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This is an old revision of this page, as edited by Hillman (talk | contribs) at 01:59, 11 June 2006 (→A Thought Experiment of Sorts from Haisch to Chris Hillman). The present address (URL) is a permanent link to this revision, which may differ significantly from the current revision.

The following Misplaced Pages contributor may be personally or professionally connected to the subject of this article. Relevant policies and guidelines may include conflict of interest, autobiography, and neutral point of view. Haisch (talk · contribs) / Haisch, Bernard Haisch, Bernard

Notable Wikipedian

Actually, Haisch (talk · contribs) has not yet responded to my request that he confirm his IRL identity. I think this edit and this edit establish my conjecture beyond reasonable doubt, however. ---CH 01:32, 2 June 2006 (UTC)

Haisch has now responded in a message (on my user talk page) and I have promised (in a message in his user talk page) to make some factual corrections and address some NPOV issues he mentioned. ---CH 21:31, 6 June 2006 (UTC)

It is natural to conjecture that Haisch attended the Latin School of Indianapolis (see the file history of the images and the article). Can anyone verify this? The stuff about the University of Wisconsin and the quotation comes from the amazon.com blurb for the book. ---CH 12:56, 1 June 2006 (UTC)

Reply from Bernard Haisch

I just today discovered your note to me.

I will be the first to admit that my work with Rueda and others on a possible connection between inertia and the electromagnetic quantum vacuum is speculative, and could well be totally wrong in the end. But the analyses we have published have been legitimate physics, funded by NASA (not the Breakthrough Propulsion Physics project by the way) and by Lockheed Martin. We are not publishing unrefereed stuff on the Web. Our papers have appeared in the Physical Review, the Astrophysical Journal, Physics Letters A, Annalen der Physik, etc. (It is partly gratifying, partly amusing that our recent two papers appeared in Annalen der Physik, which is where Einstein published his famous paper on special relativity. Yes, I know, the Journal has changed in the last 100 years!)

What I object to and which violates NPOV is (1) your selecting only the controversial parts of my career, (2) your adding negative editorial commentary, and (3) in some cases outright misinformation (in the JSE article).

For example, you mention an article I wrote for Noetic Sciences along with editorial commentary on that organization, but never mention that I have also publlished in Science, Nature and all the journals mentioned above. Most of my research has been published in mainstream journals and the bulk of my research was supported by NASA grants and contracts.

As for my editing JSE, I honestly did that as an unpaid public service. I think it is important for science to apply its tools to things that may lie outside the current corpus of scientific knowledge. There is no way to tell in advance where the next discoveries lie, so if most of what has appeared in JSE proves to be wrong (as it might) publishing on those topics is still a valid and, in my opinon, necessary function of science.

If you are going to discuss my editing JSE, then it is also fair to note that I simultaneously served as a scientific editor of the most prestige journal in astrophysics, The Astrophysical Journal, for which I made publish/reject decisions on over 1000 articles. Fair and balanced is the rule.

Your note to me is far less hostile than your articles about me and JSE, so perhaps there is some hope that we might come to a civil agreement on what is fair and what is not. By the way, I do know the NPOV philosophy quite well. Arguably the originator of the Misplaced Pages NPOV is my right hand man at the Digital Universe, Larry Sanger.

I admit that I have been sloppy about logging in but it is easy to discover the association between my IP adress and my user name, so I am not trying to hide anything. Also I know nothing about Dr. Morelos posting or the pacbell one you mention that may have been Sarfatti's (whom I try to stay far away from).

Oh, yes, the UFO thing. I am not a UFO reseacher. I've never done any research there, but I have read books, met some of the leading characters (some totally credible, some really deluded) and have tried to see what could be gleaned from occasional peeks into the world of special access programs. I report all this in a pretty neutral way at www.ufoskeptic.org, and it really is my intention to be providing a public service on a topic most scientists choose to avoid altogether. I am simply presenting my best take on what I have learned over the years, there's no promotion agenda, take it or leave it. I make no money on any of this, in fact, it costs me money to host the website.

