Talk:Bogdanov affair/Archive 5

Archive 1

←

Archive 3

Archive 4

Archive 5

Archive 6

Archive 7

→

Archive 10

DO NOT EDIT OR POST REPLIES TO THIS PAGE. THIS PAGE IS AN ARCHIVE.

This archive page covers approximately the dates between 07 October 2005 and 12 October 2005.

Post replies to the main talk page, copying or summarizing the section you are replying to if necessary.

Please add new archivals to Talk:Bogdanov Affair/Archive06. (See Wikipedia:How to archive a talk page.) Thank you. Ze miguel 22:51, 12 October 2005 (UTC)

A note about the purpose of this page

To all editors using this page for discussion: It is my opinion that the tone, structure, and content of the debate currently taking place here on this talk page has somewhat strayed from discussion of article content, and has instead degenerated into ad hominem argument. I would like to remind all participants in this debate that this article talk page is for collaboration and discussion of matters specifically relating to the article content. It is not a forum for the debate of the merits, personalities, or opinions of those participating in this particular article subject. Please keep discussion on this page solely restricted to matters germane to article content, and I would like to remind all participants that Wikipedia policy expressly forbids personal attacks being made (see Wikipedia:No personal attacks) and it also requires all editors to be civil in their communications and actions (see Wikipedia:Civility). I would like to ask all concerned to please follow these policies. Thank you. Yours, --NicholasTurnbull 01:52, 7 October 2005 (UTC)

It is very kind of you to take care of this page size. Nevertheless there were at least three ongoing discussions, related to the article content, which are now buried in Archive4 : about the scientific merit of the thesis and papers initiated by a long scientific paper, about a third party check of cites proposal by Igor B., about the "Internet Discussion" section. I propose to move back significant parts of these discussions. --YBM 01:56, 7 October 2005 (UTC)

BTW, User:Igor B. have made a mess of this page at his last edit (he injecting the whole Archive4 before answering), I copy some (imho) relevant to the current content sections here. --YBM 02:50, 7 October 2005 (UTC)

My apologies for archiving active discussion; however, the tangled structure of the current debate made it rather impossible for me to determine what was currently being referred to and what wasn't, and there appeared to be a great deal of somewhat off-topic material on the page. Would you please possibly keep each discussion thread in its own individual section, to make this easier to deal with? The old page was incredibly long, and a great deal was, in my opinion, not germane to the article. Thank you. --NicholasTurnbull 02:54, 7 October 2005 (UTC)

You're right, I hope now that we could focus on points related to the article content. Keep the good work. --YBM 02:58, 7 October 2005 (UTC)

Informations about the Citations

Here are the elements regarding the cites I am responsible for (I suppose rbj will do the same on his side).

Note that none of this cites are polite comments said during our PHD attribution. I indeed have such documdent (the "defense report") but I never used it and never made it public. I only use the written official material that was issued, at the request of the University, by experts to technically evaluate the thesis. I also used the official reports issued at the request of the Editorial Board of various physics journals, by experts to technically evaluate our scientific papers.

Here are the elements :

2. Classical&Quantum Grativity (CQG). referee's report

Author : Anonymus referee appointed by the Editorial Board of Classical & Quantum Gravity

Where it was published : The copy of the report was sent to the journal on Feb 15, 2001 and we got a copy by email from CQG the same day

Date : 15.02.2001

Purpose : Evaluation of IG Bogdanoff paper "Topological Field Theory of the Initial Singularity of Spacetime"

2. Chinese Journal of Physics (CJP). referee's report

Author : Anonymus referee appointed by the Editorial Board of Chinese Journal of Physics

Where it was published : The copy of the report was sent to the journal on Jan 10, 2001 and we got a copy by email from CJP the same day

Date : 10.01.2001

Purpose : Evaluation of IG Bogdanoff paper "Topological Origin of Inertia"

3. Comment from Massimo Porrati, Professor of Physics at New York University

Author : Massimo Porrati, Professor of Physics at New York University

Where it was published : An email dated Oct 30, 2002, which was largely distributed amongst physics community

Date : 30.10.2002

Purpose : Informations about the "Bogdanoff Affair"

4. Thesis Report requested by the University of Bourgogne

Author : Roman Jackiw Professor of Theoretical Physics at Massussets Institute of Technology (MIT)

Where it was published : This report was sent by Prof Jackiw to the University of Bourgogne and published on various internet sites (among them : http://igor.bogdanov.free.fr)

Date : 11.04.02

Purpose : Evaluation of I.Bogdanoff Thesis "Etat Topologique de l'Espace temps à l'Echelle 0"

5. Thesis Report requested by the University of Bourgogne

Author : Jac Verbaarshot, Professor of Theoretical Physics at Stony Brook University (New York)

Where it was published : This report was sent by Prof Verbaarshot to the University of Bourgogne and published on various internet sites (among them : http://igor.bogdanov.free.fr)

Date : 18.09.99

Purpose : Evaluation of I.Bogdanoff Thesis "Etat Topologique de l'Espace temps à l'Echelle 0" and acceptation as co advisor of the thesis

6. Zcechoslovak Journal of Physics (CJP). referee's report

Author : Anonymus referee appointed by the Editorial Board of Zcechoslovak Journal of Physics

Where it was published : The copy of the report was sent to the journal on Apr 17, 2001 and we got a copy by email from CJP the same day

Date : 10.01.2001

Purpose : Evaluation of IG Bogdanoff paper "Topological Origin of Inertia"

5. Thesis Report requested by the University of Bourgogne

Author : Costas Kounnas, Professor of Theoretical Physics at Ecole Normal Supérieure (ENS)

Where it was published : This report was sent by Prof Kounnas to the University of Bourgogne and published on various internet sites (among them : http://igor.bogdanov.free.fr)

Date : 22.02.99

Purpose : Evaluation of G.Bogdanoff Thesis "Fluctuations Quantiques de la Métrique à l'Echelle de Planck"

6. Thesis Report requested by the University of Bourgogne

Author : Jac Morava, Professor of Theoretical Physics at John Hopkins University (JHU)

Where it was published : This report was sent by Prof Morava to the University of Bourgogne and published on various internet sites (among them : http://igor.bogdanov.free.fr)

Date : 29.05.02

Purpose : Evaluation of G.Bogdanoff Thesis "Fluctuations Quantiques de la Métrique à l'Echelle de Planck"

I have all the copies of the original documents or mails subject to the above description.

Igor

Request for a third party inquiry

Given that almost every of these documents were only published by the Bogdanovs and therefore we do not have any trustworthy source, so we could only have quite a relative trust on their complete veracity. I ask for someone not involved in the debate to check with all of their attributed authors (whose e-mails are easy to obtain) :

• Their veracity, exactitude and completude
• Their meaning, given the context where they were produced, relatively to the merit of Bogdanovs' work
• Their status relatively to public divulgation

--YBM 15:27, 4 October 2005 (UTC)

---

YBM : I really find your above proposal totally insane. It shows how far you are prepared to go : the one who suspects manipulations and dishonesty everywhere is himself...a manipulator and a dishonest person. What else can I say? Did I propose to double or triple check your own posts?

And beyond all this dispute : are you unsain enough to think that I would take the risk to publish this material on a public page like Wikipedia without having all the proofs that these documents are for real? Do you seriously think that if these documents were "forged" (an expression you apply to us ALL THE TIME) their presumed authors would not react and confirm the fraud?

I do not know in what world you live. But let me tell you that beyond what we think of it, your proposal is also embarrassing for all the people that you will contact for confirmation : how do you think a serious professor like Roman Jackiw (or anyone else who certainely does not pass his time on internet) would react if someone abrutly asked him "to confirm the authorship, dates, veracity meaning, status, etc" of their reports? Can you imagine the effect of it?

Perhaps. And this is why you request such a proceedure.

On our side, I propose to send the copies of the originals to whoever accepts to be the "proof referee" of these documents. Once more, if there was any doubt regarding their authenticity, be sure that the reaction would fire immediatly. This is a "self evident proof".

Igor

YBM must be kidding. LLL

It is a public and proven fact that you've been publishing before :

• Unauthorized documents (Majid's report)
• Incorrect report on private conversation (Majid)
• Heavy cut documents, changing their meaning (Schreiber)
• Out of context documents (thesis reports)
• Forged proof of academic institutional support (th-phys.edu.hk with HKUST street address put there by the registrant, use of the same address in an e-mail sent to the physicist Jacque Diestler from Igor's home in Paris in the name of the IIMP, with a working th-phys.edu.hk reply-to address)
• (Unargumented) claim of support from inexistent scientists (1, 2, 3)
• Deeply modified/mistranslated documents, reverting their meaning (Giorgis, Majid, Woit: 1, 2, 3)
• Forgeries (your so-called book preprint, Heudier's letter)

It several cases "copies" were not copies at all but forgeries.

It's nothing but common sense to ask for author's confirmation when we're about to quote/link to such documents in an encyclopedia, even a free one. --YBM 16:40, 4 October 2005 (UTC)

I do not think that there is any humour intended. Given past incidents, such as the one documented here for instance ("The following was my summary of the ill reasoning of Bogdanov & Bogdanov as originally posted here, which is reproduced in a distorted fashion in their book"), I think that we would be wise to acertain the context of quotations. Rama 16:42, 4 October 2005 (UTC)

I was ironic, of course, but you had understood, had'nt you ? Why would Igor propose the referencies of what he and his brother published if that would dangerous for them ? Think about. LLL

LLL, if half of the quarter of what YBM cites is true (and I have no reason to believe it is not), then the Bodganov have already taken several actions which are "dangerous for them", be it for their scientific reputation or even for their legal security.

We here at Wikipedia are forced to take into account the possibility that some other errors or mistakes could be made here as well. Rama 16:58, 4 October 2005 (UTC)

Rama, did you REALLY read the last post of Igor. I really doubt about it. LLL

I did, and I stick to what it said. There have been in the past, apparently, instances of erroneous quotations for one reasons or another.

That these quotations are authentic (in the sense that the said person did say exactly that) proves nothing if they are taken out of context. Besides, the argument that a misuse of quotation would be too dangerous would also apply to these previous instance of actual misquoting. So I am left with the impression that we do want to carefully check every quotation, absolutely.

This being said, LLL's reaction, and Igor's intimidating "how do you think a serious professor like Roman Jackiw (...)" or categoric "This is a "self evident proof" could leave readers with the impression that there is a strong will for these checks not to be made. I do not understand why; the worse which can happen is some time begin taken about it, and Wikipedia is not on a hurry. Since Igor is so categoric about the validity of his quotations, I have not doubt that he has nothing to fear of a close scrutiny, and the article will have much to gain. Rama 17:18, 4 October 2005 (UTC)

Such precautions are really having "double standard"... On the other hand, the fact that YBM has wasted such a time to create a blog and 2 forums against the Bogdanov, and have taken part to such a lot of discussions doesn't seem to worry you a lot... The fact that Riazuelo is quoted 3 times in the article, including a whole article of his own that he wrote especially for Wikipedia, apparently doesn't disturb you either, as you reverted my last edit (I was 84.226.133.252, I had not noticed I wasn't logged). If you want to take into account of the "past" and the context of the Bogdanov affair, you have to do it for all aspects, including the harassment and the insincerity of the Bogdanovs' enemis. It's too easy to be very suspicious for the Bogdanov and to pretend to not notice that some other people who take part to the writing of the article are "not completely impartial" about them, and try to make an article as negative as possible, by using all tricks for it.

Laurence67 18:01, 4 October 2005 (UTC)

I do totally agree with what Laurence67 juste wrote. If the DOUBT is ONLY expressed about what Igor writes or publishes, and the TRUST is ONLY felt about what YBM repeats, what Riazuelo says, it's obviously too easy. LLL

I have seen YBM adopt an improper behviour in terms of civility, but I have not yet seen him feed informations which turned out to be gravely incorrect (for one reason or another). The same standard would apply to him, of course, if we were forced to have the same reserves about the veracity of this sources. For now it is not the case. Rama 08:00, 5 October 2005 (UTC)

You forgot a small detail : facts and scientific arguments can be directly checked as long as evidences and chain of reasoning are provided, what is in this case done every time, and the reader is invited to check himself, on the contrary indirect quotes and arguments of authority (which is the only line of defense of the Bogdanovs - many having being proven faked already, they especially evade scientific debate) cannot. --YBM 18:43, 4 October 2005 (UTC)

---

Well, I stick to my position too. I do not think that YBM's proposal to double check the content (or even the mere existence) of the reports and comments I published in the artcle is innocent and "clean of bad intentions". YBM knows that the simple fact to disturb again the authors of all the reports issued on our work will (no doubt) have an "irritating effect". Once again these academics will be extremely disturbed by the "nth" question about what they wrote, why they wrote it, etc. To complete the picture, these questions will be inevitably associated to the vague suspiscion that what they wrote could have been...manipulated? or false? or faked? or forged? etc.

All the reports went public in 2002. All of them. Don't you think, seriously, that if these reports had been forged (even for one word : we are not speacking of any problem of translation here), we would have gotten some reactions?

Let's face it. We do not fear any "close scrutiny". All we fear is to disturb once again people who gave lots of their time to analyze our work.

But if you really do not see any other way, fine. Let's ask these scientists "if what they wrote about the Bogdanoff is true or not".

Igor

You see ? Is that clear enough for you, YBM ? Do you need more light ? LLL

I've read that before (for almost every sample I've provided sooner), and checking was indeed a good idea. --YBM 19:12, 4 October 2005 (UTC)

---

A good idea? It was before anything else an enormous manipulation of your kind. Let's take your "examples" one per one.

YBL wrote : Unauthorized documents(Majid's report)

It is true that Majid did not appreciate that we published his report in our book as endorsing the whole content of Grichka's thesis. Majid is a mathematician. His evaluation only applied on the quantum groups part of the thesis. He said to Grichka in the phone that his reaction (about the publication of his report in our book ) would have been different if Costas Kounnas had also been published for the physical part. But we did not publish Kounnas (or any of the 15 reports issued on the 2 thesis). You know why? only because we thought it was not appropriate to publish too much material of this kind. That's why we picked only 2 reports : 1 for Grichka's thesis (Majid) and 1 for Igor's thesis (Jackiw).

