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Wikipedia:WikiProject Deletion sorting/Science

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This is a collection of discussions on the deletion of articles related to Science. It is one of many deletion lists coordinated by WikiProject Deletion sorting. Anyone can help maintain the list on this page.

Adding a new AfD discussion
Adding an AfD to this page does not add it to the main page at WP:AFD. Similarly, removing an AfD from this page does not remove it from the main page at WP:AFD. If you want to nominate an article for deletion, go through the process on that page before adding it to this page. To add a discussion to this page, follow these steps:
  1. Edit this page and add {{Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/PageName}} to the top of the list. Replace "PageName" with the relevant article name, i.e. the one on the existing AFD discussion. Also, indicate the title of the article in the edit summary as it is particularly helpful to add a link to the article in the edit summary. When you save the page, the discussion will automatically appear.
  2. You should also tag the AfD by adding {{subst:delsort|Science|~~~~}} to it, which will inform editors that it has been listed here. You may place this tag above or below the nomination statement or at the end of the discussion thread.
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Removing a closed AfD discussion
Closed AfD discussions are automatically removed by a bot.
Other types of discussions
You can also add and remove other discussions (prod, CfD, TfD etc.) related to Science. For the other XfD's, the process is the same as AfD (except {{Wikipedia:Miscellany for deletion/PageName}} is used for MFD and {{transclude xfd}} for the rest). For PRODs, adding a link with {{prodded}} will suffice.
Further information
For further information see Wikipedia's deletion policy and WP:AfD for general information about Articles for Deletion, including a list of article deletions sorted by day of nomination.


Archived discussions (starting from September 2007) may be found at:
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Science

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Matteo Paz (edit | talk | history | protect | delete | links | watch | logs | views) – (View AfD | edits since nomination)
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Undergrad whose only claim to notability is winning the Regeneron Science Talent Search. By concensus, this does not qualify him for a pass of WP:NACADEMIC, high school awards are excluded. While winning the award has some news writeups, this fails as a single event (WP:BLP1E) without evidence for sustained coverage (WP:SUSTAINED). This is particularly the case since the scientific publication describing the code that won him the award has received no citations according to GScholar; the wider scientific community has so far voted with silence. Ldm1954 (talk) 03:39, 7 July 2025 (UTC)[reply]

History of the metre (edit | talk | history | protect | delete | links | watch | logs | views) – (View AfD | edits since nomination)
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Redirect to History of the metric system, merging small amounts that aren't essentially duplicated or better covered there.

This article is functionally a fork of History of the metric system, which includes pretty much everything this article might if fully developed. This article's also exceptional; we don't have "History of" articles for other units like the kilogram, second or ampere.

The forking is something of a wiki-historical accident; this article began as "Redefinition of the Metre in 1983", a redefinition in terms of the speed of light which at least one editor thought very foolish. This article may have been created to corral that issue but long arguments about it continued across many articles leading to Wikipedia:Arbitration/Requests/Case/Speed of light, this article narrowly survived an AfD but its scope was soon expanded to History of the metre, and activity on this article died down. Meanwhile History of the metric system was created, continued to be developed, and was a GA until recently. It already has much well-written well-sourced content about the history of the metre itself and its context, but broadly speaking without the digressions that this article has sometimes included.

As this isn't a new article, it seems (I've not done this before) that WP:ATD-R applies: discuss on talk page first, but if consensus is lacking, go to AfD for discussion with the wider community. Opinion at History of the metre#Redirect to History of the metric system? was divided 2:2 and so though long discussion there just might reach unanimity either way, it seems better to come here as WP:ATD-R's preferred venue. NebY (talk) 20:19, 6 July 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Non-extensive self-consistent thermodynamical theory (edit | talk | history | protect | delete | links | watch | logs | views) – (View AfD | edits since nomination)
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Not notable. The article is about a theory proposed in A. Deppman, Physica A 391 (2012) 6380. The article has 66 citations in Google Scholar, and most of those are self-cites. The article was written by User:Deppman. Jähmefyysikko (talk) 07:26, 4 July 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Rigaku (edit | talk | history | protect | delete | links | watch | logs | views) – (View AfD | edits since nomination)
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Julian in LA (talk · contribs) attempted to nominate this article for deletion, but wound up sending the talk page to AfD instead. Their rationale follows:

fails WP:COMPANY#Primary criteria. A search of Newspapers.com, Google and JSTOR revealed no notability. Ldm1954 commented that "They are a famous maker of x-ray equipment." Fame is not the same as notability and nothing in the sources indicates that they are more widely known than dozens of other multinational technology companies.
— User:Julian in LA 18:18, 2 July 2025 (UTC)

