Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Allan R. Bomhard (3rd nomination)

The following discussion is an archived debate of the proposed deletion of the article below. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as the article's talk page or in a deletion review). No further edits should be made to this page.

The result was keep per WP:SNOW combined with previous AfD also being a keep. Also recommended that nominating editor read up on WP:BLUDGEON‎. SouthernNights (talk) 11:53, 17 June 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Allan R. Bomhard[edit]

AfDs for this article:

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This page has been nominated twice before for WP:NBIO issues, and both previous AfD noms failed to notice that while he has a degree of prominence among Nostraticists, that is itself a fringe theory well outside the mainstream academic consensus. While he has managed to get two books published by reputable sources, he himself mostly appears to self-publish for a community of adherents to the fringe theory and his work is not treated seriously by mainstream linguists. He is a notable figure in a fringe movement, not an academic field. This is important considering his work is entirely focused on that academic field. I don't believe he meets WP:FRINGEBLP considering he is mainly self-publishing to an already bought in audience. Warrenmck (talk) 00:15, 15 June 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Keep. An academic being wrong is not in itself a reason to delete an article, and Wikipedioa having an article on a controversial academic is not an endorsement of the academic or his beliefs. I would encourage people to read the previous deletion discussions to see why the article was kept before, as well as the now-removed claims (plausible not unverified) made in previous versions of the article. Eastmain (talk • contribs) 05:25, 15 June 2023 (UTC)[reply]
the person in question has never been, as far as any record exists, an academic. This is akin to a hobby physicist self-publishing theories which run counter to the understanding of physics for most of their career, minus two books which were published to zero acceptance. That’s actually my main point of contention with the previous AfDs and why I raised it again, this isn’t a “wrong academic”, it’s a fringe theorist. Altaic languages has a fair number of good examples of academic linguists who are considered wrong by their peers, but they absolutely have a place there. Bomhard does not. Warrenmck (talk) 05:59, 15 June 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Note: This discussion has been included in the deletion sorting lists for the following topics: Academics and educators and New York. Shellwood (talk) 05:37, 15 June 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Note: This discussion has been included in the deletion sorting lists for the following topics: Authors and Language. TJMSmith (talk) 12:39, 15 June 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Keep as before. Recognized as an independent scholar and as a proponent of the controversial Nostratic theory. Enough published book reviews for WP:AUTHOR. —David Eppstein (talk) 12:48, 15 June 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Most of his works are self published and he is not recognized as an independent scholar in the field. I implore people voting keep to verify these claims using non Wikipedia sources, since the content on Wikipedia was certainly heavily contributed by adherents to his fringe theory. Nostratic is controversial in the same way a young earth is at this juncture: it is completely rejected by the field and only presently explored under the guise of, effectively, pseudoscience.

I don’t know if there is a mechanism to invoke the perspectives of more people from the Linguistics Wikiproject. I don’t want to come across as either trying to canvas votes or meat-puppet but there seems to be a deep and fundamental misunderstanding as to the nature of his work and acceptance in the field of linguistics. Most of his web presence is on Wikipedia itself and his notability seems to exclusively derive from how much he has been cited on Wikipedia by a fringe movement; he is neither an academic nor a credible scholar in the field. There are practically no off-wiki sources beyond a book review, and again, an overwhelming amount of his work is self published. Contrast this with Soviet Nostraticisits who are/were prominent in their field while holding a minority opinion but seriously publishing their work. Warrenmck (talk) 16:03, 15 June 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Perhaps you misunderstood my use of the word "published". Although your claim that his books are self-published appears to be false (some but not all of them are), it is also irrelevant. What is relevant is that the reviews of his books, by other people, are reliably published. Therefore, they provide plenty of content on Bomhard's work that we can use to describe that work in an article. —David Eppstein (talk) 18:38, 15 June 2023 (UTC)[reply]
I’ve tried to be clear that not all of his books are self published and have regularly said “except a few”, to be fair. But the reviews of his books by other people don’t inherently meet the standard for notability, especially given those represent the entire corpus of references to the author in the field. Your claim that he is a “recognized independent scholar” is still not really backed up by any of the references. A book review does not recognition or endorsement make. Warrenmck (talk) 18:41, 15 June 2023 (UTC)[reply]
In fact, multiple published book reviews are exactly the criteria we use to judge whether we have in-depth published independent coverage of a book author, exactly what notability under WP:GNG constitutes. Your use of the words "recognition" and "endorsement" indicate further misunderstanding. A Wikipedia article on a scholar is not an endorsement of their work. It is a neutral summary of their work and life. Your attempts to push an editorial perspective on our article, insisting that he is "fringe" based on a source that merely criticizes his work as inaccurate (a different thing), suggests that you are not taking the appropriately neutral approach to this subject. —David Eppstein (talk) 18:54, 15 June 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Nostratic theory is considered a fringe theory in linguistics. To that effect I have asked the Linguistics Wikiproject to weigh in on this, but per our discussion on my talk page (and just to repeat it here):
As the Nostratic affinity is in itself a fringe theory based on near-zero evidence, such speculation hardly lends credence to the model.

