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Disclosure

I am the "Thomas M. English" identified as a former affiliate of the lab. Before you interpret that negatively, please read the source supporting the statement that I was with the lab. The "Tom English" who appeared at the Panda's Thumb to bash ID and explain that he was standing up for Marks' academic freedom was indeed I. My pre-controvery opinion that there was no ID content at the website is documented at Talk:No free lunch in search and optimization.

Certainly Dembski is still trying to achieve his ID ends, but the Dembski-Marks collaboration seems to be trying to develop legitimate means. Marks is a brilliant engineer, and I definitely have not ruled out the possibility that he and Dembski will generate results that I can use (even if Dembski abuses them).

It was impossible to adequately discuss the controversy in Marks biography, due to restrictions on sources for biographies of living persons. Here blog sources are OK under certain circumstances. Note that I clearly identified the bloggers and the slants of the blogs.

I'm doing my utmost to abide by WP:NPOV. I ask that you do the same. ThomHImself (talk) 09:42, 3 April 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Given your advocacy on behalf of Marks documented in this article, I do not think that we can take your claims of dispassion at face value. I am therefore tagging this article for WP:COI and would request that you cease editing it per that policy. Hrafn^Talk_Stalk 11:51, 18 April 2008 (UTC)[reply]

From talk:Robert J. Marks II:

My efforts to persuade people to treat Marks fairly have damaged my professional reputation. You cannot make a case against me under WP:COI when I am so clearly acting against my own interests.

I haven't updated my vita recently. I am not a member of the IEEE. I have never met Marks. We have never collaborated. The extent of my participation in the Evolutionary Informatics Lab was to lend my name in protest of what I regarded as Baylor's infringement on his academic freedom. You will find comments in no forum in which I called for anything but fair treatment of Marks or neglected to state in strong terms my opposition to ID. Thus I may use the sources you consider damning to document my longstanding NPOV. Marks is the only person I know of who is mistakenly called an ID proponent. Calling on you to stick by the standards laid out in WP:BLP is nothing but a continuation of my call for fair play.

My Wiki contributions related to Marks are not only here, but in the articles on the lab, evolutionary informatics, and no free lunch in search and optimization. In the article on the lab, I listed myself as a former affiliate, despite the fact that it is detrimental to my reputation. In the articles on the lab and no free lunch in search and optimization, I pointed out how the use of active information is related to the Dembski's past use of specified complexity. All of the inadequately sourced material I removed from this article per WP:BLP#Reliable_sources is in the article on the lab.

If you contact Mark Perakh, he'll tell you that he knows from personal communication with me that when I joined the lab, I planned on posting a new "free lunch" theorem that would have severely undermined the work of Dembski and Marks. I intended to hold Marks to the principle that adversarial scholars must stand up for one another's freedom of expression. I was not able to complete the proof before Dembski and / or Marks unethically revised the paper containing data that had been shown bogus. (This incident should be reported in the article on the lab. There are only blog sources to draw upon, so it can't appear here.) That was when I left the lab. So there is further evidence that I am acting ethically, and am not giving Marks a pass.

ThomHImself (talk) 22:44, 18 April 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Tom, I'm not doubting your anti-ID-nonsense bona fides, just your objectivity on Marks himself. I don't know if this is because of some subconscious '(1) I don't like ID; (2) I like Marks; so (3) I don't want to believe Marks is an IDer' thing, or some other reason. Whatever the reason, it is clear (both from your comments here & documented in the Perakh article) that you are a WP:COI when it comes to Marks' reputation, and his involvement in ID. Hrafn^Talk_Stalk 06:56, 19 April 2008 (UTC)[reply]

I started revising. It is true that the lede does not itself ned references; it is also true that science blogs is a quotable site for many purposes. The problem i have with this article is that I am not sure that details on the current view of the people who were once associate with that site are appropriate here. The main contents ofthe article should be the controversy over the removal of the site. DGG (talk) 16:58, 20 April 2008 (UTC)[reply]