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Biography: Science and Academia Start‑class

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This article was nominated for deletion on March 20th, 2012. The result of the discussion was Keep.

Tiller has been tagged :Category: Pseudoscientists but surely he is only half of one. His career work in Materials Science at Stanford is not pseudo, only his work in pseudoscience is pseudoscientific. GangofOne 00:17, 11 April 2006 (UTC)

Agree, it is POV. Any objections to delete this catagory?--RichardMalter 11:22, 20 June 2006 (UTC)

Doing some legitimate scientific work does not exclude one from being a pseudoscientist, just as being a dentist does not exclude one from being an author. Tiller is both. It would be more accurate to leave the "Pseudoscientists" categorization, but also add "Scientists". Greenie2600 13:46, 22 June 2006 (UTC)

Sufficient Plausibility

I undid the pseudoscience text about lacking sufficient plausibility. To label a well-known scientist as a pseudoscientist, you better actually be able to show his methodology is bogus. I've read his papers. They are not easy to understand. He's a terrible writer. But to dismiss them any more than one would dismiss another obscurely dense scientific writer is nothing more than imposing one's personal POV against the topic. --Mbilitatu (talk) 01:19, 6 April 2010 (UTC)

I undid user Stacyshaelo again. She did not make any effort to respond to the concern I raised here. --Mbilitatu (talk) 02:16, 16 April 2010 (UTC)

Tiller is a premier investigator in his field. To call him a pseudoscientist is cheap shot. It would be like dismissing all Christians that do science research because they believe in Virgin Birth. Stanford University thought it fit to make him a professor emeritus, not merely a professor. Criticisms of any scientist's work belongs in the commentary section of the journals they have published in, not from the peanut gallery of cyberspace. JosephCampisi (talk) 02:12, 16 June 2010 (UTC)

I think the lack of notable, reliable sources which cite his work is very telling. It's plainly clear that he is not a notable researcher and that the field of his research is not notable. --Salimfadhley (talk) 15:44, 17 March 2012 (UTC)

Delete proposal by 86.** IP

I've tried to tidy up this article, however I'm also left with the conclusion that there are no valid sources for this subject which meet the WP:BLP standards. --Salimfadhley (talk) 00:12, 20 March 2012 (UTC)

For the record: after the "Keep" decision of the deletion discussion of 28 March 2012, the article text was radically shortened by two editors on the following day. The deletions included:

• (with edit comment: "WP:UNDUE. This is not the mainstream view."): a referenced statement by theoretical physicist Amit Goswani, and
• (with edit comment: "Stubbify, barring discovery of WP:Reliable Sources") the entire list of Tiller's book publications including also his book on crystallization published by Cambridge University Press.

In my view, to include at least that one book again should be a no-brainer; for the rest it is somewhat of a gray zone. --Chris Howard (talk) 20:30, 29 March 2012 (UTC)

There's no source for the book list, though. If it can be soucred (and the bar's fairly low, admittedly, for relatively uncontroversial information), then sure. The problem is that the keep votes are based on claims of notability that have nothing to do with the lack of sources, so about all we can do is trim out the unsourced parts. 86.** IP (talk) 22:02, 31 March 2012 (UTC)

It turns out there he actually two books on crystallization, both on www.cambridge.org. The indicated publication dates refer to the dates as printed in the book, see the Google preview.

William A. Tiller: The Science of Crystallization: Microscopic Interfacial Phenomena, Cambridge University Press, 1991 (reprinted 1995), ISBN 978-052138-827-6

William A. Tiller: The Science of Crystallization: Macroscopic Phenomena and Defect Generation, Cambridge University Press, 1991, ISBN 978-052138-828-3

--Chris Howard (talk) 14:23, 1 April 2012 (UTC)

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