(Turning Puns into Names and Vice Versa, Lillo, 2007)

I am not presenting an editorialized point of view. I am presenting scholarly consensus on the status of Nostratic. It was a valid historical proposal and greater evidence and our improved understanding of the comparative method post-1960 ended most of the discussion of Nostratic. At present it is exclusviely the domain of adherents to it who take macrofamily proposals as a given and fall well outside the mainstream of academic consensus, and again I would overwhelmingly prefer other linguists chime in than just leaving me trying to explain that attempting to strike a "neutral" tone as you read it here runs against scholarly consensus and falls into WP:UNDUE territory. It necessitates elevating fringe linguists who are predominantly self publishing to the standing of academic linguists who have decades ago moved on from Nostratic.

At present scholarly consensus is that the top level identified proto-languages (discussed in List of proto-languages) are genetically wholly unrelated, with a single possible exception. I would hope that my edits on linguists who advocate for Nostratic would make it clear that I'm not here to editorialize. My primary concern is first and foremost making sure that the information presented on Wikipedia is not editorialized in favour of a specific viewpoint, in fact. Warrenmck (talk) 19:41, 15 June 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Keep: per WP:AUTHOR based on multiple reviews of multiple works. TJMSmith (talk) 13:04, 15 June 2023 (UTC)[reply]
The person has created or played a major role in co-creating a significant or well-known work or collective body of work. In addition, such work must have been the primary subject of multiple independent periodical articles or reviews, or of an independent and notable work (for example, a book, film, or television series, but usually not a single episode of a television series)

How is this standard met? He published books, to be certain, but they are in no way well known or significant, and a majority of the reviews in question are pointing out the fringe nature of the theory.

I’m not trying to change everyone’s minds here, I do worry that people unfamiliar with the field are taking it for granted that he is an academic from that field due to the academic press nature of two of his books. Bomhard has been consistently misrepresented on both Wikipedia articles and previous AfDs as a “controversial academic” when he is neither particularly controversial (as a nonentity espousing a fringe theory) nor an academic, despite the claims of the infobox on his article. It is certainly not impossible to have a fringe linguistics theory published by an academic press, but the standard for WP:NFRINGE should be higher here, and these articles are doing readers of Wikipedia a huge disservice by elevating an irrelevant figure who, to be clear, defined their entire career by self-publishing pseudoscience with three exceptions.

I am not asking people to take my word for it, but please consider verifying the claims I’m making here if you’re going to make the claim that he is a “controversial academic”. Were his article to remain, for the sake of accuracy it would need to be reworked to discuss his role as a pseudolonguist rather than an academic, and none of his books would meet Wikipedia’s standards for inclusion as a source in any article other than his own. The article would necessarily be an orphan, as we don’t tend to include quack physicists in articles on physics and while Nostratic has had historical proponents and may warrant its article, it is one of historical interest. We don’t elevate the voices of alternate theories for our understanding of physics on those pages, though the historical understandings are certainly mentioned and of interest. But this isn’t a case of historical understandings or contributions, this is someone who used pseudoscience to continue developing an abandoned theory long after it was abandoned by scholarly consensus, which many of the reviews in question point out. Warrenmck (talk) 16:30, 15 June 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Weak keep -- I've seen an article by him in what appeared to be a reputable scholarly journal (published before the rise of the Internet). Benjamin Whorf was basically an independent scholar without much in the way of formal academic credentials. Also, I don't see why believing in Nostratic means that your article should be deleted -- the article of Aharon Dolgopolsky, a rather widely-known scholar, should certainly not be deleted. AnonMoos (talk) 19:51, 16 June 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Worf was publishing in an era where linguistics was much more defined by informal research, and pointedly he didn't spend decades publishing theories that ran counter to the academic consensus in the lack of evidence (indeed, his theories were influential in part because of the testability of his hypotheses). Keep in mind that there are plenty of high-quality articles about Nostraticists on Wikipedia (see: Sergei Starostin), they're just predominantly academics who continued working on the idea rather than people who were branching off saying all the other Nostratcisists were wrong and putting forward their own alternative to zero fanfare decades after scholarly consensus had moved on. I think this is more akin to someone continuing to work on homeopathy post the water memory paper being discredited. A fair and proper treatment of the Bomhard article would result in it being an orphaned stub, which it's increasingly converging on in the time since this AfD was posted as others work on cleaning the article. Warrenmck (talk) 20:07, 16 June 2023 (UTC)[reply]

The above discussion is preserved as an archive of the debate. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as the article's talk page or in a deletion review). No further edits should be made to this page.