Talk:John Hagelin

Parked content per BLP/ pending source

Hagelin was invited to be a plenary speaker at the 2007 Quantum Mind conference in Salzburg, Austria, organized by Stuart Hameroff (University of Arizona) and Gustav Bernroider (University of Salzburg).

Global Union of Scientists for Peace

"Hagelin is the president of Global Union of Scientists for Peace which is a coalition of leading scientists and experts"

That sounds like a self-promoting PR blurb to me. A search for this organization gives mainly their own pages or those of associated groups. I did not recognize any of the names of the "leading scientists and experts" except Hagelin, who is not a leading scientist. Why do those leading scientists allow Hagelin to lead them? Weird.

I suspect that this organization is just another front of the Maharishi group, consisting of all those Maharishi fans who happen to be academics in any field of science. Is there any independent recognition by scientists that it is bona fide? One letter in the International New York Times, written by those people themselves, plus a bit of HuffPo, which is notorious for publishing anything and its dog, is a bit thin. --Hob Gadling (talk) 10:52, 4 May 2016 (UTC)

Oh my gosh, one of the cited sources is the International New York Times, which may appear like a legitimate source until one learns that it was a full-page advertisement that appeared in the paper. The HuffPo source is by a staffer from the David Lynch Foundation, of which Hagelin is the president. The last source is the GUSP website.

The article uncritically mentions "scientifically proven technologies for national security and global peace", which is over-the-top WP:PROFRINGE and a violation of the WP:NPOV policy -- not to mention that the whole paragraph from which it came was lifted directly from the advertisement. This is an epitomic example of bad sourcing that showcases why articles need to be based upon third-party sources (WP:SOURCES). Removing (obviously). The article already mentions that Hagelin is president of GUSP. Manul ~ talk 15:04, 28 August 2016 (UTC)

This material has now been restored twice using quotations, but that doesn't solve the problems mentioned here. Wikipedia isn't a venue for promoting this stuff; independent sources are needed to satisfy NPOV, specifically WP:PSCI. We don't report uncritically that these "scientifically proven technologies" are a thing. Manul ~ talk 10:46, 20 September 2016 (UTC)

The current version mostly works for me, though I'm wondering if the material on GUSP stating that he advocates the "brain-based" stuff would be useful to describe what it is, precisely, that he promotes. I think the main thing is in, though, which is simply to note his connection to the organization. Montanabw^(talk) 18:04, 20 September 2016 (UTC)

Aftermath of GA delisting

When the article lost its Good Article status in 2013 (Wikipedia:Good article reassessment/John Hagelin/1), one GA reviewer called the article "deceptive and misleading" and "a skillfully written piece of propaganda". There have been many WP:NPOV-oriented improvements since then, but there haven't been many editors involved with the cleanup and I still notice some oddities. For instance the Bibliography section contains entries which aren't referenced by the article and don't seem appropriate by themselves. I get a bit of a feeling that it's a repository of links to information about Hagelin rather than encyclopedic content. I have only partially assessed the article and I would invite others to look it over for NPOV-ness. Manul ~ talk 15:40, 28 August 2016 (UTC)

I have no problem with you removing the content you did, but I would suggest the reasons for doing so aren't accurate. Primary sources can be acceptable and in this case are, as proof of Hagelin's leadership of the GUSP. However the real issue is weight and whether this is significant content. Given the lack of secondary sources in the mainstream it may not be.

This article was reviewed in good faith and the changes requested were carried out in good faith including a complete revamping of the sources which took me and one other editor a couple of weeks of work so you will see a high edit count for Olive for example which reflects the hundreds of changes i made in the sources. However, this article was written by multiple editors including one now banned from all new religious movement articles and the encyclopedia. We can assume there was a great deal of scrutiny on this article. I requested a review to stabilize the article and to make sure it was neutral. The first reviewer seemed to think it was; I suggest that if you have concerns about the article you raise them for the sake of all the editors over the years who have worked on this article perhaps a better solution than suggesting foul play. I would also note there are some irregularities in terms of weight where explanatory content was removed while criticism remained. I may or may not work on the article; I'm pretty busy these days.(Littleolive oil (talk) 15:35, 30 August 2016 (UTC))

I haven't removed anything from the lead, at least not recently. Are you referring to the above thread about GUSP? I can't see how anything I've said there could be inaccurate. Please explain in that thread. Manul ~ talk 19:15, 30 August 2016 (UTC)

Sourced in lead per BLP

Per BLP, I've sourced physicist, in the lead, to Woit, one of Hagelin's detractors. (Littleolive oil (talk) 14:58, 28 January 2017 (UTC))

Unclear sentence

This doesn't make any sense as written: "Hagelin believes that his extended version of unified field theory is identified with Maharishi Mahesh Yogi's 'unified field of consciousness', a view that is rejected by 'virtually every theoretical physicist in the world'.

Can someone say here what the source says? SarahSV ^(talk) 02:55, 31 January 2017 (UTC)

Some of this can be found here [1], page 204. Some of it, this I think, " a view that is rejected by virtually every theoretical physicist in the world" is no longer visible on Amazon view when I looked for it just now.(Littleolive oil (talk) 19:40, 31 January 2017 (UTC))

What may be missing in terms of explanation is what Hagelin himself actually said when he was attempting to make this connection. This was removed as I remember as fringe and as a primary source . At the same time without the explanation as a base line for the criticism, the concept doesn't make a lot of sense.(Littleolive oil (talk) 19:40, 31 January 2017 (UTC))

Bibliography

There are lots of sources in this section, which is the section listing full citations, that aren't used in the article. These need to be removed or (in a few cases) moved to Further reading. SarahSV ^(talk) 05:47, 31 January 2017 (UTC)

Does anyone mind if I move the references into the text? It will be easier that way to sort out which sources are being used. SarahSV ^(talk) 06:39, 31 January 2017 (UTC)

Thanks for your work on this article. When we were going for Good Article (and achieved that), we took the reviewer's advice and did the refs in the cumbersome manner. Was a lot of work. And if I had to add a ref now, I wouldn't remember how to do it. Fine with me if you go ahead and do it in the simpler fashion. TimidGuy (talk) 15:44, 31 January 2017 (UTC)

Okay, thanks, that'll make things easier. SarahSV ^(talk) 16:34, 31 January 2017 (UTC)

I'm fine with that as well.This article was written by multiple editors over time. In asking for a GA review I hoped to make sure the neutrality of the article could be established and stabilized per a reviewer's input. I also spent a lot of time helping to redo all of the refs as one recommendation of the GA reviewer. Following the GA review there was a lot of input into this article. I have no problems with anything further that improves this articles and I respect your neutrality.(Littleolive oil (talk) 19:24, 31 January 2017 (UTC))