Now, if Majid was very irritated by the publication of his report, he never asked to withdraw it from the book (which we offered). So please stop speaking all the time about "unauthorized documents". It was a mistake to have published Majids report (especially without Kounnas report) but it is not an "affaire d'état". Unless people like YBM wants to promote it as an "affaire d'état".

YBM wrote : Incorrect report on private conversation (Majid)

What are you taking about? are you referring to the heated conversations that developped around the "Ciel&Espace" bad journalism?

YBM wrote : Heavy cut documents, changing their meaning (Schreiber)

How many times shall we repeat that no author is obliged to quote someone else's comments "in extenso". We quote the documented and argumented part of Schreiber's technical analysis of our work. But as far as his "personal views" were concerned, since he could not provide any arguments in favor of his "opinion", we considered his opinion as non scientific and not acceptable for a scientific text. That is the reason why we did not publish it.

YBM wrote : Out of context documents (thesis reports)

What do you mean by "out of context documents"? Where did we publish "out of context documents"?

YBM worte : Forged proof of academic institutional support (th-phys.edu.hk and HKUST street address)

This is a good illustration of your way to proceed. You are distording and twisting reality untill it looks as crooked as you are. Once more I will tell you that this "so important address" that you quote at each corner of a phrase WAS GIVEN TO US BY THE HONK KONG REGISTRAR!!!!!! I remind you that we legally bought a domain name that we created ourselves (th-phys). It never existed before us. Can you at least understand this? We did NOT EVEN KNOW on what address our site was referenced on the registrar's page. This was not even our problem.

Now the fact that you dare to call this a "forged proof of academic institutional support" is a shame. No other word to qualifiy your attitude.

YBM wrote : (Unargumented) claim of support from inexistent scientists (1, 2, 3)

Here again you manipulate the reality. You know perfectly well that everyone (including you) is using pseudos on internet. We publically explained why we did it and under which circumstances.

YBM wrote : Deeply modified/mistranslated documents, reverting their meaning (Giorgis, Majid, Woit: 1, 2, 3)

Here also you abuse reality. Why? simply because I wrote some days ago that ALL translations from french to english were made by the professional translator appointed by Grasset. This is a fact. The translator wrote a specific statement about this point and explained, line per line, all the translations he did from the Majid's or Woit's text. And contrarely to what you pretend, his translation is, in its essence, exactly conformal to the original text.

YBM wrote : Forgeries (your so-called book preprint, Heudier's letter)

About the preprint of our book you have created all by yourself all the "proofs" that it was a forgery. You and only you has created all that and you know it. We have a written statement established by our publishers that evidence the authenticity of the page you pretend to be false. The shame is that you still continue to pretend that you "uncovered the truth" (when you only manipulate the truth). Next week you will hear some news about this particular problem you have created.

About Heudier's letter, it is a shame (once again) that you still dare to pretend that it was forged. You and only you is writing such an outrageous lie. Can you even produce a beginning of a proof supporting your claim? No! And let me tell you one good thing : if you continue to throw such lies on this discussion page you will have to justifiy them. One way or another. And not by links sending the reader to your Epiphysique website. You know that you are falsifying the truth. Heudier wrote his statement as it was sent to France 2 and you also know that we hold the ORIGINAL OF IT!!! What else do you need?

YBM wrote : It several cases "copies" were not copies at all but forgeries.

In several cases? which cases? can you even document your lies?

In a more general way and as a conclusion I would observe 1 thing :

In the case we ask such or such scientist if he indeed wrote such report, he should of course confirm it. But at the same time I fear that this scientist will add that he does not wish his opinion to be published in any polemical article on internet. Regarding this point, you should ask rbj if he ever got ANY REACTIONS FROM CQG. I am 100% certain that CQG DID NOT CONFIRM ANYTHING REGARDING THE AUTHENTICITY OF THE EMAIL MADE PUBLIC BY KUPPERBERG ON NOV.1ST 2002. Do you know why? because (as all other scientists authors or reports) CQG does not want to be caught once again in a public debate regarding the so called "Bogdanoff affair". This is a simple fact. Ask RBJ : he will tell you that he NEVER got any answer from CQG.

on 10/03/2005 11:04, Judith Adams at judith.adams@iop.org wrote:

> Dear Dr Bristow-Johnson,

>

> Thank you for your e-mail. The statement you refer to was issued to

> Editorial Board members of Classical and Quantum Gravity in 2002, as a

> working document to provide them with information that they might find

> useful to refer to when approached by journalists or other members of the

> scientific community regarding this topic.

>

> Best wishes,

>

> Judith Adams

> Publisher

> Institute of Physics Publishing

> Dirac House, Temple Back

> Bristol, BS1 6BE

> United Kingdom

> E-mail: judith.adams@iop.org

> Tel: +44 (0) 1179 301212

> Fax: +44 (0) 1179 200818

>

>

two points. 1. i am not a "Dr" but i assume Ms. Adams didn't want to risk insulting a "real" Dr (like our friends Igor and Grichka) by saying "Mr". 2. i figure that this is a wash. CQG is embarrassed and they want to have it both ways. they want to distance themselves from this paper that they published, but they don't want to draw attention to it with an explicit repudiation. the problem is then, their reputation actually gets lower by trying to cover it up and hoping it goes away. (sorry, i forgot to sign this yesterday r b-j 20:09, 5 October 2005 (UTC))

Fantastic. Every single shred of (even slightly) positive evidence in this affair is a wash or a lie. Conversely any negative quote or document is crystal clear and beyond reproach. This is getting seriously out of hand. --CatherineV 06:54, 5 October 2005 (UTC)

Catherine, your weakening the inference of the statement is unjustified. if you insist on weakening the shortened synopsis, then i insist on including the whole statement again so you cannot distort its meaning. the Adams reply to me did not get your dishonest friends off the hook. not in any manner. we are doing precisely what the CQG intends. they issued the statement for "journalists" (like us, here at WP) to refer to. and it was supplied to us by an editorial board member for this purpose. r b-j 20:09, 5 October 2005 (UTC)

And the same rule should apply to any kind of "enquiry" about such or such text written by such or such scientist. It's simple to understand. Igor

The more you are losing your temper, the more irrelevant and contradictory are your responses. It makes you write more lies and irrelevancies. (I can prove every of my statements with written and authenticated evidences, as a matter of fact it is what I just did, just follow the links). --YBM 21:28, 4 October 2005 (UTC)

--- No, you did not. You did not authenticate anything about Heudier. You did not authenticate anything about the preprint page (except you forged the page yourself). You did not authenticate anything about "several cases copies", etc, etc, etc.

As soon as we ask you to produce evidence you come back with empty words (which is a gentle definition for "lie").

Igor

An answer to Lubos Motl

Dear Lubos, welcome on this page of discussion. It is really good to see you here.

you wrote : The gravitational instantons based on the topological action could indeed be an important part of a dual, "quantum foam" description of quantum gravity. Nevertheless, it is hard for me to agree with your statement that the Lagrangian "reduces" to the topological term. In the full Lagrangian, if written properly, there are also higher derivative terms that are expected to exceed the "R squared" topological term at ultrashort distances, near the big bang you study, much like the Einstein-Hilbert action, which you write among your terms of choice, wins at long distance scales. These terms appear even if you have 32 supercharges in supergravity, and they are the main reason why we normally believe that the usual geometric and topological intuition should not be trusted at subPlanckian distances. If you think that there are no E-H and higher-order non-topological terms in the action in your limit, you would have to give more evidence for this statement. In that case, it would indeed be an extraordinarily interesting observation.

Indeed, it is perfectly true that in the general string context D = ... , the theory generally induces non-perturbative corrections and a coupling with higher derivative terms expected to exceed the R squared term. But here, the context in slightly different, since we consider the low-dimensionnal sector of the theory. Indeed, D=4 (and N=2). In four dimensions, the expansion of derivative terms can be limited in a natural way to the R squared term (see for instance Kounnas and al). This is also true in our Kaluza-Klein context (viewed here as the D=5 superposition of the D=4 Lorentzian + Euclidean gravitationnal theories). So, on the ultra-violet limit of the theory (associated to the coupling constant g goes to zero) the Einstein term and the R squared term are exponentially supressed of the Lagrangian. Consequently, the only effective contribution on this 'topological limit' comes from the topological term RR dual. In this case of course, the time-like direction of the theory is compactified on the circle of radius zero (where we find the instanton sector, dual to the monopole sector of the 'superposed theory'). From this point of view, the ultra-violet limit (beta goes to zero) and the infra-red limit (Planck scale) represent two sectors of the same theory and can be seen as related by a duality relation of the T-duality type (which, in string theory, exchanges the scales of the theory). Then, in our approach, the so called 'zero-scale' (initial singularity given by the topological term) is dual to the 'physical scale', given by the Einstein term.

This is a brief hint and can be of course more detailed and referenced, if you wish.

Thank you again for your kind attention and your precious comments about our work.

Grichka B. 194.206.212.1 03:03, 4 October 2005 (UTC)

About Internet dicussions

Since I regained so far my faculty to edit the article again, I reformulated the section about "Internet discussion"/

Two remarks :

1. Grichka never (or almost never) posted on forums and threads of discussions. Why? because he did not beleive (and still does not) believes that it is possible to discuss real science on internetm (especially in the Bogdanoff context which is twisted by passions of all sorts). Of course Grichka never used any pseudos.

This had to be corrected in the araticle and I did it.

2. About the "th-phys.edu.hk " domain name : I created and bought this domain name from HK registrar for the International Institute of Mathematical Physics whose president is the reputed mathematical physicist Ark Jadczyk. It was me (and only me) who invented the domaine name (th-phys).

When I undertook the necessary actions for the payment of this domain name, the HK registrar explained me that every educational HK domain name remained the actual property of Hong Kong University of Science and Technology and was officially seated at the adress of the university. The registrar added that it was not a problem and that we could use our domain name as if we fully owned it. It was only a year later that YBM (again) created a big mess around this official ownership and started to accuse us to use a domain name without any rights to do it. YBM went so far in his accusations, sending dozens of emails to the university, that we finally had to cancel our domain name/

This is the real story about this domain name and I wrote it.

Igor

• Fact 1 : you pretended on fr.sci.*physics that the domain was owned by HKU
• Fact 2 : you said to David Fossé from Ciel & Espace that the "operational center" of your "International Institude of Mathematical Physics" (in fact a simple private association) was in Hong Kong (just check the article in the magazine)
• Fact 3 : Mr "Yang", whoever he is - you or an hypocrite friend of yours - posted several e-mails and blog entries from your home (as you admitted) with an reply-to address from this very domain, and pretented on several e-mails to be from Hong Kong University, he did the same on Usenet
• Fact 4 : What you've just said makes no sense regarding the real administrative structure of the DNS and WHOIS databases.
• Fact 5 : This is your third contradictory explanation of the HKU(ST) reference in the th-phys.edu.hk : first you said to be affiliated to HKU(ST) (and even bet on it), then that it was randomly added by HKDNR, now it is added because of the .edu.hk uplevel domain. All three are false, moreover, all three are in contradiction.
• Fact 6 : During about the same period you registered maths-phys.edu.bs (click on the click to see the .bs WHOIS database :

  Registrant Name 	Mathematical Physics International Institute (MPI)
  Registrant Address 	Paris Univ. 4, Parent Rosan PARIS FR 75116 FR

) with, this time not the adress but the name "Paris Univ. 4," (this is nothing less than Paris Sorbonne). You were prudent enough to never pretend, afaik, to be related to this prestigious university. Are you about to pretend that the .bs TLD registrar asked you to add a French university in the from for some nonsensical administrative reason ?

• Fact 7 : here is an excerpt from the Rules for .hk Domain and Sub-domains

  2.9 .edu.hk Domain Name
  
  Registered schools, tertiary institutions and other approved educational institutions in HKSAR
  are eligible to register a .edu.hk Domain Name. You need to provide a copy of your Certificate
  of Registration of a School from the Education Department of the HKSAR Government, or other
  documentary proof to us when applying to register a .edu.hk Domain Name. 

About Grichka : a lot of your internet activities have been committed under the name "Igor/Grichka", you confirmed several times on fr.sci.*physique that your brother endorsed whatever was written under that name. --YBM 01:25, 7 October 2005 (UTC)

I noticed you added this when reverting again to your fancy version : "you provoked the loss of our domaine name.", which is a blatant lie : I wrote to HKU, HKUST, HKDNR to ask if they knew about the domain and its relation to HKU/HKUST months after the domain expired because you didn't pay the second year ! --YBM 01:31, 7 October 2005 (UTC)

A few answers

• Fact 1 : you pretended on fr.sci.*physics that the domain was owned by HKU

No. I wrote that it was owned by HKUST

• Fact 2 : you said to David Fossé from Ciel & Espace that the "operational center" of your "International Institude of Mathematical Physics" (in fact a simple private association) was in Hong Kong (just check the paper in the magazine)

After having checked the paper, I do not see any evidence of what you wrote. Besides everyone knows that journalists are not the most reliable sources.

• Fact 3 : Mr "Yang", whoever he is - you or an hypocrite friend of yours - posted several e-mails and blog entries from your home (as you admitted) with an reply-to address from this very domain, and pretented on several e-mails to be from Hong Kong University, he did the same on Usenet

Yang was and still is a friend of ours. He is a mathematical physicist who got very interested in our work. He used to work in Hong Kong for a while and since he did NOT wish to disclose his real name he picked up HKU as an anonymizer. It is perfectly true that he posted from our home and we never hide it.

• Fact 4 : What you've just said makes no sense regarding the real administrative structure of the DNS and WHOIS databases.

Sorry but it does make a lot of sense with administrative structure of the DNS and WHOIS database regarding educational institutions. Any educational domain name is officially owned by an uplevel institution. This system is comparable to the US Educause system (you can check this point). The domain name I created was legally owned by HKUST (even if HKUST even did not it, exactly as it happens for the Educause affiliated institutions).

• Fact 5 : This is your third contradictory explanation of the HKU(ST) reference in the th-phys.edu.hk : first you said to be affiliated to HKU(ST) (and even bet on it), then that it was randomly added by HKDNR, now it is added because of the .edu.hk uplevel domain. All three are false, moreover, all three are in contradiction.

