Summary of the Following
[Briefer Wikipedia-vs-DR history
is found elsewhere here.]
This posting is made in response to a series of harassments,
threats, vandalisms, extortions, and trashings visited
by cultists and astronomical amateurs — and
a deceitful Wikipedia Administrator who is both
— upon the Wikipedia biography of the publisher of DIO:
respected, even feared, but
definitely pol-unbeloved
astronomer Dennis Rawlins (DR), whose decades of very
well-known exposures of pseudo-science and fraud
— both outside (Cook, Velikovsky) AND
INSIDE
the science politician-establishment, have left in his wake a number of
organized parties who prefer that he be read as little as possible.
His resultant shunning
by several prominent DIO-skewered forums
is well-known to insiders.
Which is why the professedly open forum of Wikipedia (WP) is of concern
to these same forces. Thus, an attempt to close down
the DR Wikipedia biography was so easily
predictable.
[Question: How much alertness by Wikipedia's inexplicably dominant
DRbio-Administrator, “Vsmith” (Versus-Myth: cute)
would be needed to notice that the prediction was coming true?
(Or, is the more radical question: how much
neutrality would
be needed for VsMyth to care?)]
Scholarship, Trash, & Priorities:
DR, whose primary enterprise is publication
of the US' #1 astronomical-history journal, DIO
(the most technically sophisticated
such journal in the world), publishes both scientific & historical
researches that are respected
by top international scholars. DIO is subscribed to
by dozens of leading academic libraries around the planet.
(US Naval Observatory, Johns Hopkins, Oxford, Cambridge,
Royal Astronomical Society, etc.) The publication is entirely non-commercial:
subscribers (library & individual) pay nothing, not even postage.
But in addition, DR has published scholarly exposures of more historical
science fakes than anyone ever, a distinction which probably relates
to why the Rawlins Papers are kept in the US National Archives.
He has also revealed several contemporary
instances
of almost beyond-belief misbehavior by modern popular science institutions
(often in connection with defending historical fakes),
none of whom have been especially happy about the experience.
Since the central facts of his exposés are undeniably nailed down,
he has become the subject of attacks that are intended to
inhibit public access to and memory of those facts.
[Or, failing that ultimate desideratum, at the least to
devalue them through smearing
the messenger. After all, the whole purpose of the attacks on the DR bio
by several of the latest goofy-science
maid-men is to lower DR's cred.
Parallel tactic: place enough trash on the DR WP bio and its
Talk page as to raise doubts as to DR, hoping that no reader
will notice that the trashers somehow neglect to overturn
any of the bio's facts. Standard smear-strategy diversion.)
Thus it was predictable (and has long been effectively
predicted
that such tactics would be the inevitable resort of DR's enemies,
to the maddeningly accurate and discovery-dense
DR bio posted on Wikipedia in 2007-2008.
Of course, the bio's prescience here required about as much brilliance &
risk as predicting that, if you dangle
honey, you'll get bees.
[Did establishing the DR bio have a double-purpose,
as the Alexandria Lighthouse may've?]
Actually, bees&honey is a less apt analogy
(to certain pols' eternal-hope attempts to
eliminate rubber-duck DR from the scene)
than, say, whack-a-mole. Or greyhounds&race-rabbit.]
DIO from early on described itself as an experiment upon academe
(DIO 1.3 [1991]
‡10 [p.177]); and, intentionally or no,
the DR WP bio has proved every bit as fascinating an experiment.
The most blatant attack-ploy so far has been a DR-hating pseudo-vandal's recruitment of WP Administrator “Vsmith” to harass the DR bio, by arbitrarily applying alleged priorities, rules, technicalities — when such concerns have nothing to do with either's actual aim — that being the suppression of accurate and important information, info which is being deleted entirely because it is embarrassing to certain figures in their otherwise worthy crusade against irrationalist kooks. (The details of VsMyth's flagrant lack of neutrality in this respect are set forth below.)
This turbid saga faces Wikipedia judges with deciding the question of which
is more important for the facts contained in (largely anonymous) Wikipedia,
[a] how accurate, important, public-interest, constructive,
pro-integrity, educational, scholarly, & reliable are said facts; or
[b] contentions
regarding writing style, authorship, and what defines a Reliable Source??
Contra
some DR WPTalk page hysterics, Wikipedia does not
ban autobio or the like but
advises)
against such out of reasonable fear (based on much experience) that
it usually leads to a non-neutral bio. So the underlying fundamental criterion
(on which all at issue hangs) is neutrality.
Since one of DR's secrets of intellectual success is
self-criticism
and self-blame
(as anyone will quickly see who consults the journal DIO
[e.g., the pages cited in the DR WP bio's list of opposition papers]
or the VsMyth-scorned DIO
website), one of the better
arguments in favor of his (hypothetical?) influence on the bio is
its detailed citations of and-or
links to extensive accounts
of all of his career's mistakes and to his critics' contentions and writings.
That DR might be connected in some way to the DR WP bio
and-or to investigating its vandalism,
was openly (enticingly?) hinted at,
after consultation, in a DIO-suggested test-note to the circle of atheist R.Dawkins,
a good friend (see preface to his latest book)
of DR-ejector
Paul Kurtz of CSICOP's SkInq. Despite that circle's reply to other
inquiry on Stall-Wall's vandalisms, there was no response in this case.
The temptation to not only suppress DR but “get something” on him
— a desideratum which has hitherto proved so elusive —
was just too tempting a grail.
Of course, the joyous leaping-upon such only shows:
[a] how dry the reservoir of hoped-for DR sins must be, and
[b] how trivial they are in the context of the failings of the missmen's
own gangs: threats, fantastic,
and deliberate smearing, suppression,
fake refereeing, scientific boobery, blackballing, fleeing debate, etc.
(When those who attacked the DR WP bio started out, did they not consider
these reefs — not to mention the risk of getting exposed as having
merely added one more monumentally
devious censorial episode to their cults' already-sleazy-enough record?)
Note the moat-vs-beam tragi-hilarity that none of THESE
academically-hideous scandals cause the slightest outrage in
any of the bio's “neutrality”-bellowing attackers. Why?
Because it's these very sorts of horrors that The Neutrality Crusade is
trying to prevent the public from knowing about —
using any shyster-lawyer-level legalism its soldiers can muster
into the service of this, their outranking-all-others crusade.]
Vsmiting Apostacy:
Free Speech's Proponents & Opponents:
The main subject here will be a Wikipedia Administrator, “Vsmith”
— or, henceforth here:
VsMyth—
who advertises himself as an old ex-Marine with an MS in geology.
He has over a long period been allowed
enough rope to compile quite
a record vis-à-vis the DR bio (and then some),
deleting
from it virtually all references to DR's publication
DIO, calling the journal
(3/10-11):
non-RS (non-Reliable Source).
[Vsmithian carelessness created some nonsense passages, the funniest
and most outrageous being when he removed citation even
to DIO vol.10, which was co-published
with the Univ of Cambridge, leaving the bio reading that DR's
report “was co-published in 2000 by the University of Cambridge”
— as if a single entity can co-publish.]
Items:
[a] The very DIO website, which VsMyth wishes to
damage Wikipedia readers' thorough access to, contains
multiple easily-checkable certifications of: the journal's commendations
from the most eminent scholars, as well as to its several boards,
comprised of not merely experts but in several cases
THE very top world leaders in an impressive variety of fields (e.g.,
celestial mechanics, Earth-spin deceleration, Babylonian cuneiform texts);
plus a sampling of the ultimo class of academic libraries who subscribe
to DIO, and scholars who have written for it.
VsMyth scoffs at DIO as if it were
a “blog”,
without even the sense to ask: how many blog-journals get
co-published
by the Univ of Cambridge, or taken
by request at libraries such as the US Naval Observatory, CalTech,
British Museum, etc. Sample list of subscribing libraries
on back cover of every issue for years, so —
how could an honest Administrator
defy such information?)
[VsMyth has been
again & again offered such potential enlightenment,
yet stubbornly continues to ignore it in order to persist in
his CSICOPesque agenda-programme of impeding Wikipedia readers
of the DR bio having ready access to DIO's
most important discoveries and revelations of institutional misbehavior.
