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Gamma or Beta?

I originally prepared the footnote equations using the greek gamma for the factor 1/sqrt(1-v^2/c^2), since that is the most common convention. However, two things caused me to change it to beta, which has historically been the second most common symbol used for that factor. First, I noticed that the lower-case gamma symbol doesn't render very well in HTML. At least on my browser, the lower part gets truncated, so it's unrecognizable, looking more like a V. Second, I noticed that Whitrow actually used beta, so it is actually more consistent with the reference to use beta. (Also, note that Einsein's 1905 paper used beta.) Dingle in 1967 used 1/a, so that doesn't agree with either convention. So, on balance, it seemed (and seems) to me that beta is the better choice. Denveron 17:08, 22 October 2007 (UTC)

Yes, the little gamma looks like a capital V now. As long as the math is inline and in the notes section, keeping the notation more or less intact is good. However, if the math is to be unburried (which I think should be done, since it is central) to the main article, I think it's better to use current notation (with gamma). The gamma we have now really looks... ugly :-) - DVdm 18:11, 22 October 2007 (UTC)

Huh, hadn't heard that before. I'm used to seeing β for v/c. However, as long as it's defined right there, I guess it'll be okay.

—wwoods 19:42, 22 October 2007 (UTC)

Denveron, in the process of changing the gammas to betas, you reverted all the other formatting changes I made, including fixing the spelling of "alledged". Did you mean to do that?

—wwoods 07:04, 23 October 2007 (UTC)

Sorry, I missed that you corrected "alleged". I have fixed that now. The rest of the formatting was intentional, only becase the was I formatted it looks more readable on my screen. Italisizing variables in expressions like t'/t makes them almosr unreadable in my browser, and the same for the squared symbols. Denveron 05:03, 24 October 2007 (UTC)

Housecleaning

This seems like an appropriate time to straighten things out. I have a few suggestions. Please add your own, implement them, disagree with them, et cetera.

• Delete these subpages (MfD or whatever)
  • Talk:Herbert_Dingle/Draft_revision
  • Talk:Herbert_Dingle/Draft_revision_talk
  • Talk:Herbert_Dingle/Comments
• Remove the top banner from this talk page about the draft version
• Pull some version of the 'Chang' reference into the main article
• Remove the disputed tag (can be re-added with reason, of course)
• Archive the entire talk page

Tim Shuba 23:11, 22 October 2007 (UTC)

Tim, the talk page still being disrupted, I think perhaps it's a bit too soon? - DVdm 10:51, 23 October 2007 (UTC)

Are you sure? Funny, it looks rather clean to me. Could be a browser problem on my end. Tim Shuba 11:12, 23 October 2007 (UTC)

Well, we waited, didn't we? - DVdm 12:21, 23 October 2007 (UTC)

Huh, Tim, you didn't archive the talk page - you just erased it. I have copied the content of the previous version to a new archive. - DVdm 12:37, 23 October 2007 (UTC)

If you biased editors would write a fair article you wouldnt have this problem.Electrodynamicist 13:18, 23 October 2007 (UTC)

Semiprotection

We gain nothing for this page to be unprotected due to Dr. Seaweed's nonsense postings (as well as new behavioral information). As such, I've semiprotected this talk page.—Ryūlóng (竜龍) 21:06, 23 October 2007 (UTC)

I will also note that Swanzsteve is not the sockpuppeteer, and is not banned in any way shape or form.—Ryūlóng (竜龍) 03:56, 25 October 2007 (UTC)

An Unnecessary Fact ?

A recent edit has removed the phrase "after his retirement" from the preamble to the discussion of Dingle's campaign against special relativity, which Dingle himself tells us (in Crossroads) was sparked in 1955 and continued until his death in 1978. Sincle Dingle retired in 1955, there doesn't seems to be any dispute over the accuracy and verifiability of the statement that this dispute took place "after his retirement". The phrase has been removed with the justification that it is "unnecessary", because the dates of both his retirement and the beginning of the dispute are given (in separate places) in the article, and hence the reader can deduce the phrase for himself, so it doesn't need to be stated. This is certainly true, although it treads a fine line, because when writing to convey to the reader an accurate sense of the chronology of events, it is customary and useful to intersperse notes of comparative and related events. This helps to orient the reader and place the events in the correct chronological context without requiring the reader to check back to previously stated dates and reconstruct the sequence of events.

The usual rules of Misplaced Pages editing are someone ambiguous on this point. The basic criteria is verifiability from reliable sources, but no one disputes that this is a verifiably accurate statement, and also that it is relevant and notable. The question is whether it is appropriate or "necessary" to include that (verifiably accurate) phrase at this point in the article. This is where the POV of individual editors may play a role, but the article ends up reflecting one POV or the other, regardless of whether the verifiably accurate phrase is retained or suppressed. If it is retained, some can argue that it calls undue attention to the fact that the dispute occurred after Dingle's retirement, but if it is suppressed some can argue that we are suppressing verifiable facts expressly to avoid calling these facts to the reader's attention, and the only reason to avoid the facts is because they tend to undermine a particular POV. Of course, the counter-argument is that if a POV tends to be undermined by calling verifiable facts to people's attention, then perhaps that POV has an inherent weakness, and in any case, POVs are not supposed to be reflected in the article.

Hmmm... a real puzzle. I suppose one way of resolving such issues in Misplaced Pages is to simply acknowledge when there are multiple POVs, and make note of them. For example, following the sentence in question, we could add a parenthetical statement such as:

("This dispute took place following Dingle's retirement, a fact which may or may not be worth noting at this point. Some sources emphasize Dingle's advanced age and isolation during this dispute, whereas other sources regard these factors as irrelevant to the dispute.")