My involvement is merely procedural; I am neutral and offer no opinion or further comment (beyond that Ldm1954 (talk · contribs)'s comments are in the context of declining a PROD). WCQuidditch 19:32, 2 July 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Procedural, to clarify, @Julian in LA did nominate it via a PROD which I contested . They then inappropriately nominated it for AfD on the talk page, which I reverted indicating that it needed to be done at the main page. Since they meant to do an AfD let's run with this. Ldm1954 (talk) 20:01, 2 July 2025 (UTC)[reply]

A fuller explanation is at Rigaku#Proposed deletion of Rigaku. Julian in LA (talk) 20:06, 2 July 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Technical correction, the location is Talk:Rigaku#Proposed deletion of Rigaku, which is for the original PROD. Ldm1954 (talk) 20:39, 2 July 2025 (UTC)[reply]
  • Speedy Keep. The nom is a new editor, and I do not think that they did a proper WP:Before and are not that familiar with how we define notability. These instruments are used in many academic and technological areas. All major research universities have several x-ray diffractometers, and a good fraction of these are from Rigaku. They are heavily used for quality control in industry in areas ranging from metallurgy to pharmaceuticals. Even conservatively with one paper per week per university using this equipment, we reach many thousands per year, which is what there is. A Google Scholar search on Rigaku yields > 400K hits. If you just limit it to "Rigaku diffractometer" then it is ~14,000, and a similar search just on Google yields 25,000 Unfortunately it appears that the nom did not search appropriately. I have seen people arguing that a few mentions in Google Scholar and/or JStor is enough to justify a commercial page; the number here is way beyond that.Ldm1954 (talk) 20:37, 2 July 2025 (UTC)[reply]
  • Keep - Rigaku is covered by reliable independent sources. For example, News Medical Life Science), Forbes, and Reuters. The company has a long history and extensive scientific use, meeting WP:GNG and WP:CORP. Z3r0h3r000 (talk) 09:10, 4 July 2025 (UTC)[reply]
    I nominated two out of a dozen or more pages on [Category:Wikipedia conflict of interest edit requests] to see how the community regards WP:COMPANY and WP:LISTED.
    These pages are written by PR firms and contain little other than the company logo, a statement that they are "leaders in" some vaguely defined industry, an equally vague list of their products, the stock price, the current CEO and a long, long list of other companies they have swallowed up. This is of interest only to investors who can't afford a subscription to Morningstar and tax accountants who can't afford a subscription to Capital Changes Reporter (https://www.nypl.org/node/424884).
    The fact that one or more of the company's products are widely used suggests a product page under WP:PRODUCT or perhaps a mention in a more generic page on the product category, such as x-ray diffractometers. It is unlikely that the researchers who use these care who the current CEO is and what mergers they have made. In other words, having a notable product or having an entry in a notable market does not make the company notable. Julian in LA (talk) 23:21, 4 July 2025 (UTC)[reply]
    Related question: if all publicly traded companies are notable, are any of their COE edits immaterial or trivial? Here are the current edit requests for Rigaku. I feel silly checking them out one at a time:
    Increase the employee count by 67 (really!). There is a comment on the talk page that neither the new nor old numbers are reliable.
    Add the date that their current CEO's appointment was announced.
    Add their new Boston office to the list of locations.
    Add "semiconductor metrology instruments" and LIBS analyzers to the already long list of products.
    Increase their annual revenue by ¥28 billion or 40%. The editor points out that the old figure is two years old, but it was out of date as soon as the next annual report was issued. A huge increase through internal growth would be noteworthy, but if it came from buying up other companies, it's not. Those 67 new employees are generating a whole lot of revenue.
    The company was acquired by the Carlyle Group in 2021 and made an IPO in 2024. They seem very pleased at the price they got for their stock, but there is no indication as to what they are going to do with all that money. More acquisitions? I guess we could go searching for the prospectus to answer that. Julian in LA (talk) 20:00, 5 July 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Cryptic (geology) (edit | talk | history | protect | delete | links | watch | logs | views) – (View AfD | edits since nomination)
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Fails WP:GNG. The only reference is to a figure in a 1989 book that contradicts modern definition of the Hadean. — hike395 (talk) 12:08, 2 July 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Dietrich Stephan (edit | talk | history | protect | delete | links | watch | logs | views) – (View AfD | edits since nomination)
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This article was clearly the subject of sustained promotional editing for quite some time. No progress has been made on the article since the fat was trimmed, and looking into it myself, I can only find routine coverage discussing his appointments, and one interview. I don't believe there's enough sources here to actually build an article upon. MediaKyle (talk) 11:16, 1 July 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Living Intelligence (edit | talk | history | protect | delete | links | watch | logs | views) – (View AfD | edits since nomination)
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There is inadequate sourcing to establish notability for this concept, which can probably best be summed up (albeit rather uncharitably) as "big picture LinkedIn-style thought leadership"—or, even less charitably, it is a thing someone made up but for business executives.