I.e., he's doing a terrific imitation of
an establishment-plant
slipped into WP administratorship (under the false pretense of
possessing the ability to neutrally control his passions):
a classic saint-worshipping,
devil-flaying CSICOP-cult smear-machine missman,
in the classic odd-hominem-Philip Klass-“Crybaby”
ad-hominem tradition.]
[b] VsMyth has not even claimed that he or his pals
(or serious scientists)
have found unreliable scientific or scientific-historical scholarship
in DIO.
[c] VsMyth can call
recognized high scholarship
“stuff”
(3/10) “junk” (7/23) — and can call mixed, temperate,
and tempered (“acerbic” is complimentary?!)
praise of it “puffery” (3/10).
[d] VsMyth finds it jolly
“fun” to excise
accurate material, specifically a quote from
a 1985/12/5 Nightline appearance by rationalist-saint Carl Sagan,
material which may be of interest to non-hagiographic future
Sagan biographers who consult Wikipedia for material. Before VsMyth removal,
this was quoted (in the Sagan WPbio) from
DIO 1.1 [1991]
‡8 §A2 [p.76]. DIO was the
first and still the only
publication to take note of this revealing interview.
[As to “fun”: incidents of such highly inappropriate,
near-sadistic glee are not rare for VsMyth's
interactions with Wikipedians — leaving the impression that
VsMyth senses that anything he does is OK by Wikipedia.
(See his User-page's archives, which make it
clear that no Resolution here will ever be possible with him involved.)
Perhaps his own bio's reference to his high-school
teaching as “torturing teenagers” is
what's sometimes called “kidding on the square”.]
Even if one wishes to argue that the full text of the Sagan-Nightline
incident takes up too much space, proportionally
to its alleged import, why not at least leave a citation to it?
Doesn't VsMyth trust the Wikipedia readership to be able to make
up its own mind on whether Sagan did something
less than admirable?
(Note that VsMyth cannot here lean upon his [WPillegal]
hints of DR doing [WPlegal]
autobio,
since that won't even apply to the Sagan bio. Nor will questions of
Reliability, since he & his fellow censors
haven't dared to claim that the quote is inaccurate —
even while one of them claims that DIO's
allegedly “disreputable” status disallows use of the quote,
which would seem to be the same charge.
[One might expect an accusation of inaccuracy if
the censors REALLY believe that DIO is unReliable.
Editor “Eleland” reacted frantically that the quote
was censorable because it didn't appear in any previous account of Sagan!
(I.e., adding knowledge subtracts from its worth??)
And because DIO is Disreputable
or “potentially” (?!) so.
(A slander that gives one a valuable glimpse into how much he and VsMyth
know about the level of mathematical expertise uniquely
(for the history-of-ancient-astronomy field)
found in DIO, not to mention
the status of the scholars backing the journal
and appreciating it.
Either [1] these ignorami are the normal stuff of Wikipedia editorship,
or
[2] DR is being quite exceptionally targeted, with no concern atop WP.)
Again: we note that Eleland doesn't quite have the nerve to claim that
the quote is inaccurate. In which case, why does the source matter?
This is classic Reliability-spat-nonsense on Wikipedia,
which in fact contains plenty of genuinely nonReliable stuff
(e.g., treating the entirely mythic “Eratosthenian stade&rd quo;as real:
DIO 21 [2017]
‡9 §C [p.99];
DIO 22 [2018]
‡1 fnn 109-111 [pp.36-37]
‡4 §N9 [p.100])
that is OK by DIO's WP-critics, some of it
(e.g., classifying DIO as unReliable!)
posted by their very own selves.]
Thus, flexibility is required to conjure up
justifications for deletion of the Sagan quote, when
the obvious actual cause is:
protecting a Hero of Rationalism by trying to prevent Sagan biographers
from learning of the incident at all. The censorial mind at work.
[e] VsMyth can say
“Yup”
(hardly a neutral manner in itself)
to a
partner-in-diversion-to-the-personal,
virtual-person “Chris Cooper”.
(See also [under Sagan Talk] VsMyth's pleasant relations with
fantasizing “Eleland”,
who's been repeatedly WP-blocked for over-aggressiveness —
though not when baselessly slandering DIO.)
But VsMyth then grossly distorts
the CC-suggestion he was assenting to.
(By professedly non-anonymous [but biography-less on his UserPage]
pseudo-person “Chris Cooper”.) This in order
to threaten far greater damage
conversion-to-stub, or semi-protection against the horror of
something positive being added to the DR bio)
than what “Chris Cooper” himself had proposed.
[f] With typical Ready-Fire-Aim carelessness
(this, while baselessly calling others “unReliable”!),
Paranoiac VsMyth — brilliantly ferreting out sinister motives
in his quarry — has publicly suggested (Carl Sagan WP Talk) that DR is
a supporter of the kook psychoanalyst and astronomer-wannabe Dr.I.Velikovsky
(a delusion shared with fellow DR-harasser Eleland,
in a Sagan Talk post in 2008 July)
— and, as befits The Marine-Lord of the Teens,
VsMyth has never retracted, despite the swiftly-posted inconvenient fact that
(while DR has defended — at some
cost
to himself — the Velikovskians' right to be heard):
[i] DR was the earliest and toughest
critic of the most lethal
of the previously unplumbed celestial-mechanics difficulties
with Velikovsky's central astronomical scenario.
[This 1972-1974 DR paper,
circulated
privately for years by
anti-V expert Leroy Ellenberger, was satirically titled:
“Freudian Astronomy, or
Do Planetary Orbits, Bristlecone Pines, and Velikovsky's Believers
Suffer from Collective Amnesia?”.]
[ii] DR dredged up (for the first
time, in the then-two-decade-old debate over Worlds in Collision)
V's 1941 paper in the Psychoanalytic Review —
a fantastic crock, which made crystal clear to anyone
(even to those with no background in astronomy) that V had always been
a pseudo-scientist, way before his 1950 Worlds in Collision.
(DIO 7.1 [1997]
‡5 §C [pp.30-33] published the history of
top Velikovsky-critic Leroy Ellenberger's ban & censorship at the hands of
the Velikovsky-cult: “Hysterical Velikovskians Flee Own
Frankenstein-Mongoose!”. Look it up.)
Note the striking contagion that gets revealed here, when we find that
VsMyth's bud, “Eleland”, made the same pro-Velikovsky charge
against Phaedrus7, which turned out to be just as invertedly hilarious
— and just as easily checkable [via Velikovsky WP Talk]
by anyone not of VsMyth-“Eleland”'s shoot-first temperament.
Birdbrains-of-a-feather, or birds-of-a-featherbrain?)
[When in 2008 July (Sagan WP Talk) Phaedrus7 pointed out
that his quotes of Sagan (from DIO 1.1) had
been deleted on the basis of VsMyth's amusingly-invert misevaluation
of anti-Velikovsky DR as pro-Velikovsky, VsMyth's typically hair-trigger
and macho response to accurate but cult-offensive information
on the Sagan bio was immediately
to re-trash the DR bio. Classic-Heyrichian
extortion-tactic
to crush rebellion.
To know the truth of DR's view of Velikovsky,
VsMyth needed only to take a moment
to search for “Velikovsky” (via Control-F) either
in the pdf of THE VERY SAME
DIO 1.1 [1991]
(pp.8-9) which he was suppressing text from (on suspicion of
DR's pro-Velikovskianism!), or in the DIO
website (which he perversely keeps treating as if it were pro-kook):
Contributions.]
Such confused — nay, outlandishly inverted — judgement
may assist in explaining how VsMyth got the bonkers notion
that DR was an enemy to rationalism, who needed to be hamstrung by
the never-erring jackboot of The Marine Guardian of Scientific Truth.
[Such science-PC Vsmite-crusading ought not to be
a neutral referee's rôle, anyway.
Let the silly irrationalists occasionally have their say, too
— and let readers judge who's right. (See, e.g.,
DIO 1.2 [1991]
n.117 [p.123]. Ironically, DIO
has taken a less slack view since 1994 in its
publisher's statement on submitted papers [each issue's inside back cover]:
“spare us the creationist-level junk.”
