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Kevin Knuth

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Kevin Knuth (edit | talk | history | protect | delete | links | watch | logs | views) – (View log | edits since nomination)
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Page has recently had some edit-warring, and was discussed at WP:ANI. Looking more closely, I am uncertain that the subject is notable, and making this nomination -- please consider my !vote as a weak delete. Reasons: any notability is likely to come from WP:NPROF. The subject has a moderate number of citations, but most of the citations are from middle authorship on papers with a moderately high number of coauthors. Looking past these papers, the highest cited paper has 167 citations (in what I believe to be a higher citation field). So I'm skeptical of WP:NPROF C1. The subject is editor-in-chief of a 20-year-old journal published by MDPI, which I do not believe is well-established for WP:NPROF C8. I don't see any sign of other NPROF criteria, and I indeed think it would be a bit surprising if a long-term associate professor at University of Albany passed this criteria. The subject has an interest in WP:FRINGE UFO theories, but I don't see a GNG pass around there. It is possible that there is a good faith combined case for notability, but I am sufficiently skeptical to make this nomination. Russ Woodroofe (talk) 11:24, 28 July 2022 (UTC)[reply]

  • Note: This discussion has been included in the list of Academics and educators-related deletion discussions. Russ Woodroofe (talk) 11:24, 28 July 2022 (UTC)[reply]
  • Thanks for starting this discussion. I am not sure whether WP:GNG is met, but if it is, I imagine it is going to end up that the article would be mostly a WP:FRINGEBLP which is fraught. There is at least one WP:FRIND source that seems relevant for the biography, but that is rather thin to write a standalone article. Having an algorithm used by Wolfram is perhaps noteworthy, but it's also not normally the thing we would identify as justifying a standalone BLP since Wolfram tends to be pretty peripatetic when it comes to including ideas that are mathematical. jps (talk) 11:34, 28 July 2022 (UTC)[reply]
  • Keep, passes WP:NACADEMIC The person has been the head or chief editor of a major, well-established academic journal in their subject area. 5Q5|✉ 12:25, 28 July 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Entropy is neither a major nor a well-established academic journal. jps (talk) 13:47, 28 July 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Indeed, the only thing well-established about it is that nobody trusts it to do any quality control. XOR'easter (talk) 00:07, 29 July 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Keep. Having originally authored the article, I'm clearly of the opinion that the subject achieves the requisite standard of notability. His academic papers; his career history in the round (including NASA Ames); his editorship of the Entropy journal; the Knuth Algorithm on Wolfram; and the public exposure he has attained for his willingness to publicly engage in the endeavour of scientific investigation into UAP.
I will also note - albeit this is likely outwith the scope of this discussion - that in light of the recent US governmental statements and actions pertaining to UAP (involving the US military; intelligence agencies; Congressional hearings; NASA), to regard scientific research into this subject area as "fringe" is patently absurd. Is Prof. Avi Loeb, leading Harvard University's Galileo Project, also now regarded as a fringe "pseudoscientist"? In any case, as noted, this is likely not the place for that wider discussion, however I would like to register my disappointment and strong opposition to this apparent state of affairs within the prevailing culture at Wikipedia that seems to be defining policies at present. Cosmoid (talk) 13:06, 28 July 2022 (UTC)[reply]
WP:FRINGE is well-defined as a content guideline on Wikipedia and was codified well before the recent dust-ups about UFOs. Note that it does not make any value judgement with respect to the subject material. It only outlines best practices for how to discuss fringe material. There are even clear rules for how to identify the fringe nature of a topic and the ide that "recent US governmental statements and actions" is not the standard that is used to judge whether a topic is subject to WP:FRINGE. jps (talk) 13:32, 28 July 2022 (UTC)[reply]