It is quite possible that I wrote things that may have been contradictory. You know why? Because (contrarely to you) I really did not give a dam to this "official ownership". It is only after you made me aware of it that I started to wonder why it was so important to you. Now I understand that you considered this as an "usurpation" of address, etc.

• Fact 6 : During about the same period you registered maths-phys.edu.bs with, this time not the adress but the name "Paris Univ. 4," (this is nothing less than Paris Sorbonne. You were prudent enough to never pretend, afaik, to be related to this prestigious university. Are you about to pretend that the .bs TLD registrar asked you to add a French university in the from for some nonsensical administrative reason ?

Absolutly not. I never pretend any affiliation with Paris la Sorbonne. And Paris Univ 4 was never used in any document for .bs registration.

About Grichka : a lot of your internet activities have been committed under the name "Igor/Grichka", you confirmed several times on fr.sci.*physique that your brother endorsed whatever was written under that name. --YBM 01:25, 7 October 2005 (UTC)

Exact. But endorsment is a different thing than writing. Grichka never wrote anything. I did. Grichka never used any pseudos. I did. This makes a major difference : it illustrates the fact that Grichka (for good reasons) did not beleive that anything coherent and good could come out of forums discussions.

I noticed you added this when reverting again to your fancy version : "you provoked the loss of our domaine name.", which is a blatant lie : I wrote to HKU, HKUST, HKDNR to ask if they knew about the domain and its relation to HKU/HKUST months after the domain expired because you didn't pay the second year ! --YBM 01:31, 7 October 2005 (UTC)

Not months : only days. The dates are there to prove it. Your messages created such a problem in Hong Kong that it became impossible for us to renew our domain name. You are directly responsible of this loss. Admit it./ As you should admit that I cannot accept your biaised presentation of facts.

Igor

I am sorry, but I do not feel that this thread is directly germane to the content of the article. Please read my message about this at the top of the page. I would be grateful if you would please take this discussion elsewhere, since it is not relevant to Wikipedia article writing in my opinion. Thank you. --NicholasTurnbull 03:00, 7 October 2005 (UTC)

If you allow the Internet Discussions chapter in the article, the related thread on the Talk page is relevant. --CatherineV 06:40, 7 October 2005 (UTC)

Please, consider this :

  Date:	 Thu, 27 Jan 2005 12:54:07 +0800
  Objet:	Re: HKU Institute of Mathematical Physics domain
  
  In Hong Kong, HKU usually refers to my University
  which is The University of Hong Kong, but it is not
  situated at Clear Water Bay.
  
  The Hong Kong University of Science and Technology,
  normally refered to as HKUST, is indeed situated at 
  Clear Water Bay.  Thus I have forwarded your email to
  the persons in charge of IT at HKUST.  However they
  have found that in fact the information quoted in 
  the website is all unreal, so it appears that somebody
  had created the th-phys.edu.hk website without proper
  authorization.  They are now investigating the matter.
  
  Best regards
  
  Nam Ng
  Director 
  Computer Centre
  The University of Hong Kong,
  Pokfulam, Hong Kong.

Igor, your reversal and comment [1] are not acceptable; you are neither making the law here (so what you "don't accept" is of little concern), neither the reality ("I have documented this version and instead of reverting it on sight you should read it and consider it as genuine;").

Your explanations about his "Yang" person are not convincing, and we have no reason to noly state that " Igor explained that Yang was a friend of them and a real theoretical physicist, expert in some of their theories (KMS theory, operator algebras) and supporting them but formally wishing to remain anonymus." without mentioning the general suspicion that this person is made of thin air.

Your explanation of the Hong Kong domain name is merely a hugely tendencious tale of someone setting a username to tries to usurpate the authority of hte University of Hong Kong. You have no explanation for the reason to require registration from the Hong Kong registar rather than a French one; the "coincidence" of this "Yang" person (who apparently claimed to be a member of the Unviersity of Hong Kong) and of the "the peculiar domain name of the Institute the Bogdanoffs work for", as you say, remain unexplained. You claim to be a physicist, so tell me the odds for these elements to happen like this by pure random chance ?

"the peculiar domain name of the Institute the Bogdanoffs work for": that phrasing is mine, not Igor's. I edited that paragraph in keeping with my own perception of the fact and your recommendation (hereunder): Note that the phrasing of YBM, if I am correct, says something along the lined that Yang's existence and identity are unclear and nebulous, it doesn't downright deny that Yang exists. Perhaps wording the part in this manner could be an acceptable middle term. --CatherineV 16:08, 8 October 2005 (UTC)

And that you choose to describe with great details the tone of your detractors on forums while ignoring your insults to Charpak and hushing the reaction of the national media makes your version utterly unacceptable. Rama 14:29, 8 October 2005 (UTC)

About the 3RR and Igor's version

Igor, I do not appreciate your constant reversal to a version which replaces basically all documented facts with appologetic and unverifiable statements. Either you formally challenge facts like insulting Charpak (and with good reasons), or you stop removing them.

Furthermore, I had specifically required everybody to discuss and seek a reasonable middle term arrangement; I note that after I made the call, YBM managed to give this a try, and that noone cared to discuss his version with him on the talk page.

Revert wars are bad because they get everybody nervous and angry, not because of some rule. Noone has a guaranteed right to three reverts, there is only one rule which spells Don't be a dick. Statements like "I stand to my position. Look at the talk page (and don't forget, YBM, that you have only 1 revert left" are enough to make me block the user so that he spends the next 24 hours in meditation in the hope that he gets enlightened and comes at peace with the universe. Rama 06:59, 7 October 2005 (UTC)

PS: To all, try to take YBM's version and include some of Igor's statements -- that he claims that this "Yang" person is a real one, and try to give a concise impression of his excuses for creating private organisations which sound incredibly like academic institutions and have a "University-of-Hong-Kong"-sounding domain name. If that can be done without getting a schizophrenic and never-ending article. These statements are interesting, somehow. Rama 06:59, 7 October 2005 (UTC)

Creating an article worthy of wikipedia

Hi. I realize the issues covered in this article really push people's buttons, so I understand why there has been so much debate and conflict, but the quality of the article has really suffered. I'm neutral to the issue and I plan to make some substantial edits with every effort toward NPOV. I'm not really familiar with the subject matter of the Bogdanov's publication, so feel free to edit for accuracy, however, this article is about the controversy, not the paper, so I'm going to focus accordingly. I'm a pretty bold editor, so apologies if I step on some toes. Bubamara 07:08, 7 October 2005 (UTC)

I'm actually answering to Rama's suggestion above (YBM's version) but I suppose I should write under this topic.

About the Internet Discussions in their current version: I'd like to take it slowly and start with two comments:

A. Regarding this: The Bogdanov affair has first been discussed extensively in the Usenet newsgroup sci.physics.research, then on fr.sci.[astro]physique, various English and French-speaking blogs and web forums, and Wikipedia. The Bogdanov brothers have frequently taken part in these discussions, originally as sock puppets under faked identities of great scientists.

Comment: as far as I can tell, their first post related to the Affair was written under I/G Bogdanoff.

I therefore suggest rephrasing:

...taken part in these discussions, originally in their own names on sci.physics.research. Later, and we may assume that the heated discussions they were confronted to influenced such a move, they sometimes used faked identities to defend themselves.

Please advise.

Please have a look at this post from Mon, 28 Oct 2002 (before any post by the Bogdanovs). You will notice a few things:

* The name and the email address don't match (not even the gender)

* Obvious mistranslations from French ("The mathematics behind are")

* This and another post in the thread (Nov 4) are the two single contributions from this e-mail address to all of Usenet

* There are several spaces after each period (compare with Bogdanov's messages) and other syntactic similarities

* The message is posted from Google (a pattern used by the Bogdanovs and all their puppets)

* The content of the post

Ze miguel 08:21, 8 October 2005 (UTC)

B. About Chinese matters, I would like some explanation for this:

During months, the Bogdanovs pretended to have academic support through the Hong Kong University

Where did they pretend to have academic support? Is there another argument than good ol’ Yang who, until further evidence, is a friend of theirs and cannot be used to justify the above sentence?

And by the way, I have a question for Rama: what exactly are we expecting: evidence from Igor that Yang is real or evidence from YBM (or anyone else) that Yang is not real? If neither can be brought, what do we do, explain both POVs or give up on Yang?

--CatherineV 08:48, 7 October 2005 (UTC)

There, there, see ? That 's the sort of things I want !

CatherineV, there are huge presumptions that this Yang person does not exist, which YBM and other have documented. Igor's only response to that has been, basically, that we should take his word that this "Yang" exists, and that no evidence will be provided because Yang wishes to be anonymous.

Obviously this is problematic, because

1) under no circumstances would I buy someone's claimed authority in a domain if he does not provide full credentials (apparently, this Yang appeals to his authority to defend Bogdanov's work)

2) I am sorry to say that given the behaviour of Bogdanov, I simply cannot take his word

Note that the phrasing of YBM, if I am correct, says something along the lined that Yang's existence and identity are unclear and nebulous, it doesn't downright deny that Yang exists. Perhaps wording the part in this manner could be an acceptable middle term. Rama 09:19, 7 October 2005 (UTC)

Please have a look at this page. John Baez is the theoretical physicist who publicized the affair on sci.physics.research. He writes that he "was able to contact Hong Kong University and check that there was no International Institute of Mathematical Physics at this university, and no "Professor Yang" in their physics department!", plus some other evidence in the links he provides. Ze miguel 08:21, 8 October 2005 (UTC)

Edits

I have edited the page at the request of User:Pasboudin and User:Willy on Wheels. Please stop reverting my edits. --The three revert rule is silly 10:16, 7 October 2005 (UTC)

Stop removing content and vandalizing pages. --JoanneB 10:18, 7 October 2005 (UTC)

I have edited this page again. --PlatinumDane 12:12, 7 October 2005 (UTC)

And so I see. And I've reverted it again, and will continue to do so. Please stop vandalizing. --JoanneB 12:14, 7 October 2005 (UTC)

So you like editing eh? So do we! --Oblivious 12:19, 7 October 2005 (UTC)

Vrooom vrooom, here comes the permablockmobile... Rama 12:32, 7 October 2005 (UTC)

Bye bye, good luck, have fun

Aaaah, it's so good to be unblocked ! I couldn't wait for having the pleasure of telling you : "Bye bye" !

Igor, Grichka, Catherine : GOOD LUCK with such people as YBM, r-b-j and above all Rama, as the latter has the power to reduce people to silence, if he doesn't like what they say. I see that YBM and him have become close friends, and that the first has become a kind of reference for the article, among others concerning the part "Internet discussions"... YBM reverted my version after I was blocked, but instead of writing in the comments "rv Laurence67 version" he wrote "adding details related to Laurence67 version", and of course it worked : in spite of his promises to treat everybody in the same way ("Further reverts to the article will be treated just the same as this one was (page)"), Rama didn't do anything against him, on the contrary he encouraged to use YBM's version as a model ("To all, try to take YBM's version and include some of Igor's statements (page)") ... Besides, the whole part "About the 3RR and Igor's version" is a model of partiality and abuse of power : you'd think that it's a teacher who talks about his pet to the rest of the class, while insulting the wipping boy (reference to "Don't be a dick !") ! Pathetic...

And as Rama was so kind to suggest that some elements of my version (concerning the violence anti-Bogdanov) could be kept, I see that YBM put himself out to write about it, with Rama's full blessing. And the result... oh my God, I believe I'm going to vomit...

So, Rama, just to answer to what you wrote me on my personal talk page :

"I also hope, though that's not of your responsability, that you see that the "opposite side" (since apparently noone cares to think it otherwise) will have behaved properly in your temporary absence; note that I intend to to treat them no differently that you, as I have advertised several times before."

But you have just advertised, you haven't done what you "intended", and what I see now is exactly the opposite of a proper behavior : the article is completely anti-Bogdanov, as people who are here to criticize them know that they are protected by you. And I don't think it will get better...

OK, I leave this ridiculous farce, I will miss the parody of justice as well, what a pity...

Have good fun !

Laurence67 14:43, 7 October 2005 (UTC)

On some difficulties with "A small Journey in the Bogdanoff universe".

I originally didn’t want to make comments on the Bogdanoff affair on wikipedia. Because of the recent events I changed my mind a little. Therefore here is a small contribution to the discussion.

First of all, I will say that I have deep respect for Alain Riazuelo, I had a look to his thesis and papers.

Now, I read some of his comment on the Bogdanoff universe. bogdanoff universe

I agree with some parts but I have difficulties with other. For the moment I will concentrate on some of them, more will probably follow.

I would like to look at Alain Riazuelo's three following remarks.

1:"Those who are more interested in gravity and mechanics will probably find interesting to have a look at the paper Topological origin of inertia published in the almost unknown Czechoslowak Journal of Physics (page 133-162 of I's thesis). The very first equation is apparently supposed to give some estimate of the potential energy of a given point in the universe. Actually, this concept is not defined in general relativity and in Newtonian mechanics it diverges for an infinite universe.

So this very first equation is stupid, as is stupid the statement that the origin of inertia is an unsolved problem in physics. Most of the stuff of this article can be skipped till Eq. (34) which makes the stupid claim that the gravitational force between two bodies goes as 1/r. For what is said after, it seems that the total mass of the universe is finite (even if the universe is infinite...). Equation (37), although containing only very basic terms is completely meaningless, as well as Eq. (38) which obviously state that the Gaussian curvature of some surface is a dimensionless number (equal to 1 here, don't ask me why). The presence of the qed at the bottom of page 150 is not understood in this context."

I had also some trouble with this part of Igor Bogdanoff's article .Then I remembered some readings I made when I studied physics at university. I have the strong impression that as it is written, the article may appear to contain errors, but adding more details would give it more sense. I say that because of those references:

wheeler1 wheeler 2 wheeler 3 wheeler 4

I've a made a smaller pdf file containing all four pages here.--YBM 18:04, 8 October 2005 (UTC)

Can Alain Riazuelo make some comments?