— but then DIO is a professional-level academic journal,
not a people's encyclopedia.) It is worth remarking here that those who
oppose pseudo-science too often show little faith in public judgement, and
accordingly try to curtail general access to dissenters:
e.g., the Velikovsky affair, or the Owen Gingerich-Martin Gardner attitude
(as told by CSICOP's MG himself to DR 1978/11/30)
that R.Newton's views on Ptolemy constituted the sort of crank literature
that publishers should be told to avoid.
(Newton's then-proscribed view that Ptolemy faked data and stole
the Ancient Star Catalog from Hipparchos is now overwhelmingly accepted,
much assisted by DIO vols.1, 2, & 12, as well as
Gerd Graßhoff (winner of DIO's RRNewton Award).
Anyone yet taking Ptolemy seriously should consult the fumblings
of his most sensational fumbled fakes, set out
in DIO's brief
2014/8/26 posting “Ptolemy's Fraudulence”.)
Question: Have such CSI (formerly “CSICOP”) clonies penetrated
Wikipedia? It would figure that they'd try. (Were they invited? —
presumably with good intent — to help in the worthy Augean labor
not letting WP articles drown in kook chaff?)
The attacks on the DR bio are consistent with such penetration,
since DR has for decades been CSI's chief hate-object-apostate, due to
DR's sTARBABY.]
Question: Is enlarged-head VsMyth seriously supposed to represent Wikipedia?! (Is his boldness evidence that he thinks his vandalism is higher-protected?) The answer to said question is exactly what this posting hopes to elicit (the continuation of VsMyth or his like as DR-bio monitor could definitively answer it) — even if this produces yet more vengeance against the DR WP bio.
A detailed discussion of VsMyth (and his curious helpers-in-trashing) follows.
In the pre-censored Dennis Rawlins WPbio, it was long
noted (in the section of the bio headed
“Publishing Controversy”) that,
given academic politicians' fear of public access to exposés
(of academic misbehavior & fraud) appearing in DR's
journal DIO, their preferred counter-tactic is: suppression.
[In forums ranging from the New York Times
(thrice in page 1 stories, 1989-1998) to the University of Cambridge
(detailed scientific report, exceptionally
co-published with
DIO 10 [2000]),
DR's detailed researches have exposed more historical science appropriations
& hoaxes than anyone, ever
(Eratosthenes, Hipparchos, Ptolemy, Tycho, the Neptune affair,
E.Kane, I.Hayes, Cagni, Cook, Peary, Byrd)
— a superlative that has won him few friends in institutional academe,
but fervent support from
some
of the most respected and creative figures of
the international scholarly community.]
That is, those who fear exposure of the lack of free speech in certain arenas,
solve the problem by suppressing free speech about its lack.
On 2008/3/10, “VsMyth” (who says he's been a WP Administrator since 2005) unself-consciously vindicated the implicit prediction of suppression by deleting virtually all of the bio's citations to DIO, which happens to be the US' top astronomical history journal, and the most technically sophisticated such journal on Earth.
Stall Wall — In-Own-Mind Dastard of Misguise:
VsMyth's tack is ominously familiar. After all, the DR-loathing
pseudo-pseudo-scientist
Stall-Wall
(who had been vandalizing WP articles for some time,
leading up to his resort to threats,
once he had absorbed enough apparent
indicia to convince him that no one knew who he was) did the very
same thing,
some months earlier, to the Aristarchos of Samos article.
[Are internet threats even legal? Similarly, what are the ethics
of anti-mystics pretending
to be kooks attacking anti-mystics? — a practice which can only
corrupt the record and thereby hurt the long-term prospect of the success of
the laudable project of opposing rampant kookery.]
Stall-Wall alleged he was fighting the offense of “site-pushing”
(a VsMyth ploy, as well): i.e., removing citations to
DIO, to DR, and to the work of Aristarchos expert and DR mentor
B. L. van der Waerden (the internationally famous mathematician),
whose final book's final page heralded
the onset of DIO:
van der Waerden, Die Astronomie der Griechen Darmstadt 1988 p.307.
A particularly gross instance of VsMyth-enabler
(and JHA debtor) Wall's hounding and deceit is his 2011/11/26
deletion from Wikipedia's Eratosthenes page
of DR's simple, spare resolution
(DIO 14 [2008]
‡1 eq.28 [p.11]) of the previously unsolved problem of
the two grossly unequal ancient Earth-measure estimates (differing by c.40%).
(In this action, Wall leaves an adjacent crackpot solution intact,
even solicitously returning 9m later to make sure it's OK.)
There had long been an undeterably sterile tradition of attempting to explain
the ancient Earth-measures' inequity by
ad-hoc-fantasizing at will whatever stade-length
one's theory required, in order to make the very disparate measures
of Eratosthenes and Poseidonios (disagreeing by 40%) both accord with reality
and even each other. DR swept aside these transparent manipulations
while producing for the first time a theory closely fitting the data
which [a] used the same mechanism (atmospheric refraction —
not exactly John-Wall's strength),
[b] the same stade-length, the long-standard 185m value
(again, no manipulation); and
[c] solved BOTH ancient values on the nose
, each within 1%.
Stall-Wall on 2011/11/26 deleted
this successful theory from the WP article's text, allegedly
doing so in reaction (see also 11/25 Eratosthenes Talk)
to another party's 2009/5/18 complaint that the passage was unclear.
What Wall deceitfully failed to note is that:
[i] The unclarity was due to an Iowa astronomer's over-careless 2009/3/11
deletion
of a different (and incredible) theory using an ancient source which
the subsequent passage on DR's theory had referred to (to save citation-space)
but was now not there.
[ii] The confusion had (2009/9/2) since been eliminated,
as
explained
— right on the very Talk page where
Wall claims it hadn't, so he could excuse trashing a DR credit.
(Problem noted twice: 2009/8/17 & 10/7.)
Thus, there was no basis for complaining of unclarity.
That is, due to delay in acting, Wall had missed his chance to delete
the DR theory on that basis, but claimed to being doing so anyway.
One can see why he made his November Talk page comment
anachronistically at the May place in the page rather than
at the temporally correct place on the page, which would have
been right after the Oct comment that showed he had no cause to mess.
Wall also called the DR theory a mere speculation,
(which it no longer is, since verification via Eusebius:
DIO 14 [2008]
‡1 eqs.10-13&27-28 [pp.6-7&9])
— though many of the alternate theories
in the same WP article are laughably speculative,
manipulative, over-assumptive —
and can't solve both ancient values
with the same simple theory and regular stade, as DIO had.
Unprecedently precisely.
[What makes the incident especially ironic is that Wikipedia articles
on Eratosthenes, ancient Earth-measures, and Astronomical Unit measures
and the Pharos are embarrassingly corrupted with
[1] classically amateurish priorities like proving Eratosthenes
highly accurate (at whatever cost in logic or probability),
[2] extensively (even tabularly) treating
the entirely mythical “Eratosthenian stade”,
with little indication that in serious academe it's long
been regarded about as seriously as the unicorn, and
[3] Arguing (see Wikipedia's article on the
A.U.,
a ludicrous notion formerly fouling WP's Eratosthenes article)
that Eratosthenes knew the A.U. to within a few percent,
with no mention that the conventional reading of the textual basis
(Eusebius) for this fantasy shows that his A.U. was far too small
(smallest in all of high antiquity) and makes the Earth's radius
equal to 40800 stades, which turned out to verify DR's 1982
Archive for History of Exact Sciences then-heterodox paper's theory
that Eratosthenes' directly empirical Earth circumference was 256000 stades,
not the previously accepted figures: 250000 or 252000.
(This can be verified by multiplying 40800 by 2π, to see which checks.)
The WP Eratosthenes page is too heavily influenced by
similar pretended expertise.]
At Wikipedia's North Pole page, DR had added that E.M.Standish,
senior CalTech creator of the celestial tables
used by explorers (& NASA) had in 2009
refereed the claims of the three pre-Amundsen N.Pole claimants
(Cook, Peary, Byrd) and concluded that all were false.
On 2012/1/10, Stall-Wall eliminated the
reference to Standish's eminence and celestial expertise as irrelevant!
(Wall also eliminated a link to a DR page on the subject
that cites and links
to ALL sides' cases, something which soldier-ideocogs
Wall & VsMyth would never even think of doing.)
