
  • Keep. The prize and scholarship makes him notable, though I'd be happier if the article were more heavily focused on him, and if the section on his theory included language indicating that it's not widely accepted within the scientific community. -Colin Kimbrell 21:46, 19 December 2005 (UTC)[reply]
  • Comment. Certainly, Evans is a classic crackpot. (Einstein and Cartan are rolling in their graves.) But is he even notable? The Harrison Memorial Prize and apparently indistinguishable Mendola Memorial Prize are awarded annually "to a British Chemist who is under 30 years of age for promising original investigations in chemistry", according to Royal Society of Chemistry list of prizes. Is this really a sufficiently notable prize? RSC lists a very long list of prizes at their website, check it out. As for a scholarship, I dare say most commentators have recieved one of those at one time or another. I have been utterly unable to verify the claims about affiliation with Cornell Theory Center, etc., although this is mentioned at a large number of websites like American Antigravity, Free Energy News whose reliability is... suspect :-) I did find however that Myron Evans is one of these charming fellows who likes to take legal action to discourage debunkers. Check this out: Myron Evans Censorship Rebuttal. The "AIAS" which Evans mentions is something called the Alpha Institute of Advanced Studies, an organization directed by himself. At least some of the prizes he claims on his C.V. appear to have been awarded by... AIAS! Hence the need for independent verification of alleged notability. The UW library does have three monographs coauthored by Myron Wyn Evans. All in all, it seems very clear that if we decide that Evans' contributions to chemistry are notable (I'd guess they are not, unless we want to have a biography of everyone who has coauthored a technical book, but I'm not a chemist), then the article needs to be rewritten to clarify the dubious nature of Evans's crackpot claims about free-energy and his so-called "theory".---CH 23:12, 19 December 2005 (UTC)[reply]
Comment: I was using "scholarship" in the sense of "body of scholarly effort produced by an academic". In particular, I was referring to some of his books and papers. The article could stand a few edit sessions, there's no question about that, but I think a deletion might be throwing the baby out with the bathwater. -Colin Kimbrell 00:21, 20 December 2005 (UTC)[reply]
Colin, we might be getting off the track, but did you notice that your Google Scholar search includes papers from Evans own site which apparently have not been published? So evidently you must be cautious in using Google Scholar to verify claims in suspect WP articles: there is certainly no guarantee that what you turn up there is even referreed, much less appeared in a respectable research journal. (Even then, of course, as the Bogdanov affair shows, problems can arise.) Also, AFAIK there is no "Evans lemma in gtr" except in his mind, and I think I know the gtr literature pretty well. What are your standards for notability? Simply having published a scholarly book or some papers? I think we need to maintain a higher standard than that, while perhaps not setting the bar as high as Brittanica. Still, I don't think you've answered the question: I see evidence for the dirty bathwater, but where's the baby?---CH 00:57, 20 December 2005 (UTC)[reply]
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