It is difficult to comment Wheeler's paper since I have only the beginning of it. What I think I can say is the following:

• For what I can see Wheeler addresses the possibility that inertia would be some sort of backreaction to the energy radiated away by an accelerated body. GW amplitude falls as $r^{-1}$, hence the backreaction, if it exists, can be expected, at least from dimensional grounds to be of the form $Gm_{1}m_{2}a/rc^{2}$, so that a body of mass $m$ subject to an acceleration $a$ could possibly experience a backreaction of the form ${\frac {Gma}{c^{2}}}\sum _{k}{\frac {f_{k}m_{k}}{r_{k}}}$, where the $f_{k}$ account for some angular dependance which is unimportant for the order of magnitude one is interested in and where the sum runs on all the species of the universe, well actually even this is unclear as Wheeler states it. This is not the way to properly address this issue in the context of General Relativity, but still Wheeler's remarks is interesting because of what he says next.
• Then, Wheeler remarks that if one performs the sum within the observable universe, then the results reduces to somethig close to $ma$, which actually is a trivial statement (see below), even though he strangely does not state it explicitely. Actually his results is of order of 1 only if the $f_{k}$ are neglected. It is not obvious that they can be.
• The relevance of this issue is uncertain as Wheeler states it clearly. From the point of view of General Relativity, the issue of inertia is indirectly solved with Einstein equations. Whether the Einstein equations are fully Machian or not is more a matter of philosophy than of science, since Mach's principle is rather vague. Most people agree that they do not fully fulfill Mach's principle. But they are (so far) in agreement with experiments, which is more important, of course. It is hard to make further comments about Wheeler's paper since the rest of the paper is not present, neither its conclusion.
• Now, in his CzJP paper, Igor mentions that there is some "inertial potential" which is given by ${\boldsymbol {U}}=\sum _{univers}{\frac {GM}{rc^{2}}}\approx 1$. It is not said on what the sum runs, neither whether it runs on $M$, $r$, or both, nor what they stand for exactly. It is not mentionned whether it has to do with some possible backreaction effect or anything else. It may have to do with Wheeler's idea, but it is not explicitely written, and the formula of the article does not match Wheeler's. In particular, the $f_{k}$ are missing. Actually it is difficult to figure out what this is about and which possibly correct material this is based on. This is problematic from the very beginning.
• Then it is said that this sum is an invariant, but no reference is given. Actually, it is not even a Lorentz invariant, so that it is very hard to figure out what this invariant thing is about. Now later, on Eqns (34) and (35) it is said that $M$ represents the total mass of the universe. Implicitely, it must assume either that the universe of closed or that the sum runs on some limited region. Even then, this leads to difficulties. The trouble continue here, because if $M$ is the "mass of the universe" (whatever it is exactly), then Igor's expression has absolutely nothing to do with Wheeler's paper. So what is Igor's claim for? It is hard to find any meaning to it.
  • Let us assume that the sum runs on some yet to determine species which have a more or less homogeneous density in the universe. Then the average of the ${\frac {1}{r}}$ goes more or less as $1/R$, where $R$ is the size of the region in which one performs the average. So that the sum $\sum {\frac {1}{r}}$ reduces to something like ${\frac {N}{R}}$, where $N$ is the number of members of this species in the volume under consideration. So we have the problem that depending on whether we consider stars or protons which make stars, this $N$ is not the same but varies by a $10^{57}$ factor... so it is certainly irrelevant to assume that $M$ was the total mass of the universe or of whatever else.
  • Restarting from the assumption that in fact the sum runs both on $M$ and $r$, then the expression remains unclear. If replaces $M$ by some smooth distribution $NM\sim \rho R^{3}/c^{2}$ ($\rho$ is some energy density), then the sum reduces to something proportional to $\rho R^{2}$, where again $R$ is the size of the region of interest. Now, the result does no longer depend on whether one considers baryons or stars made of baryons. At least this is less incoherent with that respect.
  • Now, stating that the result then is close to 1 is again strange since it is in fact a function of $R$. In fact, the result can be anything between 0 and infinity depending on the choice of $R$.
  • Of course, we do not know a priori which value of $R$ has to be chosen, but let us try to guess that the only natural value that can arise is the Hubble radius. Then, with the correct numbers, it happens that the result is 1. Note that at this point, this discussion has nothing to do with what is written in the CzJP paper, but is an attempt to find the closest expression to Eqns (1), (34) that could make sense.
  • So, if $M$ is the mass of the universe and $R$ the Hubble radius, then we obtain, as Wheeler notices, that $GM/Rc^{2}$ is close to 1. Wow. So it is no longer wrong, but now it is trivial. Taking in this expression the Hubble radius for $R$ reduces to rewriting in some slightly unusual form the Friedmann equations. Still it does not tell us why this value of $R$ should be used, and this issue is not addressed in Igor's paper.
  • The trouble is still not over, because it is then said that is an invariant of gravitational gauge and a scale invariant, whatever he may mean exactly at this point. There is also the bolder statement that it does not depend on the position. Should all this be true, then it would be an extraordinary result, but of course it is wrong. Only is some very specific situation (i.e., a perfectly homogeneous space) it is be position independent. And even so, it would not be Lorentz invariant. Actually, even in the simplest situation (perfectly homogeneous and isotropic universe) it is incorrect unless the spacelike section of the universe are Euclidean, and even then the result is 1/2 and not 1. One could also say that all this is irrelevant for Igor's paper since he does not deal with Einstein gravity but an extended theory of gravity. Actually the usual Friedmann equations do not hold in the early universe within such a framework (however irrelevant it is), so stating that there is any limit of $GM/Rc^{2}$ in the so-called zero-scale limit is meaningless.
• It also remains to be understood how a dimensionless number such that $GM/rc^{2}$ could be anything like a curvature, whichever quantity $M$ and $r$ might be.

I do not deny that some of the formulae in Igor's paper may have been borrowed from elsewhere. It is also possible that they were borrowed from good papers, even though I find unlikely that J.-P. Vigier is the most reliable person on this issue. What I am trying to point out is that there is nothing that gives any hint that Igor understood what he was doing when he copied these formulae, and actually there are too many things that do not make sense to support the idea that he has any understanding of them. One can always perform some sort of deconstruction exercise in order to find out on what possibly meaningful paper some of his statements are based on. Still it would be naive to conclude that the only problem is a matter of expressing his ideas properly. It would also be misleading to believe that only a long, detailed and technical discussion is necessary to reach this conclusion. Alain Riazuelo 13:02, 10 October 2005 (UTC)

2:“One can also mention that the terms Lagrangian and action, are used improperly instead of Lagrangian density.”

I must confess that I don’t find this very convincing.

I've chosen the following three articles of the same author, we can see that he constantly made the confusion between a Lagrangian and an action .The first paper is particularly interesting because we can see this very clearly with the action of standard gravitation theory, effective Fermi type theory of weak interaction and finally the string action, note that in addition he use L for S.

1

The following, say p44:

2

Quite all along this article:

3

Should we say that this is a proof of his poor understanding of some basic physics? Raising doubts about his mastering of more advanced topics?

3:“There is even a funny densité d'action (action density) which appears in Grichka's thesis (p. 96 and 97). Needless to say, this term does not exist.”

It seems that the term ‘action density’ is a known and used term in basic classical and quantum field theory as every body can see typing it on Google.

A good example is here, p2, equation 3.

action density

I think every body knows who the author of this article is.

Laurent s 16:28, 8 October 2005 (UTC)

Dear Laurent,

About point 2 and point 3: you are perfectly right. The end of the corresponding paragraph was very unfortunate. I thought I had added that the misuse of the terms action and/or Lagrangian instead of Lagrangian density was not uncommon, but I just forgot. So, this was nothing more than an example of sloppy notations among many. The action density thing is also irrelevant, as you pointed out. So I apologize for not having proofread enough this part of the text. Although relatively unimportant as compared to most of the rest (I hope we will agree on that), such incorrect statements are never welcome. More later about point 1 which deserves a more detailed answer. Alain Riazuelo 23:51, 8 October 2005 (UTC)

Dear Alain

Thank you for your honest reply to my post, of course I agree that points 2 and 3 were not very important and I am glad to see that you now find them completely irrelevant.

I appreciate greatly the fact that you will have a look to Wheeler's papers and I suppose to the Sciama and Brans-Dicke theories where I think some light can be found.

Once again I had the same reaction as you the first time.

I won't make further comments until yours on the point 1.

Laurent s 17:35, 9 October 2005 (UTC)

YBM's version

YBM, Beside a few points about your version, I find you way to clinging to it no more acceptable that Laurence67's, so I am giving you a 24 hours block for excessive reverts.

YBM's version can be a starting point, but I would like to see the wording improved in a great deal. I understand that that there are facts that need to be documented (use of suckpuppets, etc.), but

1) it is not necessary to describe the thing in every minute detail. Keep it concise and minimal.

2) Wording like

• "In this message, they denied that their paper was a hoax, but failed to convince scientists who intervened on the thread of the value of their work, they even add blunders to the obvious nonsense of their papers."
• "After this first somewhat disturbing episode on usenet"
• "signed by a made-up scientist"
• "trying to intimidate people using authority arguments without any scientific grounds"

Are unhelpful and tantamous to rants. It is unsurprising to see people reverting to Igor's version in the presence of such text. Compare with (for exemple)

• "In this message, they denied that their paper was a hoax"
• "After this episode on usenet"
• "signed by a scientist of unknown and unclear whereabouts"
• "using authority arguments".

Please try to work on that. Thank you. Rama 06:58, 10 October 2005 (UTC)

I've edited the text according to your suggestions and will think of some more corrections. Regarding "After this first somewhat disturbing episode on usenet": the phrasing is mine, and what I meant to show was that the shock of those initial discussions on English newsgroups may explain why Igor later used pseudonyms (to avoid a similar flow of harsh criticisms). Perhaps "disturbing" doesn't convey that meaning. I tried "perturbing" but if it's still unclear, I can be more specific.

I also think the second and third paragraphs on the HKU confusion could be dropped. The first paragraph is self-explanatory; adding more details is detrimental to the article. --CatherineV 07:33, 10 October 2005 (UTC)

CatherineV, I appreciate your efforts. I think that the HKU might still be slightly difficult to understand for someone not familiar with the topic, but I think that progress has been made.

Igor, please refrain from removing informations that you do not challenge (insults to Charpak can be traced very easily, for instance), and from making confusing edit summaries. In [2], you complain about YBM protesting to France 2, but you put apologetic descriptions of you "pseudonyms", remove references to call to authority by invented scientists and insults to Charpak, and insert tendencious wording. I would like this article to evolve on the basis of facts rather than wording intended to convoy emotions. Rama 09:50, 10 October 2005 (UTC)

Rama, I tried to address your points, please check the new version. Ze miguel 10:20, 10 October 2005 (UTC)

Rama, Igor has a point when he says "YBM was the only one to protest to France 2.The only one to write Acrimed's paper.The only one to write to HKUST". The letter to France 2 and the Acrimed article are facts of some significance in this Affair. So either we state the fact clearly, giving the author's name, or we drop the facts. I know YBM can't answer right now but this must be discussed when he returns. I suppose he won't object to his name being published here since he signed the Acrimed article on line.

About the HKU paragraph: I'm very familiar with the Affair, and yet I don't understand the domain/registrar technicalities. Beyond the confusion of a edu.hk domain, I can't figure out what else is implied or not. I'm not sure readers will follow either. --CatherineV 10:59, 10 October 2005 (UTC)

I don't know to which extend this France 2 thing is important; clearly if it has to be mentionned, stating clearly who complained a must. However, I do not find it appropriate that Igor should talk about this in his edit summary while making completely unrelated edits.

For the HKU, I am referring to what used to read "The Internet domain th-phys.edu.hk (linked by the HK registrar to an accredited institution, HKUST) was registered by Igor Bogdanov", and is now "the DNS record of th-phys.edu.hk did list the HKUST street address, but had been registered by Igor Bogdanov"; somehow, it might be useful to find a way to distinguish what HK-something organisations are official institutions from Hong Kong and which ones are organisations privately set up by Bogdanov. Rama 11:14, 10 October 2005 (UTC)

About France 2: all we know for sure is that YBM wrote a letter of complaint. Whether others did or not, we don't know, so we can't write (like I did): Opponents sent complaints. Now, is this important? If you ask me, it's one more detail among many, just like HKU. This Affair is a collection of semi-trivialities, the relevance of which, for an encyclopedia, is hard to determine. --CatherineV 11:25, 10 October 2005 (UTC)

Criticism section

The Criticism section is much too large. The quotes should be trimmed down to one or the sentences, and links provided to the actual texts.

This is also true for the Implications for the peer-review system section. Ze miguel 10:21, 10 October 2005 (UTC)

About the Followups section

This unworthy paragraph has been bothering me for days:

For comparison, the publications of cosmologist Jean-Pierre Luminet were cited on SPIRES over 500 times, an average of 28 citations per paper. The publications of mathematical physicist John Baez were cited on SPIRES over 1200 times. The publications of cosmologist Alain Riazuelo were cited on SPIRES over 700 times. The publications of physicist Peter Woit were cited on SPIRES over 200 times. The publications of physicist Jacques Distler were cited on SPIRES over 2200 times, an average or more than 50 citations per publication.

Can we please pick up one and add an average. Either Carlip's statement of 2.3 or another one. CatherineV 11:38, 10 October 2005 (UTC)

This paragraph is footnote fodder. I would recommend finding a general average (just making that average of the people cited here makes little sense), or possibly John Baez, since he was involved in the discussion with the Bogdanov (but I don't quite like one-sample or 5-sample statistics). Rama 11:49, 10 October 2005 (UTC)

I just removed most of that paragraph. Ze miguel 08:53, 11 October 2005 (UTC)

About YBM's Version

---

Rama : I will try to explain the reasons why I profoundly disagree with YBM's version and his sock puppet Ze Miguel (who got "alive" as soon as YBM was banned).

I'll explain my opinion phrase per phrase.

After this first perturbing episode on usenet, one year later,

Comment : I do not thing that "perturbing" is an appropriate expression. 1) because the discussion, in itself, was not "perturbing"; 2) because this expression evokes some events that are unclear to the reader. I propose to suppress it.

at the beginning of 2004, Igor Bogdanov began to post on French Usenet physics groups using fake identities.