DR is a world-recognized expert in this area, but vandal Wall deletes
and/or de-links his postings, calling them “spam”, presumably
inspired by his assistant VsMyth, who calls DIO a blog.
Among other prior (and continuing) abuses, Wall had repeatedly vandalized
the WP bios of DR and of one of DIO's and the world's
greatest astronomers, Charles Kowal,
discoverer
of Chiron and a host of other celestial bodies,
as well
as of Galileo's 1612-1613 observations of Neptune.
(Stall-Wall charged that the awarding of DIO's first
R. R. Newton
Award was corrupt: simply a gang giving medals to each other.
Corrupt? For years, the DIO website
prize page's concluding
statement has been: “anyone in the world is eligible for
the (DIO) awards. With one exception: DR.”
DR personally (in the pre-boards era)
gave the 1st three awards to Jones, Standish, & Kowal
two of whom were not widely known to the public,
and one (Jones) who got an award and cover-billing on
DIO 11.2 [2003],
for overturning a DR error! In truth, all of the DR-appointed
DIO prize-boards' awards have been to little-heralded
but deserving non-DIO scholars.
(E.g., Albers & Graßhoff.) Like DIO's people,
they are achievers, discoverers, advancers of the field —
not careerist politicians, who add
little to academe beyond cultism, money, and power-operator shunnings.
Wall made the same corruption-charge (Wikipedia DR Talk)
about an award to E.M.Standish, who is so undeserving that he has been
for 1/4 century the world's leading figure in celestial mechanics.
(Projection? Trading favors is certainly
what is done by the JHA clique,
which [with typical unsubtlety]
gave John-Wall of Farnborough [a west suburb of London]
his 1st JHA publication
immediately after
his 2007 Feb-Mar attack on DR in the journal Ancient Egypt.)
Stall-Wall's smear — stating that Kowal received
the 1st DIO R.R.Newton Award for corrupt reasons —
reflects or feigns innocence of the information that Kowal's eternally unique
discovery (the cause of the DIO award to Kowal)
of Galileo's accidental 1612-1613 observations of Neptune, is now
even in astronomy textbooks, since it is one of the most glorious achievements
ever in the field of historical astronomical detective-work —
which is, after all, DIO's specialty.
Of course, Kowal's name has been in numerous astronomy textbooks
since well before this find, for his discoveries of, e.g.,
Chiron and two Jupiter satellites. (Wall-slandered DR was similarly
cited through much of the 1990s in the evergreen-standard physics textbook
Halliday, Resnick, & Walker.)
The fact that Wikipedia has for years had (Administrator-VsMyth-assisted)
crackpot editing affecting coverage of Kowal, DR, DIO's
pioneering researches, etc, gives one some idea of
why serious scholars regard Wikipedia not DIO as unReliable.
Ironically so.
In 2008 March, Stall-Wall also asked a WP editor
to completely eliminate
the DR bio — and then (when he didn't comply)
threatened him.
(At the same time, Wall also repeatedly attacked the WP bio of
Cutler Cleveland, while theorizing that he knew DR. Pure fantasy.)
This is the character whom longtime Administrator VsMyth is siding with
and has actively assisted, by carrying out his anti-“site-pushing”
program of killing numerous
DR-WP-biography informative references to DIO
(the journal of Wall's self-created enemy), including deleting
the link to DR's restrained 2007/4/7 letter of
reply to the entirely unprovoked 2007 Ancient Egypt attack on DR
by latest-JHA-darling-author John-Wall.
(The DR letter tried to be amiably concessional in part, but was devastatingly
detailed on Wall's hilarious sloppiness & scholarly amateurishness,
in an article explicitly aimed at portraying DR as a kook —
purely coincidentally also the aim of Wall's Wikipedia chums
Eleland & VsMyth.)
VsMyth appears to be one of the knee-jerk brand of over-proud
would-be-rationalists who think that they are rendered Wise
merely by perceiving the centrist-obvious.
(E.g., that biologists are right and creationists are just dreaming.)
And he's so cocky and pushy about it —
just the way other Skeptical Inquirer cultists think & behave.
On the same date (2008/3/10) on which
VsMyth carried out Stall-Wall's censorial
program, Wall had (just a few hours earlier)
lodged the 2nd of two
threats against WP editors
(this time against a young WikiComm Administrator), in revenge for
their proper attempts to provide normal protection of the DR WP bio.
[The threats are also aimed at DR and his associates.
The vandalization
of the WP bio of DIO's Kowal is simply
a carrying-out of that very threat: get near DR and you'll pay.
There are academic cults that have been spreading that threat for decades:
it's no secret (and DR has been told the fact in so many words by several
prominent insiders) that DR's refusal to stay quiet about mis-scholarship
and repeated pro-forma refereeing
and even fake refereeing
at the insistently-rival Journal for the History of Astronomy
has caused the JHA to keep shunning DR and DIO.
(The reality of said shunning has even been
publicly acknowledged by
one of DR's enemies.)]
How often does a Wikipedia Administrator (seem to) yield to threats — and do a vandal's dirty work for him? (Will this incident encourage future resorts to threat by frustrated vandals?) And this is not the only case (or subject) where VsMyth has associated himself with seething amateur attacks on DR — as we shall see below.
If he were interested in finding out whether DIO is
a Reliable Source (RS), it would have taken VsMyth
two MINUTES of searching
in the DIO website to learn
the quality of scholar that resides on DIO's various boards.
Instead, VsMyth spent the better part of two HOURS late on 3/10
gleefully carving out citations to DIO
(badly bungling an excision
[another such case cited below]
at Aristyllos, creating gibberish there in the process) — demanding RS
in each case (twenty such demands in all, each stating:
“This claim needs references to reliable sources since March
2008”) — and then boasting (on DR Talk) of his mayhem,
repeatedly calling the bio “puffery”, despite its several
mentions of and links to those rare instances where DR screwed-up
and where enumerations of details of these errors may be
found.
[This was vainly noted 2008/9/10 on DR WPTalk,
where it is also remarked that the key link to details on DR errors
was destroyed
(2008/3/10) by VsMyth himself!
— who is allied with criticism of the bio's neutrality!
Also removed (clumsily
leaving a dangling half-bracket) was the pre-VsMyth bio's
(reference n.71)
to DR's having lampooned himself (in huge type, for one of his longago errors)
on the cover of
DIO 11.2 [2003]
— a VsMyth excision which is not the most honest tactic one
could choose if one wishes to be part of a team-assault
that accuses the bio of puffery and DR of
self-love.]
It should be noted that all pre-VsMyth WP editors had been constructive for
the DR bio, and had gone to considerable trouble to check out its accuracy.
(One even added a WP reference to the unique DIO vol.3
Tycho star catalog, shortly after learning
[from the sort of DIO webpage
source
that VsMyth is trying to bar Wikipedians from direct access to]
that it too was being shunned.) Why have virtually all of
these dedicated editors disappeared since 3/10, in favor of
the spectacularly ignorant, amateurish, careless, even wildly
paranoid ravings of an Administrator
who is obviously scientifically inadequate — as well as being
immune to evidence contradicting
his non-expert view of DIO's reliability & eminence?
Why has all substantial
post-2008/3/7 editing of the DR bio been exclusively VsMyth's?
(Somewhat similarly for the Wikipedia Sagan bio at that time,
where a perfectly accurate DIO-quotation has
also been scrubbed by VsMyth&co?
And, ahh, how did VsMyth or “Hypocrite”
(Stall-Wall) get involved with DR regarding the Sagan article?
[ESP?]
(Nothing in the DR WP bio would lead one to Sagan or Velikovsky.)
The cohesion here reflects the defensiveness of a gang of religious atheists
who conspire so much that they project that others must be doing likewise.
The common thread is that criticism of Sagan is,
for rationalism's (thankfully atypical) organized fanatical cultist-soldiers,
akin to criticism of the Virgin Mary for a Catholic.
Analogously, anything positive about DR is like praise of Satan.)
[What is the source of VsMyth's dedication to heading off
Wikipedia readers' access to those parts of DIO
that are embarrassing to science's publicists & politicians,
who are always getting into factual trouble
because
they aren't as able in scholarship as they think they are
— a point which in itself could explain
VsMyth's enthusiastically loyal bonding with them.]