How is the current "mainstream" view on UAP established? The fact that US government officials have publicly confirmed that UAP *do* exist most certainly should be considered important in this regard. The scientific study of UAP is not "Fringe" - even if many of the theories as to their nature may well be defined as such. Cosmoid (talk) 14:44, 28 July 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Please read WP:RGW. Until there is a big splash article published in mainstream journals that argue there is something more to UFOs than human technology, natural phenomena, hoaxes, or delusions, we are stuck at Wikipedia with following this Occam's razor approach that the scientific research community has taken towards the subject. The subtext, of course, of the present governmental interest is that there may be human technology at work here. The extraordinary arguments that there may be an explanation beyond the prosaic four is the one that requires extraordinary evidence we do not have. Wait for that Science or Nature paper, I guess, and, until then, keep reaching for those stars (just not at Wikipedia). jps (talk) 15:48, 28 July 2022 (UTC)[reply]
The "U" in UAP stands for "unidentified". A very large proportion of UAP reports are most likely resolvable to human tech, natural phenomena, hoaxes and so forth. This has already been established in numerous historical studies, both private and government. However, there is a subset that are not so readily explainable. That has been publicly acknowledged by the US government and its agencies. As you're no doubt aware, the US Congress has now passed legislation - with more coming shortly - to require US government agencies to take this matter seriously; from encouraging service personnel to file reports, to the research and investigation of those reports. For the sake of clarity: The US government has made official statements - and even passed legislation - that effectively declares that the topic of UAP should no longer be considered "fringe", with all the associated stigma that implies. Indeed, this essential point is explicitly at the heart of these initiatives, which are intended to encourage witnesses in professional positions to come forward without fear of career impacting ridicule; from military and intelligence community personnel, to civil aviation pilots, to police officers and so on.
Scientists of the likes of Kevin Knuth are pursuing what the US government has now explicitly requested of academia - to research UAP phenomena. In following the scientific method, no outcome should be assumed prior to the collection and analysis of the evidence, and nothing should be ruled out of consideration by an a priori assumption with no proven theoretical grounding. I am well aware of Occam's razor and the appeal to parsimony. However, this only applies when evaluating a set of hypotheses that fit the known facts. When you are tasked with collecting and analysing the raw data of an unexplained phenomena, you do not shrug your shoulders and say "I won't bother looking, because established wisdom dictates what can and cannot be, ergo I'll just cherrypick whichever "facts" conform to those preconceptions and ignore the rest". That approach is more akin to religion that science.
World renowned academic institutions like Harvard University are openly supporting such UAP projects. The US military and now NASA are setting up programs to explicitly study UAP. The act of engaging in the investigative processes of the topic in and of itself is no longer considered "fringe science". It is absolutely mainstream - and I am of the opinion that it's high time Wikipedia caught up with the world as it is today, rather than base policy around anachronistic sociocultural and political paradigms that should be left in the 20th century. Cosmoid (talk) 00:32, 29 July 2022 (UTC)[reply]
The problem with the argument (which is an old one) that there are "U" accounts which are "not readily explainable" is that the arguments that a particular "sighting" is "explainable" can be argued against ad infinitum. And that is typically the name of the game. The goal of the "I want to believe" enthusiast is to cast doubt on any prosaic explanation so that the conclusion they want to keep alive as a possibility is not snuffed out. This has been the name of the game for decades. The US government, thankfully, has no sway over whether a topic is subject to our WP:FRINGE guideline. We go by sources that are in compliance with WP:FRIND. So far, you might notice, the boosters of this current UAP craze do not take kindly to the mainstream critique of their arguments. It's a classic story that we see all across the WP:FRINGE spectrum. Also, when you say "world renowned academic institutions like Harvard University" what you mean to say is one astronomer has fallen off the deep end. Academic freedom means Avi can pursue whatever flights of fancy he likes. But the judgement of his colleagues is that he is barking up some very wrong trees. That's the context. Now we need to get on with figuring out how to make sure that the reader understands this. jps (talk) 01:28, 29 July 2022 (UTC)[reply]
"But the judgement of his colleagues...". You know them all personally, do you? Look, I'm sure we could argue back and forth about the UAP question all night long. However, as previously noted, this is not the place to have that broader discussion - and frankly, I have neither the inclination nor time to waste on such a pointless exercise. Cosmoid (talk) 01:44, 29 July 2022 (UTC)[reply]