Comment : The term "fake identities" is misleading. As if I had made some usurpations of identities and had posted under the names of real existing and known scientists. The truth is different. As all internet users, I only posted anonymously after having picked up a pseudonym. This is why I propose to replace "fake identity" by "anonymously".

He later acknowledged using four of them. All (and other likely sock puppets), acting as physicists or mathematicians, defended the Bogdanovs' work with scientific and/or authority arguments.

Comment : Let's be clear. What YBM calls "authority arguments" are only the fact that I wrote that critics should be written by people qualified in the field on the basis of scientific arguments. That's all. This is a pure question of scientific attitude and has nothing to do with "authority arguments". I propose to suppress it.

Igor and/or Grichka used a variety of pseudonyms, all pretending to be scientists, trying to intimidate people using authority arguments and insulting scientists who criticized them, such as Georges Charpak [2].

Comment : This YBM's phase does not give a faithfull image of the reality. We never tried to "intimidate" anyone. This is not our way of acting. As I wrote here above, our only concern was to limitate "perturbative actions" of YBM and his friends by remind them that the only discussion that seemed valuable was a scientific debate.

One of their thesis reporters, Shahn Majid, even protested publicly on this post because Igor Bogdanov was lying about his opinion on an interview he gave to a journalist from the magazine Ciel & Espace.

Comment : This reaction of Majid was a typical consequence of YBM's negative action. I certainely do not think it is a good idea to insist on this murky episode and to give a "revival" to it. It is useless to pour oil on fire. An encyclopedia has a "oecumenic" mission : to bring closer the points of view of the ones and others. Not to poke wars. I propose to suppress this agressive comment.

The HKU confusion For months, the peculiar domain name of the Institute they work for created a confusion among forum participants

Comment : No, it is not true. The only "participant" who was "confused" about our HK domain name was YBM. And only YBM. He was the only one who decided to contact by emails HKDNR, HKU and HKUST. I propose to add : "a few" forum participants".

as to a possible link with the Hong Kong University or Hong Kong University of Science and Technology. In that context, the participation of an unidentified "Prof.Yang" didn't help: the person posting under the name of a Chinese scientist wrote to physicist Jacques Diestler, Dennis Overbye from the New York Times, and on numerous physics blogs and forums, to defend the Bogdanovs' work. He signed: Professor L. Yang - Theoretical Physics Laboratory - International Institute of Mathematical Physics - HKU/Clear Water Bay, Kowloon, Hong Kong. In September 2004, Igor and Grichka wrote in a post on fr.sci.astrophysique : I maintain what we have said tens of times. The domain name "th-phys.edu.hk" is actually owned by Hong Kong University., what they confirmed on sci.physics and sci.physics.relativity by this message (at this time they still tried to make people believe that Yang was a real chinese physicist).

Comment : Although I think that this detailed description of the intervention of Yang who (as an expert of the work) posted anonymously to defend our work should not be developed this way in an encyclopedic article, I accept it. But once more, I believe that it does not contribute to the quality of the article. Besides, this question of "th-phys.edu.hk" raised by YBM and now considered as a serious issue by Rama should be clearly understood.

1. I legally created and bought this domain name from HKDNR 2. HKDNR sold me this domain name and told me that it had to bear the official address of an accredited educational insititution (HKUST) 3. I used this domain name for a year without any problems and (contrarely to what YBM claims) without pretending it was acting in the name of HKUST. 4. YBM sent his mails to HKUST and they replied that HKDNR had attributed the domain name without "proper authorization". 5. I was not even aware of such a "proper authorization" requested by HKUST since I never had any contacts with them, my only contact being HKDNR. 6. I did not renew my HK domain name.

In conclusion : after almost a year of "investigations" (as mentioned in HKUST email) I do think that if something serious had been found I would be aware of it. It is not the case, obviously.

Therefore (without pretending to create my own "law" here) I just ask Rama to consider this "HK affair" for what it is : do not give an outsized importance to it. This should not go out of its real proportions.

Strong reactions People involved in the discussions on various Usenet groups and Web fora have sometimes been quite ironic or harsh regarding the Bogdanovs interventions, especially when they have evaded systematically scientific questions, lied about what they actually wrote or said, and used sock puppet to push fallacious authorityarguments.

Comment : Why does YBM repeat so many times the same "information"? I do not accept the way he writes "lied about what they actually wrote" as I do not accept his description of "fallacious authority arguments". This is YBM's interpretation of our posts. His agressivity against us does not have to be applied on this article. I propose to suppress these terms.

Igor and Grichka got blamedv when they presented their theory as a conjecture among others on their own TV show

Comment : Absolutly false and ridiculous. This TV show was an enormous success and we got congratulations from all the responsible of the public network and scientists who participated to the show. The ONLY person who "blamed" us was, once again, YBM who wrote his "Acrimed" free opinion against the program. That was it. Neither Telerama, nor Le Monde did ever write anything against the program. I propose to suppress this phrase.

or when they were invited, as popular TV icons, to numerous talk shows on french channels where they were able, as is customary, to promote their book.

Comment : Again, this YBM's phrase is ridiculous. And should be suppressed from an encyclopedic article.

Their opponents sent complaints to France 2, 

Comment : This is false. Only YBM sent a complaint to France 2. Here is a flat copy of the mail addressed in reaction by France 2 to YBM :

De : "Claire Dabrowski" <c.dabrowski@france2.fr> Date : 6 décembre 2004 18:57:56 HNEC À : "Mediatrice Mediatrice " <MEDIATRICE@francetv.fr>, "Jean-Pierre Messager" <Jean-Pierre.Messager@laposte.net> Cc : "Fabienne Gauthier" <FGR@france2.fr>, "Juliette Rosset-Cailler" <JRC@francetv.fr> Objet : Rép. : [suites de ma saisie du médiateur] A propos des MM. Bogdanov

"Monsieur,

"La pseudo querelle que vous entretenez par le biais de nos boîtes mails commence à être pénible. Je vous remercierais donc de régler vos différends ou de chercher réponses à vos questions ailleurs que dans cet échange virtuel et pour notre part, vain. Les scientifiques auxquels vous faîtes référence ne se sont pas adressés à France 2 pour se plaindre de quoi que ce soit ni en amont de la diffusion du programme de cet été, ni en aval, et encore moins ces derniers temps. Par ailleurs, nous continuons à travailler sur Rayons X avec la communauté scientifique, ce qui tendrait à prouver qu'il n'y a aucune "affaire Bogdanov" comme vous essayez de le faire croire dans vos déclarations. Si toutefois vous souhaitiez continuer votre démarche diffamatoire par voie publique ou similaire, nous nous verrions obligés de transmettre vos écrits à notre service juridique pour lui donner les suites qui s'imposent. Recevez, Monsieur, mes salutations. Claire Dabrowski Directrice des magazines

Here is the tranlation of this email :

"Sir,

"The pseudo war that you maintain by means of our e-mails boxes begin to be painful. I would thus thank you for settling your disputes or for looking for answers to your questions somewhere else that in this virtual exchange which is for our part, vain. The scientists to whom you refer to did not address any complain to France 2 neither before the program of this summer went on the air nor after and even less these last days. Besides, we continue to work on 'Rayons X" (the Bogdanoffs program) with the scientific community, what would tend to prove that there is no "Bogdanoff Affair" as you try to make it appear with your statements.

If however you wished to maintain your slanderous action by public or similar way, we would then be obliged to pass on your written documents to our legal department which would give all necessary consequences that would ensue your action.

Sincerely, Director of Magazines"

This email was quite clear. Considering YBM's malicious action and the diffamatory mails he sent to France 2, we had all grounds to follow France 2 in a legal action against YBM. No doubt that he would have been condamned. Not only we did not do it, but we convinced France 2 not to do it. By trying to discredit us, YBM disqualified himself. This mail issued by France 2 in full knowledge of what really happened was explicit. I really think, once again, that Wikipedia s article should not mention any of these episodes that are the direct consequence of YBM incomprehensible action.

and several media-centric information channels in the press and on the Internet covered the Affair (Europe 1, Acrimed, Ciel & Espace, Télérama, Le Monde).

This is a pure lie perpatrated by YBM himself. There is not a word about this "affair" (the television show) in Telerama. Not a word of it in Le Monde. Not a word of it in Europe 1. The only article that was related to the television show was written by YBM himself, (again!) on internet, as a "free opinion" article (even the responsible of the website distanced himself from the article declaring "not having the necessary competences to judge the content of the article".

After having threaten numerous scientists and questioners, the Bogdanovs actually sued, at the beginning of 2005, the scientific magazine Ciel & Espace. The trial should happen at the end of 2005 or the beginning of 2006.

Once again, this phrase does not make any sense. It is not in our manner to sue anyone. YBM writes this again and again to justifiy his incomprensible "war" against us. As I wrote here above, if we had had the intention to undertake a legal action against YBM we could have done it 10 times. With 100% of chances to cause his condamnation by the court for diffamation, harrassement, etc. We did not it. What should one conclude of our decision not to attack him so far?

Regarding the mention of our action against the magazine Ciel&Espace, we have always repeated that we make a major difference between individuals (even very agressive persons like YBM) and commercial entreprises. Ciel&Espace is nothing but a commercial entreprise. They put our photographies and the title "The Mystification of the Bogdanoffs" on the front page of the journal only to sell more paper. This is the reason of our reaction against them.

Now, as far as the trial is concerned, there might be some actions in view of a settlement between the parties. Do you think that such a phrase would help? Definitly not. This is the reason why discretion should apply in such circumstance. YBM has all interest to "blow on the fire" and make the action as public as possible. It is not the role of Wikipedia to be the relay of YBM's action by interfering with a legal action currently applying to the parties mentionned in the article.

I therefore think it is necessary to suppress all these phrases and/or litigious paragraphs.

Now, on the basis of what I have written, I do hope that you understand why I will modify YBM's version.

Igor

From Le Monde: http://www.lemonde.fr/cgi-bin/ACHATS/acheter.cgi?offre=ARCHIVES&type_item=ART_ARCH_30J&objet_id=786051

Full article: http://www-cosmosaf.iap.fr/Le%20Monde_fr%20%20La%20r%C3%A9putation%20scientifique%20contest%C3%A9e%20des%20fr%C3%A8res.htm

From Europe1: http://www.europe1.fr/sedivertir/references.jsp?id=1202&pos=3&periode=9

Mercredi 19 janvier 2005 - La polémique Bogdanoff - Alain Ciroux Journaliste scientifique

Ze miguel 14:05, 10 October 2005 (UTC)

Rama, I object to the large POV revert and deletion that has taken place, especially since it was an attempt to make the section NPOV. Ze miguel 14:14, 10 October 2005 (UTC)

---

Rama:: Igor, I think that the softening of tone, such as removing instances of "fallacious", is appropriate.

My comment : OK. I think it should help to achieve a better article.

Ramav :: However, I do not understand what your explanation for your n-th removal of the mention of insults to Georges Charpak is.

My comment : Because I do not wish to "freeze" a situation for which I have expressed personal apologies. Even if the "insults" against Charpak were not very strong (I only said, in legitimate response to an open -and unfair- attack from him on public TV, that he was "getting old and bitter") That's all I said (pick up the post and you will see). It was only YBM who emphasized this "insult" and made it totally out of proporsion. As far as I am concerned, I do not wish to give anymore credit to any artificial war against Charpak or anyone. Therefore I do not wish to "freeze" for ever in an encyclopedic article an attitude that is not corresponding to what I am and to what we really think.

I suppose than in this case, briefly mentioning the slip of language and the appologies, with references, might satisfy all parties. Rama 18:04, 10 October 2005 (UTC)

No, it wouldn't satisfy me at all : in this case you must also mention the insults the Bogdanovs are victim of for more than one year, and the fact that nobody ever apologized to them. I tried to mention this problem, but as you know better than anybody else, it was systematically reverted, you even blocked me because I tried to restore it. So, I cannot accept to read the word "insult" in a text concerning the Bogdanov affair, in this context only, while for one year I've read hundreds of insults against them on the forums and partly on Wikipedia.

So, if there is a chapter "insults", restore this text !

Laurence67 09:39, 11 October 2005 (UTC)

There is no chapter "insults".

As for the rest, insults made by random people on a forum are not comparable with insults to a Nobel prize laureat by people who pose themselves as scientific autorities. Rama 09:45, 11 October 2005 (UTC)

There is no chapter "insults".

I know, thanks, but there is a chapter "Internet discussion" in which the "insult" against Charpak is mentioned... and in which the real insults against the Bogdanov are not, or, even worse, are justified by their main author (depending on the versions).

As for the rest, insults made by random people on a forum are not comparable with insults to a Nobel prize laureat by people who pose themselves as scientific autorities.

Suuuure. Indeed, insults like "bastards", "cheaters, liers, fraudster" etc. (in French, most of the time), publicly repeated for more than one year by a little group of guys (one of whom is YBM), is not comparable to "old and bitter", one time, (and with apologies !), just because the man is Nobel Prize laureat ? And it was as an answer, because he had criticized them ! And that should be mentioned in the article, whereas the insults to the Bogdanov must be censored, as my text was ? Can you confirm, for the arbitration ?

Laurence67 13:54, 11 October 2005 (UTC)

Rama :: I also fail to understand why you have removed the mention of the article by Ciel & Espace; that you do not agree with them changes nothing to the fact that they wrote a critical article about you and your work

My comment : I dit not refute the article of Ciel & Espace and its negative content. You could quote it if you wish. What I removed is the allusion to the current legal action against the journal. As I said, in similar cases one should remain discrete (if we want to achieve a settelement (which is now quite possible), we better stay away from any polemics in medias).

This is very sensible. I suggest to only briefly mention the article, without getting at length on it, nor mention possible ongoing legal actions. Rama 18:04, 10 October 2005 (UTC)

Rama : (I won't say anything about the other media, apparently this is to be discussed with other users. I won't make a mystery of the fact that I find it remarkable that you should have had access to YBM's personnal mail).