On 2008/3/10-11, VsMyth boasted (DR WP Talk): “Removed citations
to [DR's] own website as per WP:RS [Reliable Source]
and perhaps WP:COI [Conflict-of-Interest]”
No commentator on DR is neutral (CSICOP-clonie VsMyth
himself
has a throbbing COI vis-à-vis CSICOP-exposer DR),
so the latter charge is irrelevant.
JHA-defender Wall has a flagant COI
and doesn't even hide his passion to hound DR,
who has done more than anyone to reveal the truth behind
the JHA's pretensions.
These COIs did not ruffle VsMyth at all.
[Check VsMyth's Wiki-archived User pages
(in which he treats creationists with uniform contempt),
and see if you can imagine him aiding the censorial desires
of someone he REALLY BELIEVES is a geocentrism-defending
Catholic fanatic (Wall's 2007-8 pose)
who is hate-vandalizing the WP bio of a scientific atheist.
It's such contradictions that inspire the overview smile-question:
when cultists find it irresistible to combine to pull off a dirty trick,
don't they ever stop&think how transparent it's bound to be? —
and how much ultimate damage it will do their cause?
(Remember the scene in the Buck Henry cine-comedy To Die for, when
the cops tell J.Phoenix just how smart his gang of schemers actually is?)]
So, despite the attacker's sinuous pretense to being a religious nut,
VsMyth knew that this vandal was actually a Good Guy — one of
his own kind: a scholar-wannabee who seeks academic status by downing
kooks even less scientifically equipped than himself —
a Custeresque lust, of a sort that, e.g., came to embarrassingly Custeresque
grief when John-Wall attacked DR,
under the impression that DR was the sort of pushover whom Wall
and his CSICOPish kind typically bully for self-aggrandizement.]
Comments:
[a] Contrary to the repeated 2008/3/10 claims of hipshooter VsMyth
and his 2008/3/10 inspirer-mentor Stall-Wall,
the journal DIO is not on
[DR's] “own website”, but rather on the DIO website.
DIO is a refereed publication,
monitored by an impressive spectrum
of top experts — and, as already noted, is the most scientifically
competent history-of-astronomy journal on Earth.
Ironically, it is this fact that is ultimately responsible for
the confusion of some, because it is the exposures by DIO
and by DR (in Publ. Astr. Soc. Pacific, Amer J. Physics,
Isis, UnivCambrdidge's Polar Record,
DIO, etc) of the inferior science, mathematical foulups,
and pathetic refereeing consistently featured in
self-styled Reliable journals, that has caused
enragedly-embarrassed Reliable-forum archons'
very attempts to smear, exile, slander, and damn DIO,
slander which has led certain cocksure mediocrities
(who don't know any more science than the archons) into thinking
or pretending to think that DIO isn't a Reliable journal.
Damning, censoring, smearing, threatening, etc, are inevitably resorted-to
because the exposed Reliables are otherwise-weaponless:
NB: While DR & DIO have again&again
revealed Reliable forums' sins in
math,
pretend-comprehension, and
sources, there have been
no successful parallel exposures of DIO pratfalls,
because
in 24y of publication, there haven't been any.
[The only two errors of DR's long career were published
in Reliable journals. B.Schaefer's attempts
(to overturn DIO's support of Hipparchos as author
of the Ancient Star Catalog) didn't even claim to have found
DIO math errors, and backfired amusingly anyway: see
DIO 12 [2002]
§§1&2 [pp.3-34]. And BS seems later to have
come over
to the Hipparchans. Critics have attacked DR for alleged incompetent science
(B.Schaefer),
editor-harassment (echoing O.Gingerich),
kookery (J.Rummel & B.Schaefer
both again echoing O.Gingerich),
thievery (P.Klass), insanity
(O.Gingerich), etc.
(Yes, this is what it's like to be for decades
a feared,
enragingly-competent & unkillable enemy of establishment cults.
Which is exactly why
the public knows so little about such non-kook rebels.)
Since all of these smears have turned out to be baseless, critics have been
reduced to hungering for any crumb of DR sin. Thus: Stall-Wall.]
So, who is calling whom nonReliable? — the very point emphasized in
a 45-item sampling of certain arrogant & censorial Reliable forums' goofs,
“the Incompetence-Charger's Competence”
(DIO 4.1 [1994]
‡4 §A [p.48]).
Among the several Reliable journals whose unreliable science & refereeing
have been revealed by DIO are ones
whose connexions to attacks on the DR WP bio are self-evident.
(Aside from the obvious, there is an even starker simple consideration:
who else would care to devote so much time to such
a curious & specialized project?)
And the list of forums whose misbehavior has been chronicled by DR
is extensive. To pick three, not necessarily at random
(all three of whom, it should be noted, publish numerous enlightening
articles, whatever the integrity of their DR-criticized leadership):
CSICOP,
Scientific American
(and its Letters),
as well as the ever-seething Journal for
the History of Astronomy, whose Editor-for-Life (though a welcome,
dedicated contributor of Herscheliana to the community) is
demonstrably a historical
fleaweight and
a mathematical-astronomy
nitweight.]
[b] While VsMyth's deletion of references to the Dennis Rawlins webpage
is arguable (though it's still part of the DIO enterprise,
and its material should [according to Wikipedia's own principles] be judged
on logical merit — not by either “Reliable” forums'
censorial fears, or DIO's eminence),
VsMyth's many 2008/3/10 eliminations of references to the JOURNAL
DIO were obviously unjustified, given its level of scholarship
and the extremely high reputation of most of its various board-members.
In order not to know this, VsMyth would have had to wilfully ignore
a mass of readily-accessible indicia (which he was
repeatedly
reminded of, anyway, on the DR & Sagan WPTalk pages) showing
that DIO is much, MUCH more reliable than many so-called
“Reliable Sources” accepted by Wikipedia.
Question: Isn't ignoring evidence, to maintain a pre-set position,
the very antithesis of the scientific spirit VsMyth claims to defend?
[c] Equally slack overseeing is evidenced by failure to notice
that many of the VsMyth-eliminated citations to
the DIO website were to places that listed clusters
of citations to what VsMyth would regard as RS.
Merely checking a few examples would have made that obvious.
(And would have led to realization that the carefully-constructed
and oft-intelligently-Wiki-edited
pre-VsMyth-trashed DR WPbio's links
to the DIO website constituted
a space-saving device, allowing a seeming single reference
effectively to provide multiple references. Isn't the aim of
an encyclopedia to inform? — and as efficiently as possible?)
[d] During the better part of a year, VsMyth and his oddball companions
(in routinely mantra-deeming DIO non-RS)
have been embarrassingly incapable of pointing out
actual instances of scholarly unreliability in DIO's volumes.
Which figures, since not one of these frustrated ciphers
(including fumbling Wall) has
Reliable expertise in the relevant sciences.
[e] Lastly, there is the failure to consider an obvious logical point:
if DR has been published in so many RS journals (see bio) for 40 years,
it stands to reason that he would probably run a reliable journal himself.]
The Most Hilariously Unjustified Deletions of DIO citations on Wikipedia:
[1] DR is editor of the standard edition of Tycho's
thousand-star catalog. VsMyth (3/10) eliminated the link to it.
[2] DR is the ultimate killer of the Byrd North Pole hoax,
and the DIO issue (vol.10) is an expansion of his report
to Ohio State University, which was the basis for
the 1996/5/9 New York Times front-page virtual retraction
of its 70y acceptance of the claim. This DIO vol.10 was
co-published with the University of Cambridge.
VsMyth deleted the bio's link to this DIO.
[3] A protégé of the previous world
expert
on ancient heliocentrism, DR has published more original findings on
heliocentrist Aristarchos' numerical astronomy
and cosmology than anyone (living or dead).
The culmination of this DR work was delivered at the British Museum,
and published both in DIO (vols.11 [2002] &14 [2008]),
and in Alter Orient und Altes Testament.
VsMyth killed all the DR bio's citations to his work on Aristarchos' vision.
[In 2007, VsMyth's parallel vandal Wall persistently deleted links
(in the Aristarchos WP article) to these sources AND to the Aristarchan work
of the late super-eminent DIO-enthusiast,
van der Waerden.
Like Wall said, it is Wikipedially-dangerous to get near DR.
Even if you're dead.]
