Talk:Mohamed El Naschie

"No pages link to Mohamed El Naschie. "

Mark, can you find an appropriate article or two to link to this, please? TheoryOfPractice (talk) 20:58, 12 January 2010 (UTC)

I linked pseudomathematics and peer review here. I'm thinking of writing a related page on Elsevier (the publishing firm) which could also link here. I think this may be on-mission given their involvement in publishing pseudoscience (they use bundling tactics to shove the journal Homeopathy down the throats of science libraries), and their production of fake journals paid for by drug companies (e.g. the notorious Australasian Journal of Bone and Joint Medicine). On the other hand this might be driven mostly by my own dislike of Elsevier, so I'm curious if others think this is appropriate. --TheRealMarkGall (talk) 21:14, 12 January 2010 (UTC)

Lawsuit threat

Got another lawsuit threat on this one. If someone wants to give it a quick go over to make sure there is nothing that got in that is actually libel or defamation? I will try and look more closely later. tmtoulouse 20:01, 22 March 2010 (UTC)

Yikes, sorry about that. I think I'm the only real contributor to this page and I'd have no complaint if you just take it down. As far as I know it's entirely factual and just about every claim is cited, except the snark at the end of the introduction. If there's anything you'd like to me work on fixing up let me know, or again, just take it down -- I don't know how these things work and I don't want to make any trouble. --MarkGall (talk) 20:14, 22 March 2010 (UTC)

Looks like the section Chaos, Solitons, and Fractals is probably arguable too (insofar as it calls him a crank, which is doubtless the case but I don't know if it's legal to say so). Should I remove this all? --MarkGall (talk) 20:16, 22 March 2010 (UTC)

I know nothing about the subject matter & haven't checked the sources which are cited, but I've tagged a few things which look like they probably need citations. In particular, the stuff about sockpuppeting & harassing bloggers needs some examples; otherwise it just looks like an empty accusation. Ŵêâŝêîôîď^{Methinks it is a Weasel} 20:38, 22 March 2010 (UTC)

No, no, don't need to take it down and no need to apologize. It is not the first, nor will it be the last. My only goal in posting here is to alert people that someone is threatening and to make sure the article is as solid as possible in case they do decide to pursue things. tmtoulouse 20:42, 22 March 2010 (UTC)

Can we maybe have an RW-space article on every threat or complaint we have ever received, and what we did in response? I know we have details of Andy whining over us copying CP articles to side-by-side them, but what else is there? It would be cool to have one stop shopping for our "legal" debacles. ħuman 04:14, 23 March 2010 (UTC)

Was the threat specific about which statements are alleged to be defamatory? Ŵêâŝêîôîď^{Methinks it is a Weasel} 20:46, 22 March 2010 (UTC)

Thanks for the ^{[citation needed]} tags. My thoughts on each, and I'll edit the article shortly to reflect this:

1. "El Naschie's theories are regarded as not even wrong by all but a tiny number of mathematicians, but have been greeted with great enthusiasm by a large number of his own sockpuppets." This is clearly the truth, but things like "all but a tiny number of mathematicians" and the sockpuppet claim are difficult to give real citations for. I'll remove it for now and later add specific citations to claims by mathematicians that this is nonsense. There are enough in the article already that it's not a big loss.
2. "El Naschie was previously forced to remove a claim to be affiliated with Cambridge University," I believe this is the case but the paragraph is already a bit repetetive with other claims about his credentials, so I'll remove for now.
3. "that the work of Gerard 't Hooft (an actual Nobel winner) is derivative of his own." This is a common claim made by his supporters/sockpuppets on message boards (e.g. http://www.physicsforums.com/showthread.php?t=53682) , but difficult to link to him. I'll link to the thread and change to "supporters".
4. "after some foot-dragging Elsevier obtained El Naschie's resignation as editor of the journal". Cited source already in list.
5. ", but they were quickly revealed to be sockpuppets of El Naschie himself,^{[citation needed]} or a small number of like-minded cranks who published in his journal" Removed.
6. "apparently in the face of legal threats from the El Naschie's representatives" Cited emails from Baez posted on El Naschie Watch. Is this sufficient? --MarkGall (talk) 20:50, 22 March 2010 (UTC)

Is it necessary to remove all phrases like "Though generally considered a crank,"? This is absolutely true, but hard to actually back up. --MarkGall (talk) 20:56, 22 March 2010 (UTC)