My comment : I got many, many copies of YBM's personal mail. They were all sent to me by people he contacted with the view to discredit us. I got all the copies of his correspondance with France 2 (sent to me by the director of the Magazines). These mails were sufficiant to cause his condamnation. We did not do it.

I find this behaviour from these people rather peculiar, but well, why not... Rama 18:04, 10 October 2005 (UTC)

Rama:: As for the HKUST, I really find it hard to understand how you could possibly have understood that it was necessary to give the physical address of an academic institution to which you were not related to be granted a domain name whose name happens to be very close to the one of the institution.

My comment : As I wrote, I never had to "give any physical address" : it was automated by HKDNR registrar. I never "ask" for it and I did not know nothing about it.

Ah, now I understand, This would, however, sort of confirm YBM's idea that the name of you "institute" was sort of confusing, does it not ? Rama 18:04, 10 October 2005 (UTC)

RamaI also find it odd that you should have choosen the buy a domain name in Hong Kong rather than in some other country (well, France, for instance).

My comment The answer is simple : we had published 2 papers in China : one in Chinese Journal of Physics, the other one in Chinese Annals of Mathematics. At this time, one of the referees we were in contact with (and still are today) told us that an educational domain name was extremely unexpensive in Honk Kong. SInce we had these links with the country thru our papers we decided to create our site there.

A likely tale, which, however, would also sort of nuance the notion that "edu.hk" domains are difficult to obtain. Rama 18:04, 10 October 2005 (UTC)

Rama :: I find your statements regarding the HKU especially difficult to understand in the light of claims such as "

"th-phys.edu.hk" correspond à un véritable domaine de l'Université de Honk-kong. Comme tu le sais, les extensions "edu" sont extrèmement réglementées  : notre domaine en "edu.hk" (Université/Institut de Maths) existe bel et bien, c'est vérifiable et, à moins d'être une université de Honk Kong, ce type de mail est impossible à obtenir. Renseignes- toi, tu verras bien." [3]

My commentThis post was made in reaction to one of the multiple attacks from YBM who accused me to have created a "fake" domain name. I answered him that it was very difficult to obtain an educational domain name and that mine was not a fake. I told him that this domain name was corresponding to the HKUST and, as such, was for real. But instead of accepting this answer, YBM went much further pretending that I was using HKUST name illegally, wrote to HKUST and as a result of it I did not renew my domain name. Here too I could have sued YBM for his action. But I did not.

As I say above, it seems that YBM was quite right in pointing out that anyone could obtain such a domain name, after all.

But what disturbs me the most here is the claim that the domain name "must be owned by a university of Hong Kong", which you seem to agree is absolutely not the case, do you not ? Rama 18:04, 10 October 2005 (UTC)

Rama :: that is:

"th-phys.edu.hk" is related to a real domain of the University of Hong Kong. As you know, "edu" extensions are extremely regulated: our "edu.hk" (University/Institute of Mathematics) does exist, it can be verified, et, if you are not a university in Hong Kong, this sort of mail is impossible to obtain. Check, you'll see".

My comment : same above explainations.

Rama:: In this context (and several others), it is difficult to believe that this domain name was bought purely by chance. Rama 15:07, 10 October 2005 (UTC)

My comment : I never said or wrote that this domain name was "bought purely by chance". I wrote that I created this domain name. I created it, I submitted this domain name to the registrar, and I bought it That's all I did. If you track back the activities of this domain name, you will never find any "abuse of identity" or any use of HKUST name in any way. I never, never used this name. It is a fact and all YBMs insinuations would change that fact.

YOu don't ? What about, for instance, the piece of mail I quote above ? Rama 18:04, 10 October 2005 (UTC)

In a general way, you got all evidence (especially with the mail of France 2) of the very sad behaviour of YBM. Don't neglect the fact that when he sent his mails to France 2, his objective was to obtain our dismissal of the public network. For that purpose, he did not hesitate to slander us. Without the full trust of our manager, the e-mails of YBM would have been able to cause the loss of our functions. When the manager of magazines suggested us instituting a legal action against YBM, we refused. I would like him to remember it. And to be honest enough to post fair and objective texts.

Igor

I don't ignore the fact that YBM seems indeed to have a particular feud against you; however, what concerns me now is the behaviour of the contributors (YBM is presently banned for pushing the boundaries a bit far, for instance), and the exactitude and fairness of the content of the article. I am sorry to say that the more you explain this Hong Kong matter to me, the more obscure it gets. Rama 18:04, 10 October 2005 (UTC)

Usage of fake identities:

In this post, Roland Schwartz presents himself as a physicist working on Lie Groups, implicitly stating that he's not related to the Bogdanovs, and accusing their critics of being liars and "collaborationnists of good-thinking science".

In this post, Igor Bogdanov admits that "Roland Schwartz" is a pseudonym that he used.

Ze miguel 15:27, 10 October 2005 (UTC)

Reports and comments from scientists

I just added this section, which is a major rewite of the Criticism section. I tried to organize the information, and accurately present both points of viez. You will note that there are more pro-Bogdanov views than anti. This version possibly allows for the removal of the Clean Up tag from the page. Comments about this are welcome.

PS: "God does not play dice with the Universe" is a way to say that Quantum Mechanics is an invalid theory. Ze miguel 23:27, 10 October 2005 (UTC)

To me, anything that shortens the litany of quote, counter-quotes, counter-counter-quotes,... can't be completely bad. Rama 06:40, 11 October 2005 (UTC)

Some New Comments

Here is a new comment published on October 3, 2005, by the string theorist Lubos Motl about our work :

"Seriously about Bogdanoffs II

"I was just asked to give my opinion about the Bogdanoff paper(s) on Wikipedia, so I replied with a neutral comment. It is surprising that some people who otherwise propose that everyone should study alternatives to string theory - such as Peter Woit - are so incredibly negative about the Bogdanoff paper(s).

"Why? Because the Bogdanoff brothers are proposing something that has, speculatively, the potential to be an alternative story about quantum gravity. As a string theory believer, I would say "a new dual description of quantum gravity i.e. string/M-theory". What they are proposing is a potential new calculational framework for gravity. I find it unlikely that these things will work - but it is probably more likely than loop quantum gravity and other discrete approaches whose lethal problems have already been identified in detail.

"In the previous article I focused on the creation of myths and their idea about the fluctuating spacetime signature. But let me now ask you about the following proposal that is included among their refreshing speculative ideas.

"Usually we assume that the geometry completely breaks down at the sub-Planckian distances, together with the spacetime topology and all other things. It's because the excited string states and other states appear together with infinitely many higher-derivative corrections. But let us now believe that geometry is a useful picture despite all these effects.

"Imagine that you start with a generic gravity action whose pure gravitational part has terms like L = R / (16.pi.G) + alpha. R (wedge) R + beta . R^2 + gamma . R^3 ... and so on. The topological term "R (wedge) R" would have to be replaced by something else in higher dimensions. At long distances, the first, Einstein-Hilbert term is important (after the vacuum energy, of course). At short distances, we usually assume that the infinite tower of higher-derivative terms takes over and we can't say anything; the metric is not a relevant degree of freedom anymore because we must really add a whole tower of new, equally important states predicted by string theory.

"But try to assume, together with the Bogdanoff brothers, that it is not the case. Your task is nothing less :-) than to finish their work e.g.

"find an appropriate theory of gravity in which the steps below can be justified

"explain that the higher-derivative terms disappear or decouple in this theory at very short distances, or that they can be ignored for other reasons

"isolate a topological term that does not disappear in this limit

"write down the path integral as a summation over the actual quantum foam - different topologies of the Universe - in analogy with the quantum foam in topological string theory - where the contributions are labeled by "exp(-S)" where "S" is a combination of topological invariants of the d-manifold such as the Euler character this will be your dual, sub-Planckian expansion of the partition sum or maybe just some important quantities in quantum gravity

"Alternatively, prove that this picture by Bogdanoffs is impossible in any quantum theory of gravity. I can't do either."

Igor's latest edits

Igor, you have again edited the article as to remove valid information (insults to Charpak, link to the original post "Physics Bitten by Reverse Alan Sokal Hoax", further confused the "th-phys.edu.hk" story) and put extremely tendencious words ("Fashionable"...).

ALso, you editre-inserts lengthly quotations, which is not desirable and is currently worked upon. Please don't do that again. Rama 17:00, 11 October 2005 (UTC)

Rama, if I did remove valid information (like links to the original post "Physics bitten..." etc) I a am quite sorry and, of course, ready to restore these damages. However, as I repeated many times, I do not wish to give a "new life" to the sad episode concerning Mr Charpak. I do not think that it is reflecting the truth. I have never insulted him. I reacted anonymously to some hard attacks on a thread of discussion. This context is very different from this encyclopedia. Do you think that Mr Charpak would be happy to discover that Wikipedia "took the relay" of some attacks against him? All I said (anonymously) is that Mr Charpak was getting old and bitter. This was in specific context, for specific reasons, and I apologized for it. I do not wish to disturb Mr Charpak a second time : is it that difficult to undersand?

Igor

Well yes, I do find the notion difficult to understand. That you might have found yourself calling Charpak "old and bitter" is very telling about the sort of discussion that was going on on the forum, especially in the light of his appreciation of your work; I do not see how making the statement anonymously makes it any different in nature.

Of course, the fact that you later apologised is also worth mentioning, and the whole thing should be kept short. Rama 17:37, 11 October 2005 (UTC)

very telling about the sort of discussion that was going on on the forum: you said it, Rama, Igor's remark cannot be removed out of context and pinned into an encyclopedia. We all say/write things we later regret, especially during heated discussions. You cannot turn them into official statements, short or not. I'm certain Charpak himself would agree on that. --CatherineV 18:15, 11 October 2005 (UTC)

Of course, the fact that you later apologised is also worth mentioning, and the whole thing should be kept short

And, I ask it again : how long will be the mention of all the insults to the Bogdanovs from YBM, Romnulphe, Max, alain_r, Ark Klyde / Le Vilain Macho, Gros Sabots, GG, LaurentM, JR33, Rayons Z, Stephen, GregTr, etc., on Usenet (several newsgroups), Hardware.fr, sur-la-toile.com, etc. (it is only the main forums)... and on Wikipedia (do I have to copy agains YBM's and r-b-j's insults ?).

Don't try to ignore that, I won't ever give it up !

Laurence67 18:37, 11 October 2005 (UTC)

No, we don't want to mention that in detail, because

1) neither YBM, Romnulphe, Max, alain_r, Ark Klyde / Le Vilain Macho, Gros Sabots, GG, LaurentM, JR33, Rayons Z, Stephen not GregTr have ever claimed to revolution modern physics

2) The Bogdanov are not Nobel Prizes.

I suppose that you understand that some anonymous person insulting another user on some Internet forum is not comparable to a would-be scientist striving for recognition and making huge claims for notability finding himself insulting one of the most possibly recognised luminaries of the domain. Rama 19:05, 11 October 2005 (UTC)

So, according to you, it's allowed to insult people if they are not Nobel Prizes ? And if the people who insult them are anonymous ??? You're really making fun of me ! It becomes more and more obvious that you have to answer anything because your unfairness is less and less tenable !

And in this case, it was some anonymous users who insulted two famous people on public forums, which were particularly read because the subjects were famous ! But it's real, they were not "Nobel Prizes"...

Laurence67 19:30, 11 October 2005 (UTC)

Igor apologized. YBM never did. Does someone have to be a) a Nobel Prize to be protected by Rama ? b) to be YBM or YBM's friend to have the right to insult people and to be protected by Rama ? Actually both of them. The others, especially Igor can be insulted during many years. It is a proof of the side you have taken from the start. LLL

---

An edit [4] was lost [5]. Re-inserting:

This is why I suggest to include Igor's retractation, and to keep the thing short. I also note that in his new edit, Igor removes not only mentions of this incident, but also Charpak's appreciations of his work (I have no reason to think that Charpak, on the other hand, regrets his statement) and add lengthly quotes by a much younger researcher who is not a Nobel Prize. Rama 18:25, 11 October 2005 (UTC)

Reinserted by Pjacobi 18:48, 11 October 2005 (UTC)

---

Here are a few comments about my 13 changes :

1. Mention : the mention "Honorable" is not the lowest passing grade. It is "passable" (see the 1984 décret) 2. The title of the 1rst thesis : It was Topological Origin of Inertia 3. One of the conditions to obtain my thesis was a presentation of a new subject for it 4. I did not get any mention on my thesis diploma 5. I replaced "vehemently" by "fermly" (which corresponds to the nature of my posts) 5bis Motl statement is quite important : it is a real help for the readers to understand that our work might by valid 6. Since I do not wish to "harm" Charpak again, I supressed this sad memory 7 The same with Majid : knowing him, I know that he hates to be associated in such articles. Do him a favor : forget Majid. 8. Only "a few" (in fact only YBM) forumers reacted about this th-phys "problem" 9. I replaced "domain name is owned" by "was owned" 10. I would say "lied"; Because it was not the case. In science, one does not lie. One can be mistaken. 11. We are in a process of settlement. This mention of the trial to C&E is an interference to it 12. Our last papers are from 2003, not 2002

Igor

---

Mr Bogdanov deleted the following from this page, so I'm putting it back. I will assume it was an innocent mistake.

I did the following:

• removed clean up tag
• minor spelling corrections
• Added Charpak quote without reference to insults
• Reverted "lying about what they actually wrote or said, and using sock puppets to push fallacious authority arguments." If one reads the complete sentence, it states that these were accusations that were made, not whether the accusations are true or not.
• "the large majority" is POV. Changed to "many"
• Shortened Mr Lubos Motl's quote. I tried to keep the most positive sentences of his comments. If Mr Motl would provide a separate webpage with those comments, or a sub-page in his Wikipedia User page, a link could be provided, which I think could be very useful.
• Reverted Ciel&Espace trial information. This information is highly relevant to the controversy, and is publically available. Media routinely mention trials like this.