[4] The DR bio's citation to the
DIO 4.3 [1994]
paper by world-class polar expert Robert Headland
(of University of Cambridge's Scott Polar Research Institute)
was eliminated by VsMyth, WHO DEMANDED A RELIABLE SOURCE.
(If VsMyth had a better source than Cambridge in mind, he didn't cite it.)
Is Wikipedia taking this farcical “Administrator” seriously?
(Simply because he's a frenetic warrior for the Rationalist Cause.)
Is it not painfully plain that his programme
(vis-à-vis DIO) is that of
the clique that fears [a] what DIO high competence has
revealed of establishmentarians' hilariously fouled up scholarship, and
[b] the unsavory practices the bunglers are resorting to,
to prevent the public from knowing.
VsMyth's 2008/3/10 deletions of references to DIO
left the DR biography rather in
tatters
though with much useful material. (Be sure to see the
later)
scrupulous version —
as it stood before its swift automatic trashing by VsMyth cloniedum,
who are evidently offended by the bio noting that DR is a publisher,
a fact that has been removed several times since 2014 and is still missing
in late 2015. Someone has also invented and inserted the myth that DR
was “fired” from CSICOP as if his position was a job,
with the implication that he only criticized CSICOP's bungling after ejection.
No, he was unanimously not re-elected to CSICOP's Council precisely
because he repeatedly would not heed warnings to shut up
(like all other then-cringing councillors) about said bungling —
the validity of his evaluation of which is no longer doubted.
The DR bio remained crippled and harassed continually from 2008
(until 2014/9/12 complete destruction and substitute-stubhood)
— despite repeated multiple-source
alerts
(on the bio's Talk in 2008 May & Sept,
and on Sagan talk in 2008 July) to all concerned that
DIO is highly admired by major scholars,
publishes articles by internationally recognized experts,
and is taken at dozens of the world's top academic libraries --- recently
many more as its rep has spread and electronic subscriptions have exploded.
[It ought not to be the responsibility of serious scholars
(to whom Wikipedia is indebted for the accurate entries it boasts)
constantly to have to undo vandalisms, etc.
Some among such creatures have other priorities — and eschew engaging
in hourly crud-wrestling-revert-wars with fanatics, amateurs,
cultists, censors, goons, authority-freaks,
et ilk.]
The indefensibility of VsMyth's bald censorship is obvious to anyone familiar with DIO's boards, which include not merely leading scholars but those at the very pinnacles of their fields: celestial mechanics (Standish, CalTech JPL), astronomical discovery (Kowal, Johns Hopkins APL), Earth-spin and time (Stephenson, Univ Durham), Babylonian cuneiform texts (Walker, British Museum). One gets the impression that neither Wall nor VsMyth even knows who these figures are, though Kowal's WP bio (which even Wall has presumably read — while placing a slanderous lie on it) might have partially clued them.
DR himself has been published in most of the relevant leading professional journals for decades (see bio's notes), is praised by major figures in astronomy, and was the cited successor to the most mathematically able of the 20th century's ancient astronomy historians, as well as heir to the final work of that century's most respected expert on ancient geographical mss.
As a particularly flagrant example of VsMyth's exercises-in-omniscience, we may examine the case of the sole DR-scholarship section which he specially and wholly deleted: the Discovery of Neptune, on the priority dispute between France (U.Leverrier) and England (J.C.Adams). It is well known that DR is the modern central figure in this controversy. The prime scientific evidence proving that Adams had no legitimate claim (namely, his mid-1846 calculation of a circular-orbit ephemeris for Neptune, though his entire legend hangs on his supposed 1845 elliptical orbit) was discovered by DR & published in DIO 2.3 [1992] ‡9 §G9 [p.137]; the discovery was later rendered quantitative in DIO 9.1 [1999] ‡1 §E [pp.13-14] footnote 49 & Table 1. Its import is obvious even to Scientific American: 2004 Dec p.98. (DR's once-solitary 40y contention that Leverrier should be recognized as primary discoverer is now widely accepted.) In DIO 4.2 (1994), DR outed the RGO official who stole the Royal Greenwich Observatory's Neptune file; the file was found in the thief's home after his 1998 death. DR wrote the 1999/4/29 fax (co-signed by prominent figures at NY Times science dep't, Science magazine, & CalTech) that successfully resulted in the file's photocopying and transmission to NOAO (Tucson), CalTech (Standish), and DIO (DR). The central, extensive Royal Astronomical Society-funded excerptings from this file are exclusively hosted by the DIO webpage, with valuable technical enhancements by DIO's Keith Pickering, who worked with the most important gleaner ever, N.Kollerstrom (co-author of the 2004 Dec Scientific American article on Neptune's discovery), to render the Neptune-file materials conveniently available. It was world ultimo-expert Standish who deputed DR (1999) to analyse and report on the file's contents & implications, a task accomplished in DIO 9.1 [1999] ‡1 [pp.3-25].
For over a quarter-century, Standish of CalTech JPL has computed the orbits of the Sun, Moon, & planets for the Astronomical Almanac; these are the orbits which are used by NASA when aiming its spacecraft. His use of special perturbations instead of general perturbations so enormously improved the accuracy of the Astronomical Almanac (not to mention NASA's hits on celestial quarry!) that since 1984 his JPL ephemerides have been adopted for it.
And what Reliability does VsMyth bring against this, to qualify as judge DECREEING THE ENTIRE DELETION OF DR'S SCIENTIFIC & HISTORICAL NEPTUNE LABORS, which are among the best known of DR's contributions to academe? Well, VsMyth bills himself as an elder ex-Marine and a high-school teacher. So he obviously knows more about the Discovery of Neptune (an astronomical-orbit-perturbation controversy) than CalTech-JPL. Or Or DR, who (alone among those cited in the Scientific American 2004 Dec article) has published original scientific (not just historical) researches involving perturbations, in several of the leading journals: Nature (twice), AJ (Amer.Astr.Soc), Roy.Astr.Soc (twice).
Given the relative expertise here,
what can have caused VsMyth to invite such embarrassment, by excising
the Neptune case in particular?
Hmmm. Well, we notice that it's the only place in the bio
where
there was exposure of a popular science magazine's current misbehavior:
ScAm's alteration (after text was agreed upon by fax) of
a DR letter that appeared in ScAm in 2005 April, where it was
followed by an attack upon a statement that was ScAm's not DR's,
having been substituted for a DR statement that was not being answered.
DIO has posted
a photo
of the original of the fax in question. (What can be more
“Reliable” than the actual document in question?)
ScAm has since just gotten in deeper by attempting
to hide its forgery by more of same:
it deleted the original
(magazine hard copy) 2004 Dec bibliography-citation
to DIO 9.1 from its on-line bibliography.
(Gee, isn't that sorta like what VsMyth is doing to the DR WP bio…?)
[The web-version later disappeared, so the above link may not work.]
Since the facts cannot be disputed, coverup is the only recourse for the unregenerate: friends of ScAm have attacked (as “garbage”, etc) the DR bio's mere mention of ScAm's rewrite & censorship (Censorship of censorship.) OK, that we expect. But VsMyth poses as a paragon and protector of neutrality, even while he is acting as protector of (virtually an agent for) ScAm, Carl Sagan, and the DIO-rival JHA's author John-Wall, who is obsessed with attacking DR because (given his meagre level of scholarship) it's his only chance for advancement. (Will the DR bio continue to be harassed in revenge for DR's exposure — and his refusal to let ScAm's publishing power intimidate him? Is the bio effectively being held hostage for silence on ScAm? Is this the way Wikipedia is supposed to work?) And if VsMyth thinks the Leverrier-vs-Adams material belongs in Wiki's Discovery-of-Neptune article — though he didn't put it there! — instead of in the DR bio (some obviously belongs in both), then by the same logic: he should place the matter of ScAm's double-coverup in the WP Scientific American article instead of the DR bio. Instead his censorship has converted the matter into a TRIPLE-coverup. Certainly potential contributors to ScAm who consult Wikipedia for balanced information should know what that magazine's notoriously sloppy (by the nicest interpretation here) and less-than-expert editing is capable of, and whether it corrects its embarrassing mistakes. (As DIO always does.) After all, Scientific American has enough genuine positive credits (several involving DR: 1979 May & 1990 June) that it will survive revelation of these negatives.