The HBR source, the AOL (which syndicates Motley Fool, and is a transcript of a video interview) and the 'Future Today Institute' source aren't independent of the author who originated the concept. A brief web search identified a few other pages that are broadly in the same genre.

The Hesham Allam source cites a wholly different source for an idea referred to as 'living intelligence' (namely someone called Anna Bacchia) that predates the FTSG/Webb/Jordan formulation. It is also mentioned only in passing—not significant for the purpose of the notability guidelines.

The Robitzski source predates the invention of the concept, and thus does not do anything to establish notability.

The 'Analytics Insight' source looks extremely unreliable. According to their bio, the author of the piece "excels at crafting clear, engaging content", apparently. Last week, on Friday, they produced seven articles for 'Analytics Insight' in one day, on topics as wide-ranging as staying at the top of Google search results, knowing the difference between OLED and QLED televisions, the best travel credit cards, discounts on Android phones, smart mattress covers, and using AI to generate video. An optimist might commend this industrious work ethic; cynics might draw the conclusion that this feels like a low quality content farm (the massive flashing adverts for ropey looking cryptocurrencies don't help).

The Nature source discusses "living intelligences" and tries to draw up some philosophical basis for distinguishing machine and biological intelligence. It is not discussing the same thing.

The Inc. article by Aiello does look to be reliable, and independent, and provides significant coverage, but probably isn't enough alone as "multiple sources are generally expected" (WP:GNG).

There was another source listed which I removed. It's generated by Perplexity AI. Literally, just AI generated text. It's here (and on the Wayback Machine, but the overuse of JavaScript makes that version unusable). It is pretty much a case study of AI confabulation.

The AI generated text reads: Amy Webb and Gary Marcus, two prominent figures in AI research and forecasting, offer contrasting perspectives on AI's trajectory in 2025. Webb predicts a convergence of key technologies, including AI, biotech, and advanced sensors, leading to what she terms "living intelligence". At this point, there is an inline footnote which points to an article titled The great AI scaling debate continues into 2025 from a website called The Decoder. Said article does not discuss "living intelligence" or Webb. The Decoder article talks about Gary Marcus and AI scaling, so the AI generated source is at least half right. To be fair, the Perplexity source does go on to point to a podcast interview which... might establish notability if you squint a bit.