Ze miguel 21:35, 11 October 2005 (UTC)

---

Some comments about Igor's fancy stories

Igor's explanation about th-phys.edu.hk can be refuted very easily :

- consider the real Whois record :

  Record last updated on 2005-01-03
  Record created on 2003-11-24
  Record expired on 2004-12-04
  
  Administrative Contact:
  IMP maths-physics-institute@th-phys.edu.hk
  INTERNATIONAL INSTITUTE OF MATHEMATICAL PHYSICS
  Clear Water Bay, Kowloon, Hong Kong
  HK
  +082--50825
  
  Technical Contact:
  IMP maths-physics-institute@th-phys.edu.hk
  INTERNATIONAL INSTITUTE OF MATHEMATICAL PHYSICS
  Clear Water Bay, Kowloon, Hong Kong
  HK
  +082--50825

- consider the real HKDNR rules :

  2.9 .edu.hk Domain Name
  
  Registered schools, tertiary institutions and other approved educational institutions in HKSAR are eligible to 
  register a .edu.hk Domain Name. You need to provide a copy of your Certificate of Registration of a School from 
  the Education Department of the HKSAR Government, or other documentary proof to us when applying to register a 
  edu.hk   Domain Name.

- consider the real e-mail I got from HKUST

  Your email has alerted us on a rather intriguing problem.
  
  In Hong Kong, HKU usually refers to my University
  which is The University of Hong Kong, but it is not
  situated at Clear Water Bay.
  
  The Hong Kong University of Science and Technology,
  normally refered to as HKUST, is indeed situated at 
  Clear Water Bay.  Thus I have forwarded your email to
  the persons in charge of IT at HKUST.  However they
  have found that in fact the information quoted in 
  the website is all unreal, so it appears that somebody
  had created the th-phys.edu.hk website without proper
  authorization.  They are now investigating the matter.

- consider the real e-mail I got from HKDNR :

  Thank you for your enquiry.
   
  Information of Billing Contact is the same as that for Administrative Contact and Technical Contact.

- consider all the posts "Yang" and him tried to gain authority from the domain name of their posting address or Web site

- consider that the first explanation Igor gave when I told him that HKUST didn't recognize this domain was that someone in HKUST bought the record for them, now it is a totally different story.

What he said on my role on this affair is as well completly false : I wrote to HKDNR/HKUST/HKU months after he stopped paying for the domain.

He is now trying to desperatly make people forget what they did on Usenet by trying to shut down the discussion they created first by posting under fake identities far before anyone began to talk about their crappy book. He said that he apologized on the insult to Charpak, I wonder when and where since he provided no reference, and I've never read such apologies.

There are others obvious lies in what he wrote and edited during these last days (especially the story about France 2 is false on almost every key points). I'd give an advice to anyone working on this article : don't forget you are dealing with someone able to do this (same text in french ici). --YBM 18:38, 11 October 2005 (UTC)

YBM, if I understand correctly, you claim that it is not possible that the Hong Kong registar could have filled the postal address of Clear Water Bay ? But I am not certain that I understand what in these mails is a clue that they did not; could you elaborate ? Rama 19:12, 11 October 2005 (UTC)

They filled out the HKU name with the HKUST street address (and a fake phone number) because the "billing contact" (aka Igor) filled them out himself when registering. --YBM 19:46, 11 October 2005 (UTC)

Sorry, I'm lost; where does this appear in the mails that you provide ? Rama 19:53, 11 October 2005 (UTC) (Reinserted. Igor, I would apreciate if you refrained from removing my comments Rama )

The billing contact (which does not appear in the Whois database) is Igor (according to Igor)

The administrative and technical contacts are HKUST according to HKDNR, and they had, at this time, no doubt on that.

The administrative and technical contacts is believed to be the same as the billing contact for HKDNR

1+2+3=? --YBM 20:26, 11 October 2005 (UTC)

All right, but how does this say that the postal address was provided by Bogdanov ? Igor's statement is that the HKDNR filed this information itself, and I can't see that this is invalidated in your mails (however weird a register filled out information on its own might be). Rama 21:10, 11 October 2005 (UTC)

Who else, Santa Claus ? If HKDNR have filled HKU(ST) in, they wouldn't have said that the "billing contact" (Igor Bogdanov) was the "technical/administrative contact" (HKU(ST)).

They did exactly the same when they inserted "Paris Univ. 4" (aka Sorbonne) in the adress field of maths-phys.edu.bs, but they eventually didn't try do use Sorbonne's authority. --YBM 21:19, 11 October 2005 (UTC)

---

1+2+3 = 0. Such is your "addition", YBM. Your fancy "demo" is a pure collection of personal hypotheses. Because of your bizarre obsessions (consisting in eliminating us), you are the only person capable to dig so profound that instead of the minerals all you find is the magma. Igor

---

YBM : You act as if you were convinced of lying. And you are : the story of France 2 is false? Do you want me to repost the copy of the letter I got from the Manager of the Magazines Department? OK. Here it is. As I said this is enough to send you in front of any judge. You know it and everyone whith a minimum of knowledge in the field knows it.

De : "Claire Dabrowski" <c.dabrowski@france2.fr> Date : 6 décembre 2004 18:57:56 HNEC À : "Mediatrice Mediatrice " <MEDIATRICE@francetv.fr>, "Jean-Pierre Messager" <...> Cc : "Fabienne Gauthier" <FGR@france2.fr>, "Juliette Rosset-Cailler" <JRC@francetv.fr> Objet : Rép. : [suites de ma saisie du médiateur] A propos des MM. Bogdanov

"Monsieur,

La pseudo querelle que vous entretenez par le biais de nos boîtes mails commence à être pénible. Je vous remercierais donc de régler vos différends ou de chercher réponses à vos questions ailleurs que dans cet échange virtuel et pour notre part, vain. Les scientifiques auxquels vous faîtes référence ne se sont pas adressés à France 2 pour se plaindre de quoi que ce soit ni en amont de la diffusion du programme de cet été, ni en aval, et encore moins ces derniers temps. Par ailleurs, nous continuons à travailler sur Rayons X avec la communauté scientifique, ce qui tendrait à prouver qu'il n'y a aucune "affaire Bogdanov" comme vous essayez de le faire croire dans vos déclarations. Si toutefois vous souhaitiez continuer votre démarche diffamatoire par voie publique ou similaire, nous nous verrions obligés de transmettre vos écrits à notre service juridique pour lui donner les suites qui s'imposent. Recevez, Monsieur, mes salutations. Claire Dabrowski Directrice des magazines"

Do you still maintain this is lie?

So what ? What one could expect from you manager than trying, even desperately, to defend you ? After all she is responsible of letting shameful pseudo-scientific tv shows be broadcasted on this public channel.

At your place, I would avoid to make this kind of comments about someone whose professional qualities have been recognized by many poeple under many circumstances. I do not think that you should write your opinion on a public page as you do.

I guess that all these people will appreciate very much that you publish - again - their e-mail addresses.

Your edit removed comments from several people. Why don't you try do get a course on basic computer fluency before ridiculizing you again ? --YBM 20:12, 11 October 2005 (UTC)

Actually, to be in front of a judge and eventually to be obliged to see a psy, that exactly what YBM wants and needs ! LLL

Yes, indeed, you'd think that it's exactly what he hopes for, like these children / teenagers who do everything they can in order to be punished by their parents... just to draw their attention. In most case they eventually get it !

Laurence67 21:29, 11 October 2005 (UTC)

Of course I'm convinced about that, because such an harassment has only one goal : a legal punishment. Igor is too patient. LLL —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 84.100.159.74 (talk • contribs) 21:33, 11 October 2005.

Archiving needed

See title. Ze miguel 21:44, 11 October 2005 (UTC)

Regarding Legal Threats

Sadly, I believe Laurence67, LLL, and Igor must review this page [6] before continuing to post. (And Laurence, you wrote such a tearful adieu three days ago!) —The preceding unsigned comment was added by EE Guy (talk • contribs) 23:29, 11 October 2005.

I didn't intend to stop writing what I think about the way this article is "administred", which should mean "arbitred", by a neutral admin. I just don't want to edit any more, as my texts were systematically reverted, and moreover it gave an excuse to Rama for blocking me. But don't hope that you can write anything you want on the article as long as it is against the Bogdanovs, just because the "main" administrator has taken a dislike to them.

I know that you don't want any legal threats here, but it doesn't mean that you can do anything against who you want : the rules must be respected also by the administrators, who are supposed to work for the quality of an article, and not just to use their "power" to destroy, by means of an article, someone they don't like. And it's exactly what Rama has done since the very beginning against Igor : harassment and above all "abuse of power".

So, if you don't want legal threats, don't break the law, and respect at least the "internal" laws, including those which concern neutrality and impartiality !

Laurence67 11:26, 12 October 2005 (UTC)

EE Guy: Thanks for the reformatting of the article, it looks much better now. I'm a bit concerned that the quotes section is starting to grow again, though. - Ze miguel 08:34, 12 October 2005 (UTC)

Very funny, indeed ! LLL —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 84.100.159.74 (talk • contribs) 04:32, 12 October 2005.

I would like to remind everybody that legal threats are not allowed on Wikipedia. This is one of the fundamental rules of this site.

On a more concrete and immediate problem, I would very much like all parties involved here to limit themselves to what is needed to improve the article, and particularly to refrain from taunting each other and deliberately and needlessly degrading the atmosphere of the talk page. Further offences will result in immediate blocks and report on the arbitration page. Rama 07:40, 12 October 2005 (UTC)

But will YBM be free to say anything what comes through his mind ? LLL—The preceding unsigned comment was added by 84.100.159.74 (talk • contribs) 08:04, 12 October 2005.

That was needlessly aggressive. Rama 08:11, 12 October 2005 (UTC)

What I just posted was aggressive, you say. How do you qualifiy what YBM says for YEARS ? LLL—The preceding unsigned comment was added by 84.100.159.74 (talk • contribs) 08:15, 12 October 2005.

LLL, I would like you to restrict your comments to constructive and topic ones. I have hinted more than once that I was willing to enforce calm if necessary, and you are pushing me beyond the point where I expected to find myself still issuing mere warnings. I hope I make myself clear. Rama 08:36, 12 October 2005 (UTC)

Yes, the situation is very clear since the beginning : the Bogdanovs'enemies can be as agressive as they want against them without any protest from you, while we must be very prudent for anything agressive we could write about your new friend YBM. Like for the insults : everybody has the right to insult them as one wants, but when Igor writes one time something unpleasant, it must be in the article, just because it can be bad for his image, and so it will be good for some contributors... and for the administrator.

But perhaps that's too agressive also, despite you're not a Nobel Prize ?

Laurence67 11:34, 12 October 2005 (UTC)

Modifications by Igor

Here are the reasons why I modified the last version proposed by EE Guy :

I. ORIGIN OF THE AFFAIR

- I added the reason why the "Honorable" mention was attributed to Grichka. It was explained in a statement (achived in Wikipedia discussion page) published by Sternheimer, the thesis advisor who wrote that this mention was attributed for non scientific reasons.

- I added "his advisors" (about Igor's thesis who was directed by 2 co-advisors : 1 for the mathematical part, 1 for the theoretical physics part

II. THESIS REPORTS

- I added "15" (the number of the reports)

III. IMPLICATIONS FOR PEER REVIEW

- I suppressed Motl's second negative post. It was OK when it was introduced there by EE Guy (and I left it at this time) but it is not anymore today and for 2 reasons :

1. It does not correspond anymore to Motl's real thinking of what we do (if he had been that negative he would not have published a second article saying that our work might be of some interest)

2. Considering the present "balance" between negative and positive opinions, a new "negative one" appears as a "symmetry breaking". Moreover at this stage of the article it is more confusing than informative.

IV OTHER CRITICISM

If people want absolutly to create an "affair" between Charpak and us, they must have their reasons, even if I disagree with it. But I will only put Charpak comment in context (he said this in a television show and not in a scientific paper).

IV INTERNET DISCUSSIONS

In a general way, I think that the of an encyclopedic article is to harmonize positions not to pour oil on fire. For this reason, I suppressed the word "insulted them" which is out of context. I also suppressed all the expressions (like "lying", etc) that are not right in such an article.

Once more, I suppressed the Charpak paragraph. As I said, I do not wish to endorse a new "Charpak Affair". I have respect for this man and what was written anonymously 2 years ago on the heated atmosphere of an internet discussion should not become the "reference of my opinion about Charpak". It does NOT correspond to what I think and I cannot accept it. Ze Miguel (who is a fair, intelligent and quite objective editor which deserves my apologies for having thought he was a flat copy of YBM) understood my reasons. Wikipedia should be a "peace space" not a "war mirror".

I also moved Majid's protestation paragraph in the "Media Involvement" section where it belongs (although I really would have prefer no to mention it at all. Same for "Ciel & Espace" : the settlement I was hoping for is now going away and it is sad. I really thought it was not the role of Wikipedia to emphasize the trial).

Igor

You just can't help removing which is bad in this article for you can you? And you just decide when an "affair" ends.

You did abuse (and cowardly) G.Charpak, it's a notable part of the matter and it does hightlight a deep part of your nature. Accept it. It's an article about the "bogdanoff affair" which start in 2002, so all the relevant facts which has occured about it since 2002 has to be presented. Wathever they are flattering for you or not. Can you just understand that ? --Luis A. 10:34, 12 October 2005 (UTC)

Igor, I disagree with a few of your points:

I added the reason why the "Honorable" mention was attributed to Grichka.

Your explanation is unverifiable and inconsistent with other material widely available. Also, you removed -- without explanation -- references to your "honorable." That is less-than-admirable behavior.

It does not correspond anymore to Motl's real thinking of what we do (if he had been that negative he would not have published a second article saying that our work might be of some interest)

That quote comes from the same article to which you refer. There is no change in Motl's thinking. Motl's point in writing his (only) article was that people should not reject ideas out of hand because 99.9% are silly, and there should not be academic lynch mobs. It's hard to make the case that he thinks much of the work itself.

Considering the present "balance" between negative and positive opinions, a new "negative one" appears as a "symmetry breaking". Moreover at this stage of the article it is more confusing than informative.

I believe Motl's quote astutely and succinctly captures the vast majority opinion people have expressed with the Affair. If I loudly claim that the moon is made of cheese, it is extreme to think that any article should contain 50% pro-cheese and 50% anti-cheese opinions. Likewise with the Affair.