Note in passing that those edits of the DR bio (and other WP articles)
which openly come out of Baltimore
(B) — thus triggering accusations of non-neutrality,
since DR & many of his friends, etc, live there —
have been entirely constructive and scholarly (the accuracy of
not one of them as been contradicted), and have not gone
into others' bios to do mischief. (Instead adding citations of attacks
on DR to DR WPbio!) Compare that record to
Wall's and VsMyth's, which have had the intended net effect of
denying accurate and relevant information to Wikipedia readers.
[It is almost funny to watch the phantasmagoric demand of
the bio's WP supervisors as they threaten to restrict or kill the bio if
they don't know who are the parties writing it, while simultaneously
threatening or
trashing anyone who associates
with DR — a tack which does not exactly encourage
non-vandalizing contributors to identify themselves.]
If one wishes
to check the numerous B edits of WP articles since 2007
one will notice not only the aforesaid refusal to trash the bios of
DIO opponents, but also a competent level of scholarship
(as regards math, astronomy, and history)
— which LEGITIMATE editors would value not resent —
as well as a rigorous avoidance of eliminating alternate views,
no matter how bizarre some are.
[The B edits are merely factual. They make no judgement or praise
of DR (some criticism), though they point out his findings' priorities in
an unusual variety of fields, and the understandable reluctance of his
scientifically hapless critics to engage him in fair combat.
And there are comments upon DIO's history and superiority
(in some scholarly areas)
to its critics' forums. But these are plain facts, not one of which
has been contradicted by any of the bio's harassers
since they are plainly true.]
The B approach has obviously been to allow others to have their say,
merely adjacently offering a different take if the situation merits it.
One of VsMyth's more curious imbalances
was in regard to suspicion of authorship:
he repeatedly worries (2008 March, July) about COI regarding the accurate
and constructive material on the DR bio, but appears to have had no interest
whatever in who the conspicuously-frantic vandal is — or the fact that
he obviously has a vitriolic COI. VsMyth also takes no notice of
relative academic competence.
(There are several possible obvious interpretations of this point,
none of them creditable.)
VsMyth's only equanimity here was his astonishing 2008/3/10-11 sorta-equating
the rights of the constructive, scholarly party and the destructive,
scatter-slanderous, vandalizing, pretending, suppressive, threatening one!
Even so, VsMyth couldn't help (in the very next sentence) jettisoning
any claim to impartiality even in this hugely unbalanced sitation,
when he ignored Stall-Wall's vandalism, while calling “puffery”
B's constructive, scholarly, sometimes DR-critical edits on various pages of
Wikipedia (which were almost entirely factual and wholly non-vandalistic).
To repeat: VsMyth offered not the slightest criticism
of the party that had invaded bio after bio
with crude vandalism (frequently “DD” [Drop Dead])
— e.g., to Keith Pickering and to a defender of Buffett's circle).
[VsMyth's 3/10-11 (anonymous!) demand was:
no more anonymous editing of the DR bio.
But when Keith Pickering afterwards non-anonymously edited it,
that was ruled out as COI (Catch 22?) — and VsMyth reactively,
insultingly threatened
(2007 March & July) to semi-protect against putting pro-DR information
in the bio, threatened to turn the bio into a stub, and (in odd encouragement
to non-anonymity!) attacked a Pickering site.
(Isn't stubhood earned by insignificance rather than by disagreeing
with a power-mad Administraitor-to-the-cause-of-truth?)
How did such a bigotted amateur get the power and arrogance
o make such threats against the mere dissemination
of access to high scholarship — and to exposures of
the occasional academic misbehavior of some captive institutions?
Note: several 2008 Winter warnings on the DR WPTalk page should've been
sufficient to wake up any neutral WP Administrator; further, in 2008 May,
DIO's Keith Pickering entered upon VsMyth's own page
an alert that the party harassing the DR bio had been regularly vandalizing.
VsMyth indicated no concern.]
Regardless of how deliberately cohesive the several attackers of
the DR bio are, they are certainly bound together by a common cause:
the desire to prevent exposure of DR findings that discomfit
themselves and-or their cults. (It is shameful, ironic, and ultimately
damaging to science, when those who think they are defending science
against cults become a cult themselves.)
Anxious to avoid having his attacks on the DR bio trigger a Wiki
edit-war between DR and certain “rationalist” cults,
Stall-Wall began during 2007 to build long in advance a disguised identity. On
2007/5/17,
he first tested an untraceable IP#
(just doodling “hahahaha what ever”), to which he did not return
until months later (thereby covering the connexion to his May alert
from Ancient Egypt), in anticipation of his long-term plan
(to ultimately employ a scattered mass
of IP#s throughout his part of England),
shortly after a DR 2007/4/7 letter was read by Robert B. Partridge,
Editor of the British magazine Ancient Egypt,
a letter which showed that
John-Wall's attack on DR in the 2007 Feb-Mar AE
was such a scholarly disaster that Wall has not attempted to defend it.
His only hope of escape has come from Stall-Wall&co's attempts
(including Stall-Wall's killing a reference to the DR WPTalk Page,
when he realized it contained a link
to a shredding of John-Wall's Ancient Egypt paper)
to lower the odds that anyone will read DIO —
remarkably similar to the tactic of the establishments which Stall-Wall
tries to pretend he doesn't serve.
To watch Stall-Wall repeatedly do what John-Wall needs, inspires one to
wonder
how rationalists can refuse acceptance of Jungian synchronicity
— and it has a parallel in the equally astonishing preternatural
guardian-angel
good fortune of Respectable establishments with vandals.
Note in passing: though DR has for decades written against kooks
(astrology, ESP, F.CookSoc), it's not the kooks that are vandalizing
WP to damage his rep.
Lesson:
[Of more than incidental interest in the present context
is the fact that DR's letters to AE
(well before the attacks on the DR WP bio)
provided evidence connected to [a] trying anonymously to intimidate
people, & [b] conspiring
in attacking a proscribed scholar. If all this sounds unbelievable, well,
have a competent astronomer read this material, and see what
his funny-bone concludes.]
In his 2007/5/5 letter to DR, Ancient Egypt Editor Partridge,
just returning from a trip, acknowledged receipt of DR's 2007/4/7 letter
and that he had talked to John-Wall and was sending along a copy of
DR's letter: Stall-Wall's 1st test-edit
(IP#86.145.11.103) was about 10d after receipt, 2007/5/17.
On 2007/9/11, at Wikipedia
Galileo Talk the same vandal by now boasted of using
the July sarco-comment by “Eleland”
re “plot” accompanying his neutrality-complaint.
He seems unaware that DR's shunning
by certain journals & academic politicians is common knowledge
and has been published
even
by DR's most public smearer, Sky & Telescope.
N.B.: Shunning doesn't work by ESP. It requires
[a] communication for assent, as well as sanctions to assure
the rigid uniformity without which it vanishes; and
[b] threat
against both the heretic and
anyone who resists the shun.
(For explicit threat not to get near DR, see VsMyth's
fellow “rationalist” Stall-Wall..)
Moreover, since most of those involved try to keep the shunning's existence
secret — especially from the public
(requiring reporters' assent, for fear of losing their archonal contacts)
— shunning may accurately be called: conspiracy.
The reality
of the decades-long cult-shunning of
a co-founder of DIO, Johns Hopkins APL Space Sciences
Supervisor Rob't R. Newton, was later
certified by a chief shunner,
O.Gingerich; and the shunning of DR has likewise been certified
by one of his own shunners, Sky&Telescope (2002 Feb p.40).
Thus, JHA Editor-for-Life Michael A.Hoskin's three-decade
(1983-present) “blackballing”
[MAH's own explicit, verbatim private term for his tactics,
precisely confirmed by close colleagues of his]
of DR threatens BOTH heretic and non-joiner, since DR in 1983 was not only
a heretic but (in a carrot&stick situation) was ignoring both bribe
(DIO 1.1 [1991]
‡1 n.11 [p.6]) and shun-threat — the carrot being
the attempt to bribe him with JHA-publication
to join the shunning of R.Newton,
an approach that seems to work smoothly with so many other historians.