Thanks for that. I don't think removing phrases like "crank" or "not even wrong" is necessary since these are so subjective. I took out the word "harassment" as it has a legal meaning & could arguably be construed as libellous. The sockpuppeteering stuff is very relevant to debunking this guy's work, so it would be a shame to skip it altogether. It just needs a couple of examples, if they're still preserved somewhere, & to be carefully phrased with a few choice weasel words ("allegedly", "according to", etc). Did he ultimately acknowledge that these supporters were sockpuppets? Otherwise, we can't actually prove that they were, only that they were believed to be socks. Ŵêâŝêîôîď^{Methinks it is a Weasel} 21:09, 22 March 2010 (UTC)

OK, I'll stick the "not even wrong" claim back in the intro. I think the sockpuppetry was decisively exposed at some point, though some of the sockpuppets are his supporters and not El Naschie himself. I'll see if I can dig it up, but there's a lot of articles asserting these things are sockpuppets without proof, so it may be hard for me to find the right thread. Maybe I'll email the guy who runs El Naschie Watch, he ought to know.

Luckily it's hard to come up with anything funnier to write in this article than citing some of El Naschie's claims verbatim, so I don't think too much is lost by removing some of the other stuff. Thanks for your help. --MarkGall (talk) 21:17, 22 March 2010 (UTC)

If there's a lot of articles asserting these commenters were sockpuppets, you could just cite those articles, as long as it's clear that it's just what those articles say, so we don't necessarily have to explicitly assert whether we believe that or not. Ŵêâŝêîôîď^{Methinks it is a Weasel} 21:29, 22 March 2010 (UTC)

I just emailed the folks who run El Naschie Watch -- they should have a better idea about this then I do. Once I hear back I'll update the article to reflect whatever sources they suggest proving sockpuppetry, or just link to articles asserting it and word things carefully. --MarkGall (talk) 21:31, 22 March 2010 (UTC)

Hah, an update on the 't Hooft front: there's a picture of El Naschie with 't Hooft that's posted on his official site, but it turns out it's photoshopped and someone found the original on a reputable site. His supporters/socks claim that the "official site" actually isn't, but whois traces to one of his close associates... Maybe I'll add this in once I hear more about sockpuppetry --MarkGall (talk) 22:07, 22 March 2010 (UTC)

More Info from El Naschie Watch

I emailed one of the people who runs the site El Naschie Watch about some questions above. Here's his response:

> I'm wondering if you could fill me in on what's known about El Naschie's sockpuppetry

There is compelling stylistic evidence (use of backticks instead of apostrophes, and consistent use of certain unusual words like "goodself") that the person who maintains El Naschie's Web site goes to bat for him all over the Internet.

>has it ever been established that any of these posters are El Naschie himself?

There is contradictory info about that. El Naschie's sockpuppets claim he doesn't use the Internet at all. On the other hand he has recently given an Arabic news interview talking about how useful the Internet is to him for long-distance collaboration. He is very rich and may regard manual activity such as typing to be beneath his dignity. In such cases it is, we think, still reasonable to call his proxies sockpuppets.

>Is it known who posts things like the claim that he deserves the Nobel?

Oh, now that I can tell you 100%. El Naschie himself publicly makes that claim every damn time he is interviewed by Arabic media. So do many of his followers such as Ji-Huan He.

All the above statements are well documented on El Naschie Watch.

I hope you retract nothing and hope you can provide the legal threat. Good luck! I doubt he'll sue you though. He's busy with Nature, still fretting about Die Zeit, and then he has SIAM and El Naschie Watch to worry about. He's trying to intimidate you. Don't let him.

He was also kind enough to supply links to his site documenting some of these issues:

Hehttp://elnaschiewatch.blogspot.com/2009/04/apparent-sock-puppetry-again.html

http://elnaschiewatch.blogspot.com/2009/03/el-naschie-does-not-use-internet.html

http://elnaschiewatch.blogspot.com/2009/11/who-says-goodself.html

http://elnaschiewatch.blogspot.com/2009/11/science-prize-prediction-posted-on.html

http://elnaschiewatch.blogspot.com/2009/11/punctuation-issues-remain_25.html

Typical interview in Arabic claiming to be Nobel worthy:

http://translate.google.com/translate?js=y&prev=_t&hl=en&ie=UTF-8&u=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.almasry-alyoum.com%2Farticle2.aspx%3FArticleID%3D232203&sl=ar&tl=en also supplied some links to his site documenting this:

I'll sift through this in the next couple days and adjust the article accordingly. --MarkGall (talk) 23:39, 22 March 2010 (UTC)