I suppressed the word "insulted them" which is out of context. I also suppressed all the expressions

But you did repeatedly insult them. The article should also mention that you have been repeatedly insulted as well. I agree with supressing statement such as "lying," but strongly I disagree with removing verifiable, relevant information even if it's unpleasant.

I suppressed the Charpak paragraph

I also disagree with this. It is absolutely relevant that anonymous sock puppets were used to insult a Nobel Laureate. I can't imagine that many people would have dared to do something so foolish, and the incident is telling of the behavior and atmosphere at the time -- again, even if it's unpleasant.

--EE Guy 12:26, 12 October 2005 (UTC)

I reworded the final paragraph. I agree with the sentiment, that out-of-the-mainstream ideas are needed to advance fields from time to time, but I think the phrase "some opinions" is too nebulous. Also, as promised, I re-integrated the information that I believe is relevan back into the article.

--EE Guy 12:29, 12 October 2005 (UTC)

Igor's Modifications Again

Here are again some precisions about my changes (Igor)

I. ORIGIN OF THE AFFAIR

- I added the reason of the mention. The precision about the "Honorable" mention given to Grichka was made by Sternheimer in a written statement; Here it is : http://users.skynet.be/catherinev/sternheimer.htm

- Suppression of "also honoralbe" I had no mention. Sternheimer has explained why in the same document http://users.skynet.be/catherinev/sternheimer.htm Contrarely to Grichka my thesis report does NOT bear any mention; I can send it to any neutral party who could check it immediately.

- Niedermaier's mail was not sent to "a frien" but to the physicist Ted Newman

II IMPLICATIONS OF...

- I suppressed Motl's second comment. As I wrote it does not correspond to his present way of thinking.

III INTERNET DISCUSSIONS

I suppressed all the agressive words. And I also suppressed Charpak's mention.

IV FOLLOW UP

I suppressed agressive words (blunders, etc)

Igor

Here is my reply to these statements:

I added the reason of the mention.

Your statement by Sternheimer is misleading at best. See these links: [7] and articles in the NY Times that quote Sternheimer. It does not belong.

Suppression of "also honoralbe" I had no mention.

While your mention honorable may have been revoked (this is hardly worth bragging about), you and your brother wrote in an interview (after the supposed retraction of your mention honorable):

Igor defended successfully his thesis on June 8, 2002, getting also the "honorable" mark for reasons that it is not up to us to judge. [8]

Please note that this date (8 June 2002) is after the date of retraction on Cather[ineV's personal Web site (25 Avril 2002)] http://users.skynet.be/catherinev/sternheimer.htm.

I would love to hear your explanations of this.

I suppressed Motl's second comment. As I wrote it does not correspond to his present way of thinking.

Until Prof. Motl states otherwise, there is no reason for a third party to state that "does not correspond to his present way of thinking." Please note, for example, that you cropped the sentence following your quote from Motl: "I find it unlikely that these things will work." [9] Also note that you maintain another quote by Motl from the same post that, for some reason, you believe still corresponds to his present way of thinking. Please explain how this can be.

I also suppressed Charpak's mention.

Again, just because you're ashamed of your actions doesn't mean it didn't happen or it's not relevant. I'm sure Bill Clinton would love to remove all references to Monica Lewinsky.

Again, please reconcile the mention honorable paradox above.

--EE Guy 15:13, 12 October 2005 (UTC)

New paragraph on forum discussions

I've added a paragraph outlining the peculiarity of this affair which is talked about on forums but is also generated on the same forums. I believe it is important to mention it. --CatherineV 15:15, 12 October 2005 (UTC)

I appreciate the sentiment, but the paragraph has to be cleaned up substantially.

--EE Guy 15:47, 12 October 2005 (UTC)

I didn't expect it to be readily approved, lol. How would you modify it, or rather what parts do you find inappropriate ? --CatherineV 16:47, 12 October 2005 (UTC)

Hey, I want my link to Net.kook back, please :) - Ze miguel 16:08, 12 October 2005 (UTC)

Sorry, Ze miguel, but I really do think that the article reads better without it.... is there a way to reword it? (Specifically, I don't think placing the Bogdanoffs into discrete bins of cranks etc. is the right way to go, although I did like the Net.kook reference.)

--EE Guy 16:49, 12 October 2005 (UTC)

CatherineV, I don't find the paragraph inappropriate. My concern is that it doesn't seem to flow very well with the rest of the article... but I'm not sure how to rectify it. However, my version of the edits surely wouldn't be what ProfessorYIN just did to your paragraph. ;-)

--EE Guy 16:56, 12 October 2005 (UTC)

Well, thanks for revering that. My best guess is that Professor Yin is unhappy at being left out of the article while Professor Yang has a whole paragraph to himself. Anyway... My original version is neutral enough and, if I say so myself, correct. However you're right about the flow being disrupted, I could feel it too. It will need some work. --CatherineV 18:30, 12 October 2005 (UTC)

About EE GUY reverts

All the reverts you have done were documented and explained here above. Let's discuss them one per one.

1. The thesis mentions

Far before this "affair" was discussed on Usenet, Sternheimer issued a statement where he explained why the "rarely honorable mention" was attributed to Grichka http://users.skynet.be/catherinev/sternheimer.htm. He specifically wrote that it was given to G. "for non scientific reasons" (explaining the context of the defense in Polytechnique). This statement is necessary to explain why the "honorable" mention was given to a thesis that is obviously different from a simple "mediocre thesis".

As far as I am concerned, this mention was not given to me. If you give me a private email (you can contact me at igor.bogdanov@wanadoo.fr) I can send you the copies of the thesis reports : you will see that the Honorable mention is present on Grichka's but not on mine. This is a fact and one cannot deny it. It is also explained in the document http://users.skynet.be/catherinev/sternheimer.htm by Sternheimer himself.

Where did I say that Honorable mention was given to me? to whom? in what interview? I would be very curious to know. Because I do not remember having said something that I know being false (unless the journalist put these words in my mouth).

About Charpak

I will never accept to be considered as an "insultor". Why? because it is simply not true. The Charpak episode was a very pecular accident that should not be taken as a representative image of who we are. I have said that apologized for this mistake. I have said that an encycolopedia is not having for mission to "blow on the fire".

About Motl

You decided to add this sentence of Motl which was appropriate when you introduced it (about 3 weeks ago) but not as the article reads today. In the meantime 2 events occured :

1. The article contains more "negative" opinions

2. Motl himself published another article (October 3) where he explains why our work may be of interest.

We have developped a private correspondance with Motl and we know what he really thinks. The image given by certain of his phrases written in June is not consistent with what he considers today as representative. Why do you want this phrase to be present? It is not necessary for the general comprehension of the article. It is not coherent with Motl's present "state of mind".

About insults in general

When people are commenting about our "insulting attitude" it is giving a total false image of reality. Go to the forums and count the number, the incredible high number of times we got insulted by people. Why? because we were "stars" from television daring to pretend that they did something in science. Is it a good reason to be treated the way we were? How would you have reacted if after almost 10 years of pain and efforts all your work would have been ruined by an email which considered it as a "hoax"?

In spite of this, as recogized Peter Woit himself, we never lost our control and remained calm. You cannot consider the "YBM exchanges" as representatives of what we are.

Foucault Pendulum

I am sorry but what you wrote about the F.Pendulum is not scientifically right. In spite of what you say, there is a problem with the behaviour of the Pendulum. This was at the origin of March's principle. Therefore your comment does not stand.

In a general way, as I said many times, I do not wish to enter into an endless explaination process. I gave you some links and evidence.

Igor

I replied to each of these points earlier, and here is the text of my reply repeated verbatim. (Including the link to the interview that you requested, which was present in my previous post.)

Here is my reply to these statements:

I added the reason of the mention.

Your statement by Sternheimer is misleading at best. See these links: [10] and articles in the NY Times that quote Sternheimer. It does not belong.

Suppression of "also honoralbe" I had no mention.

While your mention honorable may have been revoked (this is hardly worth bragging about), you and your brother wrote in an interview (after the supposed retraction of your mention honorable):

Igor defended successfully his thesis on June 8, 2002, getting also the "honorable" mark for reasons that it is not up to us to judge. [11]

Please note that this date (8 June 2002) is after the date of retraction on Cather[ineV's personal Web site (25 Avril 2002)] http://users.skynet.be/catherinev/sternheimer.htm.

I would love to hear your explanations of this.

Igor is honest enough to say he got no mention on his thesis and he suppresses it on the article. I don't understand why you insist about that point once again. –––– LLL

I suppressed Motl's second comment. As I wrote it does not correspond to his present way of thinking.

Until Prof. Motl states otherwise, there is no reason for a third party to state that "does not correspond to his present way of thinking." Please note, for example, that you cropped the sentence following your quote from Motl: "I find it unlikely that these things will work." [12] Also note that you maintain another quote by Motl from the same post that, for some reason, you believe still corresponds to his present way of thinking. Please explain how this can be.

I also suppressed Charpak's mention.

Again, just because you're ashamed of your actions doesn't mean it didn't happen or it's not relevant. I'm sure Bill Clinton would love to remove all references to Monica Lewinsky.

It is funny to see how unfair you can be, EE Guy. YBM keeps insulting Igor and other people for years. That's not mentioned in the article. Igor says something negative about Charpark ONE TIME and APOLOGIES and of course, it must be on your opinion mentioned in the article. –––– LLL

Again, please reconcile the mention honorable paradox above.

--EE Guy 17:10, 12 October 2005 (UTC)

There again you just erase the fact that sounds bad for you, and you think that any "explanation" of yours is relevant.

You did write that "the limit of a decreasing sequence is always 0", it's a good indication of the level of the mistakes seen in your book. It's fact, if you erase it, i'll ask for an arbitration.

--Luis A. 17:23, 12 October 2005 (UTC)

---

Luis : where did you read in our book that we wrote that "the limit of..etc.? Can you give me the page, please? Igor

Igor: some problems of memory ?

page 292, one can read "Quelle est la limite d’une suite de nombres qui, sans fin, deviennent de plus en plus petits ? C’est le zéro".

Wich can (without any controversy) be translated as "What is the limit of a sequence of numbers wich, endlessly ,become smaller and smaller? it's the zero."

I'm eager to see the way you'll try to "escape" from this.

Another horrible mistake you made in your book is that the set of the imaginary numbers is the algebraic closure of the set of the real numbers.

--Luis A. 21:38, 12 October 2005 (UTC)

---

EE Guy Redux

Some new answers to EE Guy

I added the reason of the mention.

:Your statement by Sternheimer is misleading at best. See these links: [13] and articles in the NY Times that quote Sternheimer. It does not belong.

This question of the mention was decided from the very day we decided to maintain the defense in Polytechnique. Normally, Grichka would have gotten "Très Honorable" (as 99% of thesis). But the context of his defense was such that he got "Honorable". This was decided several days before actual defense. It was for political reasons and Sternheimer wrote it in his statement. Who could be more qualified than the thesis advisor to comment on this?

Suppression of "also honoralbe" I had no mention.

:While your mention honorable may have been revoked (this is hardly worth bragging about), you and your brother wrote in an interview (after the supposed retraction of your mention honorable):

We did not write anything. I checked this interview : as you can see, it was totally written by an english speacker. The basic material was a phone interview and it is quite possible that a mistake was done in the transcription of it. I am used to read some articles written about us where the journalist wrote things that were not part of what I could have said.

In this case, as I said, I can send you (ou whoever you choose) my report of thesis : the mention is not written on it (as opposed to Grichka's).

Igor defended successfully his thesis on June 8, 2002, getting also the "honorable" mark for reasons that it is not up to us to judge. [14]

:Please note that this date (8 June 2002) is after the date of retraction on Cather[ineV's personal Web site (25 Avril 2002)] http://users.skynet.be/catherinev/sternheimer.htm. :I would love to hear your explanations of this.

As I said, I am not the author of the text that was published in this interview. Mistakes can happen. In this case, it is likely that some error may have happen (even on my side). But that does not change the fact that my thesis report does not bear any mention.

I suppressed Motl's second comment. As I wrote it does not correspond to his present way of thinking.

:Until Prof. Motl states otherwise, there is no reason for a third party to state that "does not correspond to his present way of thinking." Please note, for example, that you cropped the sentence following your quote from Motl: "I find it unlikely that these things will work." [15] Also note that you maintain another quote by Motl from the same post that, for some reason, you believe still corresponds to his present way of thinking. Please explain how this can be.

If you go to my first addition of Motl's second statement, you will see that the phrase "I find it unlikely that these things will work."was present. Someone else suppressed this phrase but it was not me. I put the phrase "I find it unlikely that these things will work." because I consider it as part of the scientific reasoning. This exactly why I considered it important and why I still think it should stay in the quote.

But as far as his first quote is concerned, I do not think that it is appropriate. We all agreed on a certain "balance" between "negative" and "positive" comments. This extra negative post breacks this balance.

I also suppressed Charpak's mention.

:Again, just because you're ashamed of your actions doesn't mean it didn't happen or it's not relevant. I'm sure Bill Clinton would love to remove all references to Monica Lewinsky.

It is quite possible. But please, compare what is comparable. It is not that I am ashamed  : it is that it was said in a particular context (usenet anonymized discussions) as a response to all the attacks we were submitted to by YBM and his band. At the limit, this answer was even not directed to Charpak but to YBM and his friends. If youi read it again you will see that Charpak was not the real issue of this discussion.

My "band" ? Am I suppose now to be a musician after having being a "computor specialist" ?

BTW, this way to excuse himself to have insulted Charpak, under a pseudonym as any brave person would have done, is a very very good illustration of the kind of guy we are dealing with here. I'm not about to point out every lies in all this bunch above and after this comment (there are far too much, most have been refuted before, a lot have just been refuted in place, the whole make me sick, as could say Laurence67). Just remember when you read this that he, and his brother, have been several time convicted of fraud and forgery and are unable to write a single meaningfull sentence about mathematics and physics, even at the pregraduate level. --YBM 23:11, 12 October 2005 (UTC)

The fact that we honestly recognized the use of pseudos is already a proof of our good faith in this matter. Instead of forcing me to admit that I still insult Charpak, you better consider that this accidental episode should not be taken as representative for this encyclopedia.

Igor