[Little-pondered but inevitable realities of shunning:
[a] Academic shunners are HIDING. Hiding from encounter or debate with
the shunnee — hardly necessary if the latter could be shown wrong
by the former, in whatever scholarly dispute triggered the shun.
(Since the shunnee obviously seeks open debate, the act of shunning is simply
punishing the shunned party out of fear of fair debate.)
[b] Since it would obviously be criminal to suppress valid scholarship,
all shunning requires a concomitant pretense that
the shunned's scholarship is utterly worthless. (See
DIO 1.2 [1991]
§H2 [pp.124-125].)
So, to sum up: the shunning of genuinely
contributing figures (e.g., W.Luytens, Finn Ronne, Rob't Newton, etc)
has entailed cowardice, faking, conspiracy, and slanderous deceit.
None of which (though it goes on all over academe, at obvious cost to truth)
appears to interest the press very often.]
Thus, the hope of ensuring a fair DR WP bio is submerged in an environment
where there are just too many pols who fear the public's access to DR's
revelations — and too many mediocre-scholarship gofers who want to
syc up to said cower-operators (by helping the submersion)
— as (admittedly!) their pathetic selves' sole non-miraculous hope
for academic advancement.
Only 2h37m after Phaedrus7 responded (2008/7/25)
to “Eleland” by citing lots of DIO's eminent authors
& DR's prominent publications (and
debunked VsMyth's bigotted delusion
that Velikovsky-spoofer DR was pro-Velikovsky), cementally ineducable VsMyth
(instead of admitting his gross mistake) struck out at DR again!
— by re-eliminating a bunch of DIO citations
from the DR bio (the few that had been restored months earlier by Pickering).
He went on soon after to excise all
DIO-quoted material from the Sagan WP article,
saying:
“Gee, what fun
I just removed a rather trivial post [Phaedrus7's quote from
DIO] …. The reference given [DIO 1.1]
reads rather like a blog
and seems written by someone
annoyed by Sagan's criticism
of Velikovsky … what does that have to do with anything?”
Trivial? The Sagan quote shows
— read it, or view it,
and judge for yourself —
that he was not being exactly frank about his knowledge (at least in
the 1985/12/5 Nightline appearance). Is deviousness trivial?
[Phaedrus7 posted the fact that DR has from the start and for decades
been utterly anti-Velikovsky.
(As VsMyth himself could have known, had he bothered to read
the very same issue he was condemning:
DIO 1.1 [1991]
‡1 n.18 [p.8].)
But VsMyth remains as unbendingly infallible-in-his-own-mind as ever.
Why bother checking facts when your own brilliance enables you to judge
material by writing style
(allegedly blog-like: but, again, judge the quality
of writing and humor for yourself) instead of evidence —
or by hairtrigger-inducing that DR's DIO 1.1 comments
were inspired by the anger of a Velikovsky-defender!
When one is an astronomical amateur of the ilk of VsMyth etc
— but nonetheless desirous of condemning a source —
one is reduced to complaining of style or rule-nits, thereby
casting aside such trifling matters as accuracy, import, truth, creativity,
testimonials, etc. Cultist minds naturally tend to operate
with such tightly-blindered focus.
Nothing could more clearly demonstrate the shallowness
of Vsmith's intellect and scholarship.
For, no one who understood DIO's discoveries would
need to resort to such superficial criteria. Genuine experts never do
— which is why such folk have joined DIO,
and why genuine experts have never argued with a single fact on the DR WPbio.]
What binds VsMyth&co together is a common sham: all pretending that they
are just enforcing rigid rules (actually WP discretional recommendations
at best, which VsMyth has transformed into rules), when their actual —
but VsMyth-unstated
— purpose is to eliminate material
they regard as a kind of heresy against their icons.
[DR has criticized those who call atheism a religion, so he is
particularly sensitive to fanatics who seem to volunteer validation of that
corny linguistic & philosophical confusion.]
The saddest part of VsMyth's tyranny is that he obviously believes he is
Doing Good. Even the vandals probably think the same,
given the US' growing wave of occultist bilge.
But one of the reasons DR has
(DIO 9.3 [1999]
‡ §§A&N1 [pp.120&135])
less patience or sentimentality than most regarding crackpottery
(which both sides [of the vandals-vs-DR spat]
are battling against) is this reality: cranks' outpourings
so clutter the desks of editors, that valuable temporarily-unorthodox ore
gets barely examined or is totally lost in the overwhelming gush of crud.
[Over the years DR has debunked astrologers, the ESPbrained,
Velikovskians, & the Dr.Cook cult. Where he differs from most skeptics
is in his willingness to
scrutinize — with equal force — zany (temporarily) orthodox claims
and their often-unprincipled dictatorial defenders, for the excellent reasons
that
[a] these do even more harm
(to potential communal academic progress)
than the fringe-folk just cited; and
[b] money&conference-controlling power-operators
(such as the JHA's Hoskin & Gingerich) cow most scholars
into silence, so that any journal (such as DIO) with
the freedom to fight censorship & shunning is obliged to do so.
See
DIO 1.1 [1991]
‡1 §C4 [p.7] (a passage misconstrued as indiscriminate
knee-jerk anti-orthodoxy at S&T 2002 Feb p.40).]
It is hoped that VsMyth will be relieved at the very least of his Wiki-Admin-ownership of the DR biography — and that a few genuinely neutral (perhaps even scientifically able?) Administrators will be alerted to watch for attacks on the bio that are sure to continue if it attempts to accurately reflect and source DR's generally positive contribution to the scholarly community.
It is ghastly enough that a scientifically-underequipped
Wikipedia Administrator wilfully kept mis-classifying a high-level journal,
evidently in an attempt to CENSOR readers' access to its important revelations
on CENSORship. But to do so
in-concert with one side
(the censorial, ad-hominem one) of a dispute?! —
that defies and degrades the entire spirit of Wikipedia.
[One expects squabbles between individuals,
but not that an Administrator would side with vandalism —
and effectively join it.]
There is merit in having a detailed WP bio of DR. The very breadth of his researches may intrigue some readers. And he publishes a high-level academic journal, whose nerviness towards academe — and proclivity for providing information not readily found elsewhere — parallels Wikipedia's purported independence of orthodox centrist encyclopedias. DIO even parallels Wikipedia's use of anonymity as a protection for contributors, our mutual theory being that ideas ought to be judged on their merit not their origin's eminence. As noted on every DIO's inside back cover, DIO refereeing anonymity works inversely to the usual: the contributors, not the referees have the option to be anonymous if they wish.
DR has a good many academic firsts and
vindications. In the WP bio,
his currently unaccepted proposals are clearly designated so
(with evidence pro&con provided),
yet their concise and competently rendered enumeration will
provide scholars wide access to them in the full context of
his previous record of vindications (which may or may not prove relevant).
While the DIO web-page's
sprawling DR-Contributions
compilation was merely chronological, the [pre-2008/3/8]
WP summary of his scholarship is
by contrast terse, subject-organized, & non-judgemental.
[Among major post-2008 edits to DR WPbio,
all aimed at harming DR without answering a jot of his math:
[a] Sadistically add a link (2009/7/5 by “Mhym”)
to the WP bio of embattled Nick Kollerstrom
(co-author of Scientific American's 2004 Dec exposure of
the Brit theft of Neptune, vindicating DR's longtime contention),
while paying no attention to
Nick's adept physical capture of the prime document of the Neptune case.
[Instead of using a smear-ploy to lower confidence in
DR's Neptune findings, the hater MIGHT instead have evaluated the science
of DR's novel discovery (Scientific American 2004 Dec p.98)
that was the key to permanently undoing J.Adams' claim to Neptune.
And pigs MIGHT fly.]
[b] Wall's 2013 ripping out reference
to Diller's high rank in the geography-history community.
[Perhaps we should (for convenience) group all vandals
on DR-related WP articles as “Stall-Wall” —
since, after all, he's hardly the lone figure he fakes it as.]
Further on the matter of DR WPbio structure: anyone consulting a DR discovery
in one area of scholarship may (if its article is linked to the DR bio)
find himself interested in another area of DR's wide-ranging detective work.
Why stub out that progressive possibility?
But if the cost of maintaining the DR WPbio is that DIO people stay silent about academic crimes, then it will inevitably be removed or gutted.