Haisch 19:22, 6 June 2006 (UTC)Bernard Haisch

I just replied on your user talk page, but just to make sure everyone knows: I will make the factual corrections and address the NPOV concerns you raised ASAP (probably in about four hours). After my revisions you can take a second look and let us know whether you are satisfied that the revised articles meet WP:NPOV. ---CH 21:34, 6 June 2006 (UTC)

New version

Unfortunately, I was delayed until now in addressing the users raised by Haisch (talk · contribs) (Bernard Haisch IRL) about his wikibiography as rewritten by myself. I don't think it is a good idea to have users edit their own wikibiography, so I am going to revert, add an inuse flag, and try in good faith to address the issues he raised, then compare with his version, and consider similar changes, then summarize changes in a new message in this section of the talk page. This seems to me a better way to satisfy WP:NPOV. ---CH 20:25, 7 June 2006 (UTC)

OK, I have reorganized and rewritten this wikibiography. Summary: my new version retains most (maybe even all) of the changes requested by Haisch in his talk page message. The major difference appears to be these:

1. Following the model of similar biographies elsewhere in the WP, I reorganized the material to present Haisch's more mainstream activities/accomplishments first and to summarize more controversial activities later on.
2. My version quotes Haisch in what is intended to provide a more balanced portrait in his own words. In particular, it is important to note that he recognizes that his work with Rueda is controversial. OTH, I retained the long quotation from his "open letter" regarding UFOs and U. S. government conspiracies.

Regarding a quotation from WP talk page: before anyone objects that this violates WP:SELF, let me point out that the quotation is talking about Haisch, not the WP, and in addition, WP:SELF states in the second paragraph

Misplaced Pages can, of course, write about Misplaced Pages, but context is important. If you read about Shakespeare's works, you are not interested in reading about Misplaced Pages's policies or conventions. If, however, you read about online communities, the article may well discuss Misplaced Pages as an example, in a neutral tone, without specifically implying that the article in question is being read on — or is a part of — Misplaced Pages.

— from WP:SELF

To avoid any question of violating WP:AUTO I think it is best that I correct any remaining factual errors or address any further WP:NPOV concerns myself, but I am willing to consider further modifications suggested by Haisch (talk · contribs). In fact I solicit further information (please provide it in this talk page and let me figure out how to incorporate into the bio, however) on:

1. Can you provide some standard biographical information (birthplace/date, early education)?
2. Can you provide subject of Ph. D. thesis and perhaps advisor's name?
3. Can you confirm that Rueda is an EE by training?
4. Please provide more details on forthcoming experiment on stochastic electrodynamics: Does this directly address the alleged explanation of the origin of inertia? What "U. S. government" agency precisely is providing the funding? Where will the experiment be carried out? When will results be available?
5. Would it be correct to say that calphysics.org essentially consists of yourself?

I think it is important to avoid pasting a C.V. into an article like this, but a direct link to a complete publication list would probably be helpful to our readers. It might be nice to ask Haisch to choose one or two examples of noncontroversial publications in presitigious journals to add to the list, to balance it out.

Comments?---CH 21:52, 7 June 2006 (UTC)

User:Paul August: indeed, I forgot to add my sig, and thanks for noticing that, but why did you alter the wording of my comment, even altering a few words so that they became misspelled? ---CH 08:42, 8 June 2006 (UTC)

Sorry about that — mea culpa! — I was inadvertently editing a previous version of the talk page. Again sorry. Paul August ☎ 12:02, 8 June 2006 (UTC)

Comments by User:Haisch

Hi, Bernard:

First, you don't need to cc identical comments to my user talk page and to article talk pages. Usually Wikipedians just leave a note in a user talk page saying something like this:

Please see my comment in ]. ---~~~~

Because I have this article in my watchlist, even this is probably redundant unless you are wondering why I have not continued some previous in some article talk page.

Second, I moved Additional comments to Talk:Journal of Scientific Exploration because this comments seems to concern this article, not your wikibio.