So, in terms of sourcing that establishes notability, we have an Inc article and a handful of podcasts/interviews. But the convergence of AI-generated text and the somewhat spammy promotion of futurist/thought leadership suggests this should be deleted (or possibly merged/redirected into Amy Webb). —Tom Morris (talk) 11:42, 30 June 2025 (UTC)[reply]

  • Note: This discussion has been included in the deletion sorting lists for the following topics: Science, Biology, and Technology. —Tom Morris (talk) 11:42, 30 June 2025 (UTC)[reply]
  • Also pinging User:BD2412 as the AfC reviewer. —Tom Morris (talk) 11:44, 30 June 2025 (UTC)[reply]
  • Delete as, indeed, "a thing someone made up but for business executives." Honestly, anything made with "sources" from Perplexity or other slop machines should be deleted on moral grounds. They're the opposite of reliable; using them is by definition not being here to build an encyclopedia, and the results should be treated accordingly. Stepwise Continuous Dysfunction (talk) 18:19, 30 June 2025 (UTC)[reply]
  • Delete per last user, WP:MADEUP, and the use of AI-generated sources, which is a flaming red line for me. WeirdNAnnoyed (talk) 21:20, 30 June 2025 (UTC)[reply]
  • Leaning keep or restore to draft. I was pinged to this discussion and am mulling this over carefully. I don't think that Amy Webb being the coiner of the term is disqualifying of a source for which she is the author. It's not like she's selling "Living Intelligence" as a product for her enrichment. She is an academic in the field, and her opinions in the field carry weight. I have never seen Harvard Business Review questioned for its reliability. With this along with the Inc. article, I would expect that if this is a notable concept (and the article describes something that certainly should be), then additional sources may be found. BD2412 T 01:11, 2 July 2025 (UTC)[reply]
    Thanks for this. Two points: the Harvard Business Review do publish sponsored content on behalf of corporate partners. Some of which is emabrassingly mediocre research that would get a failing grade as student coursework. The source in question doesn't seem to fall into this category, thankfully.
    Also, at risk of being excessively cynicial, the thinktank/thought leadership world are selling a product. Taking a vague trend of New Stuff, and self-publishing a report that gives it a label is exactly what goes on in futurist/thought leader circles in order to promote yourself so corporations and others will pay you for consulting and speaking gigs etc. I drew an analogy with WP:MADEUP becuase hand-wavy futurist thought is often "a PDF of a thing I made up on my own website" rather than getting subjected to peer review. Whether the idea actually is notable is a question for other people to determine, hence why our notability guidelines look to independent sources. —Tom Morris (talk) 09:22, 2 July 2025 (UTC)[reply]
    "Amy Webb being the coiner of the term" is "disqualifying" of any source that she wrote, insofar as it means those sources are the opposite of independent. A source that Webb wrote isn't completely useless for all purposes, but it carries zero weight in evaluating the notability (in the Wikipedian sense) of the concept.
    To paraphrase Tom Morris' second paragraph above: a label is a brand is a product. We absolutely should treat a thinktank/thought-leader person writing about their own label in the same way that we would treat a business owner writing about their own business. Stepwise Continuous Dysfunction (talk) 23:15, 2 July 2025 (UTC)[reply]
    These concerns are not alien to me, which is why I would support restoration to draft as a WP:ATD. BD2412 T 03:18, 3 July 2025 (UTC)[reply]
  • Draftify - Confused about the Perplexity AI issue address above but not sure if it matters. I did find this from The Week but that only makes two if you take Inc. into consideration. I would not fully discount the HBR just because she is the coiner of the phrase; however, being that there is not a lot of other references talking about it, I am not sure we can consider her the expect on the topic either.--CNMall41 (talk) 06:50, 3 July 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Igor Ivitskiy (edit | talk | history | protect | delete | links | watch | logs | views) – (View AfD | edits since nomination)
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Page on a young Materials Scientist which claims that he is a mathematician, but has only published on polymers. According to this page he was in the Department of Chemical, Polymer and Silicate Engineering described here. While there are claims that he is a Professor, the relevant staff page does not currently verify this. Page makes many claims, for instance 200 scholarly works but he only has an h-factor of 13. (An h-factor of 13 is at about the level of a senior postdoc in Materials Science, to at most a starting assistant professor. If he was truly a mathematician then an h-factor of 13 might be acceptable.) Page has major refbombing and a fair amount of peacock. No indications of anything close to a pass of WP:NPROF on any count, or any other notability criteria. Page was previously PROD by nom, then indirectly challenged by Jars World here. Ldm1954 (talk) 13:21, 26 June 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Relisted to generate a more thorough discussion and clearer consensus.