  • (EC)Comment. Entropy has a long track record of publishing junk science by unqualified "researchers". In fact, it's probably one of the journals most responsible for MDPI's poor reputation; certainly its publication of antivax[1] and anti-GMO[2] propaganda in 2012 and 2013 -- from the same quack author-- was enough to put the whole publisher on Beall's List. So I certainly wouldn't call his editorship of it an NPROF pass by any means. JoelleJay (talk) 00:47, 29 July 2022 (UTC)[reply]
    Knuth cannot be held responsible for what the publication did before he was its editor-in-chief. Cosmoid (talk) 01:28, 29 July 2022 (UTC)[reply]
    But he can be held responsible for (a) taking a position at a journal that has a history of publishing pseudoscience and (b) supporting the ongoing pseudoscience being published at that journal including a paper that he wrote himself. jps (talk) 01:31, 29 July 2022 (UTC)[reply]
    Whether or not he's "responsible" for anything, the relevant point is that only being Editor-in-Chief of a very select class of journals qualifies for the notability guideline. And Entropy is not a member of that select class. XOR'easter (talk) 02:50, 29 July 2022 (UTC)[reply]
    Those papers were published under his tenure[3] as editor-in-chief. That's part of why I singled them out. JoelleJay (talk) 06:33, 30 July 2022 (UTC)[reply]
  • Delete. I was truly on the fence about this, but the discussion at WP:BLPN has swayed me. Where are the sources that document the biography of this person? Where do they account for his interest in anything, his childhood and adolescence, his personal life, his hobbies, his friends, his cultivation of a persona? I see no source that can attest to that. Mere mention of a person saying this or that isn't really good enough for us to write a biography, and we should be honest about that. Standards for inclusion should be higher here because when they are low, we end up writing either prose that is helpful to precisely no one or we turn into glorified CVs. Neither of those options seems better than just putting this part of the project away. jps (talk) 04:11, 29 July 2022 (UTC)[reply]
The above comment is irrelevant for WP:Prof, which the user should read. Xxanthippe (talk) 04:41, 29 July 2022 (UTC).[reply]
  • Delete - I don't think he quite climbs over WP:PROF on citations, and I agree that Entropy is not good enough to pass him on that criterion. If he had a bit more discussion in mainstream media for his activity, that would push him over on WP:GNG independently of WP:PROF, but... he doesn't. PianoDan (talk) 04:54, 29 July 2022 (UTC)[reply]
.Weak delete As I see it there are three possible route for notability for Knuth, WP:PROF-C1, WP:PROF-C8, and general notability for his UFO work. I don't believe he passes C1 due to "as demonstrated by independent reliable sources". I was of the thought that he passed C8, but I don't believe Entropy quite passes well-established. It might be possible that he passes GNG in the future for his UFO work, but at the moment he doesn't quite make it in my opinion. -- LCU ActivelyDisinterested ∆transmissions∆ °co-ords° 12:11, 29 July 2022 (UTC)[reply]
I can't understand the above comment. His work has been cited by 4672 mostly independent reliable sources. Xxanthippe (talk) 23:11, 29 July 2022 (UTC).[reply]
None of his highest-cited papers are even in his field (they're all neuropsych/neurophys, in neuropsych/neurophys journals), and he's predictably a middle author on all of them. Since he made only minor contributions to those papers, we shouldn't credit him with their success, and we certainly shouldn't describe their findings as a product of his research career (or vice versa: they shouldn't be presented as if they were a significant focus of his research). So if we shouldn't describe those papers with more than a half-sentence in his biography, they shouldn't be given much weight for C1 purposes either. JoelleJay (talk) 06:25, 30 July 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Total citations: average: 7053, median: 2593, Knuth: 2330
Total papers: 104, 62, 83
h-index: 31, 23, 20
Top 5 papers: 1st: 1025, 496, 810; 2nd: 521, 263, 206; 3rd: 337, 154, 169; 4th: 280, 140, 162; 5th: 226, 109, 103.
All of his top 5 papers are outside of his own self-described research interests, and additionally are in a field with higher citation rates than what he seems to publish in the most. Accordingly, if I censor both those papers and the citation profiles of his coauthors on those papers (most of whom were well above the median), his metrics are actually worse:
TC: 4494, 1699, 827. TP: 81, 54, 77. h: 24, 21, 14. T5: 968, 274, 70; 392, 151, 59; 250, 115, 51; 199, 100, 47; 161, 87, 45. JoelleJay (talk) 07:17, 30 July 2022 (UTC)[reply]
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