How about that? Would this make everyone happy? I think this would be most in accord with the established Misplaced Pages policies for handling and resolving situations in which either mentioning or not mentioning a verifiable fact can be construed as POV. If this isn't acceptable, can anyone suggest any alternative? Denveron 02:13, 25 October 2007 (UTC)

Just to be clear, I should have added that I personally think the right solution is to simply state the fact, as in the previous version of the article. Adding a special note to comment on the different points of view has the effect of calling even more attention to the issue. Editors should bear in mind that both Davies and Whitrow, when describing this episode, made special note of the chronology (saying "in his later years", and "The last 20 years of his life"), so it seems to me the status quo ante was quite representative of how the subject is covered in verifiable reputable sources. I think the latest edit is an attempt to impose the POV of an editor by suppressing and modifying how the episode is described in reputable sources. And, again, the phrase is question is agreed by everyone to be a verifiable fact, so it's just a question of whether mentioning this fact explicitly (instead of making the reader infer it from separate dates) is appropriate. The reputable sources all judge that it is appropriate, so I think that should be the default position. Denveron 02:34, 25 October 2007 (UTC)

"... the phrase has been removed with the justification that it is "unnecessary"..." ==> I have put the phrase back with the justification that the removal of the fact was unnecessary. Academics have much more time to shape and hone their publications after their retirement, so I think this is a significant fact. Perhaps the objection from the contributor who removed the fact was inspired by the (sorry, i.m.o. somewhat paranoic) suspection that someone would like to hint at dementia? In that case, quite on the contrary, I'd say. - DVdm 09:21, 25 October 2007 (UTC)

You are correct. It is important to notice that after his retirement Dingle had more time to persue the relativity question without embarassment to his academic affiliations.Electrodynamicist 13:29, 25 October 2007 (UTC)

Dingle Never Lost His Respect for Einstein's Genius?

A recent edit added the statement, referenced to the Whitrow obituary, that Dingle never lost his respect for Einstein's genius. If that statement is going to be retained, it should be placed in the correct context. All the other verifiable facts in the article can be found in multiple sources, and we've just selected one or two for convenience, but the statement that Dingle never lost respect for Einstein's genius appears only in the obituary, accompanying a similar make-nice statement about Eddington (who was savaged and ridiculed by Dingle in "The Sources of Eddington's Philosophy). Mature readers understand that this is an example of the protocol for writing obituaries, in which everything is "made nice" even after describing (as gently as possible) disputes with other individuals. This is why, if this Wiki article was being written by mature people, we would simply omit that statement, recogniziing it for the obituary-speak that it is. However, to accomodate people who don't understand subtlties like this, we may be forced to leave the quote in the article. In that case, we ought to accompany it with some other quotes to give a fuller picture. I suggest something like the following as my second choice for how to edit the article. (My first choice would be to simply omit the silly statement altogether.)

Whitrow in his obituary of Dingle, after describing Dingle's campaign against Einstein's theory, made the conciliatory statement that Dingle never lost his respect for Einstein's geniusWhitrow obit. However, this assertion does not appear elsewhere in the literature, and Dingle's own book "Science at the Crossroads" contains numerous statements such as Would that the revelation would come to that theory appears to them to be nonsense because it is nonsense and not because they are too stupid to understand it! and It appears astonishing that Einstein could have overlooked so simple a fact....Dingle, Science at the Crossroads So, whether or not Dingle ever lost his respect for Einstein's genius is perhaps an open question.

I don't know... it seems rather obtuse to include such verbiage in the article, simply to accommodate the insistence of one or two editors who insist on include Whitrow's "make-nice" statement. So, I much prefer my first choice (return the article to the way it was), but failing that, I think we must go to a second choice like the words above.Denveron 15:55, 25 October 2007 (UTC)

The statement that Dingle savaged and ridiculed Eddington is not justified. I have read this book and this statement is a false distortion. Please retract it and apologise to the readers of this page. As usual your facts are false.Electrodynamicist 16:18, 25 October 2007 (UTC)

In the make-nice statement toward Eddington in Whitrow's obituary referenced above he characterizes "The Sources of Eddington's Philosophy" by saying that Dingle subjected Eddington's philosophy of science to "devastating criticism", and one of Dingle's later reviews of an Eddington book was greeted with the charge that "the old instinctive antagonism emerges", and Dingle and Eddington exchanged very abrasive letters to the editor over a casual remark of Eddington's to which Dingle took offense, and so on. The antagonism between the two men was very public and quite vitrolic at times. It is true that Dingle also sometimes defended some of Eddington's ideas, or at least stated that other people's criticisms of Eddington were based on misunderstandings of Eddington's positions (unlike Dingle's, of course), and some of this is reflected in "The Sources of Eddington's Philosophy", but the fact remains that Dingle consistently lambasted Eddington and his followers as "modern Aristotlians", and compared them with the scholastic theologians who refused to look through Galileo's telescope for fear of having their pure ideas corrupted by facts. So, I stand uncorrected. Somehow I suspect that if I hadn't provided quotes showing how Dingle savaged and ridiculed Einstein in Science at the Crossroads, you would be claiming that he did no such thing. Speaking of people who refuse to look at the facts for fear of corrupting their pre-conceived notions... Denveron 17:41, 25 October 2007 (UTC)

Your attempt to avoid the fact that your statement above is false by citing additional facts does not remove the fact that your first statement was false. Electrodynamicist 21:30, 25 October 2007 (UTC)

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