Please add new comments below this notice. Thanks, plicit 14:22, 3 July 2025 (UTC)[reply]
  • Keep Per WP:NACADEMIC: The person has received a highly prestigious academic award or honor at a national or international level, which in Ivitskiy's case is the President of Ukraine’s Prize for Young Scientists. Antoine le Deuxième (talk) 15:49, 3 July 2025 (UTC)[reply]
  • Neutral but lean Keep. Mostly commenting that "Young X" awards don't contribute towards WP:PROF notability when they're at the High-School, College, etc. level; they DO contribute, however, when "young" means post-doctoral and early-mid-career level. This one was earned around age 29, so looks more like the later, and can fairly be considered a WP:PROF pass; but the citation count, etc. just doesn't fully pass the "smell-test" expected if the award were really that prestigious, hence staying neutral. -- Michael Scott Asato Cuthbert (talk) 23:03, 6 July 2025 (UTC)[reply]
    With apologies Michael Scott Asato Cuthbert, but I think you are misreading WP:NPROF#C2. The text in the notes is quite clear that these need to be major, senior awards. Examples would be the named awards from major national or international societies, in his case an example would be one of the awards of the European Federation of Chemical Engineering, as that is his PhD and academic research field (not mathematics). Junior or mid career awards indicate good progress, but alone rarely to never qualify at AfDs I have seen, particularly outside of mathematics. Since his citations are weak there is not a cumulative pass with a synergistic combination. Ldm1954 (talk) 04:08, 7 July 2025 (UTC)[reply]
On My Own Technology (edit | talk | history | protect | delete | links | watch | logs | views) – (View AfD | edits since nomination)
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WP:NORG doesn't pass, no sigcov in article, and I suspect WP:COI. See Wikipedia:Sockpuppet investigations/ThePerfectYellow. grapesurgeon (seefooddiet) (talk) 00:22, 26 June 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Relisted to generate a more thorough discussion and clearer consensus.
Please add new comments below this notice. Thanks, Liz Read! Talk! 00:42, 3 July 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Transformer effect (edit | talk | history | protect | delete | links | watch | logs | views) – (View AfD | edits since nomination)
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Mutual inductance and Inductive coupling already have much more information here. The transformer effect certainly is not the WP:COMMONNAME for this, either. DeemDeem52 (talk) 16:12, 20 June 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Relisted to generate a more thorough discussion and clearer consensus.
Please add new comments below this notice. Thanks, Destinyokhiria 💬 12:53, 28 June 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Relisted to generate a more thorough discussion and clearer consensus.
Please add new comments below this notice. Thanks, Doczilla Ohhhhhh, no! 06:35, 6 July 2025 (UTC)[reply]
  • Comment on Mutual inductance: The original intent of the author of the WP article does not matter, especially when the assertion that "transformer effect" is synonymous with mutual induction is unsourced. It is more important how the term is used in the literature. L.V. Kite (1974) An introduction to linear electric circuits discusses mutual inductance and says The phenomenon we have discussed here is the is the transformer effect. It occurs in circuits which are fixed in position, and should not be confused with the related phenomenon known as the dynamo effect, which depends for its existence on relative motion. This does not yet tell us whether he considers transformer effect synonymous with mutual inductance or whether it is more general phenomenon. However, he also says later that self induction [...] is obviously an additional manifestation of transformer effect. Here's another source that considers self-inductance in connection with the transformer effect: [3]. This indicates that Mutual inductance is a narrower concept than the transformer effect. Anyway, this is such a niche term that I am not strongly opposed to Mutual inductance as a target if it helps closing the AfD, since mutual inductance does lead the reader to the general topic area. Jähmefyysikko (talk) 07:47, 6 July 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Science Proposed deletions

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Science Miscellany for deletion

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Science Redirects for discussion

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Deletion Review

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