Third, you should avoid editing your own wikibio; see WP:AUTO. More generally I at least feel that you should avoid editing articles on controversial topics in which you are directly involved, although if you feel you simply must do that, you should certainly use your user account to at least alert readers to possible bias. I think you grasp the idea that historically Misplaced Pages is governed by concensus and tends to give equal weight to all opinions no matter how ill informed. The latter is not always desirable but you should be aware of it. With patience and tact sometimes articles converge via successive approximation to a state acceptable to a small number of editors (right now I am not sure anyone but you and I is even reading this discussion). Then someone else comes along and undoes previous work. Not always desirable but part of the wiki philosophy. But there is strong community support for reverting slander or misinformation when the subject of a wikibiography raises concerns in the talk page. As I understand it, the current version contains no misinformation about yourself; please speak up if you spot any errors of fact.

I reverted to my version and then added back the information about Latin School of Indianapolis. Bearing in mind that

1. this is an encyclopedia article and not a C.V. or academic eulogy,
2. you have enjoyed a long career,

I am not sure that I see that all the details like postdoc and titles are really necessary. It seems to me that the article makes it clear that you have held mainstream posts and published in presitigious journals, and have also been involved in some nonmainsteam organizations and have published in some unusual venues. It seems to me that this is adequately balanced without becoming boring for Misplaced Pages readers, whose interests are ultimately paramount. In addition, concise articles are easier to maintain against "edit creep" and similar problems. ("Edit creep" occurs when some user adds new material without regard to previously existing organization, thus breaking up the flow of ideas, or even making nonsense of nearby material.)

If anyone strongly feels that the information about postdoc, exact titles, etc. are urgently important please speak up.---CH 14:23, 10 June 2006 (UTC)

A Thought Experiment of Sorts from Haisch to Chris Hillman

I would like to pose a simple question that might warm you up ever so slightly to the possibility that we may be onto something promising --- could be wrong, of course -- with respect to a connection between the electromagnetic quantum vacuum and inertia. You are a GR expert and even known for your non-mathematical relativity explanations. Let's assume that GR is correct that light rays travel on curved geodesics in the presence of matter. Fine and good. Now when you stand on a scale, is there a physical explanation for the force, i.e. weight, you feel? You say, well I am prevented from travelling on a geodesic, therefore the force merely reflects my inertia. Okay... but is there a more physical reason?

I propose the following. The (very short) trajectories electromagnetic quantum vacuum photons follow are geodesics. This means that to the observer fixed in a gravitational field, the quantum vacuum is falling, i.e. accelerating past. But this is identical to having the observer accelerating through the quantum vacuum. Thus if we are correct about the quantum vacuum acquiring an asymmetry from the perspective of an accelerating observer and that being the cause of inertia, then we have implicitly explained the principle of equivalence, since the two situations are identical. Thus inertial and gravitational mass become two different names for a single phenomenon. Have I raised your temperature by even half a degree. Download and read our . I would genuinely like to hear your thoughts. Haisch 02:30, 10 June 2006 (UTC)

I have briefly semi-replied to this and other duplicated messages from Haisch (talk · contribs) on my user talk page. ---CH 01:51, 11 June 2006 (UTC)

Addressing WP:NPOV concerns of Bernard Haisch

I feel it is best if I make any neccessary changes, to avoid the appearance of a conflict of interest should Haisch (talk · contribs) edit his own biography. In the new version, I made some minor changes from my previous version:

1. added a phrase about Latin School of Indianapolis as per Haisch, although I must say I am still not sure whether Haish was trying to say that this is a Catholic seminary, or that he attended three seminaries, or what.
2. added sentence to quotation of open letter on UFOs as per Haisch.
3. corrected Rueda education/job as per Haisch.
4. added "employed five postdocs" to brief description of calphysics.org as per Haisch.
5. In links, describe UFO skeptic as "website" not "organization" and add and Astrophysics to calphysics.org link, as per Haisch
6. removed "Unfortunately, Haisch's own publications and his involvement with fringe science organizations suggest to some that his involvement with Digital Universe might be compromise the percieved reliability of this project." as per Haisch, although this has been mentioned by others and something along these lines should in my view be reinstated.

Bernard, if you still have concerns sufficiently serious to pursue, please describe below the two most urgent concerns and describe what changes you would like to see.

TIA ---CH 01:59, 11 June 2006 (UTC)

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